My Modded Fender champ 600

Alanstrainor

Okay, so i've had my champion 600 for a good few months now and love it, but it just got better today with the addition of a weber alcino 6" speaker, man this thing sounds sweet! No more crackling at high volumes from the crappy speaker, just sweet compressed warm bluesy tones. The valves have been changed obviously, so where do i go from here? Do any boardsies have any they've modded?

Eoin Madsen

I briefly considered getting one to mod it. If I had, I'd replace the circuit board with an original Champ board.

Not sure what I'd do about the rectifier. Maybe just copy the diode circuit from the existing board. But if feeling adventurous, punch a hole in the chassis and add a valve rectifier as per the original 5F1 design.

You can get "kits" for replacing the transformers and everything (they cost more than the amp), but I reckon you might as well build an amp from scratch if you're going down that road.

Music4life

Ya I have the amp its great.I was thinking about doing it myself.Where Did u buy the speaker?Did you get someone too install it the speaker?:rolleyes:

Alanstrainor

Music4life wrote: »

Ya I have the amp its great.I was thinking about doing it myself.Where Did u buy the speaker?Did you get someone too install it the speaker?:rolleyes:

I ordered the speaker on ebay, it's a weber 6" alcino, i installed it myself, seriously easy job, no matter how good or bad you are at DIY kinda things, there's no soldering to be done just two connectors to switch from the old to new speaker. I had to take everything out of the amp to take the old one out though, again all very easy to do all you need is a Philips head screwdriver. I take you've upgraded the valves? The stock ones were god awful.

vintagemusic4u
That's the seller, very good to deal with, received the speaker within a week from the states and answered all questions promptly.

Music4life

Alanstrainor wrote: »

I ordered the speaker on ebay, it's a weber 6" alcino, i installed it myself, seriously easy job, no matter how good or bad you are at DIY kinda things, there's no soldering to be done just two connectors to switch from the old to new speaker. I had to take everything out of the amp to take the old one out though, again all very easy to do all you need is a Philips head screwdriver. I take you've upgraded the valves? The stock ones were god awful.

vintagemusic4u
That's the seller, very good to deal with, received the speaker within a week from the states and answered all questions promptly.

Sound for that.Ive the Fender Champion 600 Reissue one I dunno if you have that one.Ya I still have the stock ones but there 6v6s there not bad what ones did you put in?It does buzz quite a bit.Im still new too value amps so I dont know much,I wouldnt trust myself changing the speaker though:o.

Music4life

I dont think there selling the weber 6" alcino anymore.Only 8",10" & 12" im right by saying that Right? I really wouldnt mind souping it up alright:)

Alanstrainor

Yeah mine is the fender champion 600 reissue, And seriously there's nothing to installing the speaker, if you can unscrew a screw and unplug a plug then you'd be fine!:). Yeah that seller doesn't seem to have any at the mo, but the stock changes very regularly so check back every now and again for them.
The valves i got were these:
jj/tesla
sotek nothing special, but still sooo much nicer than the stock valves. Again very easy to change out

Music4life

Ya sound for that.Do you use both of the valves?Ya It doesnt seem that expensive Suppose its worth a shot.Your saying it gives you a nice Blues tones ill be temped too buy them tonite but im poor very poor.My amp actually stop working and had to send it back & im doing my leaving cert in 2 weeks so i wont change anything until thats over.Im not taking any changes.:D

Alanstrainor

yes, there are two valves in the champ 600, a pre-amp valve and output valve, so both the stock ones were rubbish, and yeah they seem good for warn blues tone alright. But i'd say the speaker would make the biggest difference. And you can pick up a ceramic weber 6" delivered from the US for under €50

Alanstrainor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O7E-ZcZh8w

there's a vid of me with the amp to give you an idea of the tone, it gets more compressed when cranked fully, the volume is only at 7ish there. And forget about the sloppy playing i was tired and bored.

Music4life

Ya thats sounds sweet:) Ya ill definely get the tubes & the speaker ill say.If I have problem with puitting the speaker in ill give you a shout:D

Eoin Madsen

You can get Weber speakers directly from Weber at www.tedweber.com.

Try www.watfordvalves.com in the UK for new valves. You don't have much choice regarding type anyway (it pretty much has to be a 6V6 and an ECC83 unless you're looking for trouble) but they might be able to make a good recommendation re brand. Don't skimp on the valves anyway.

Alanstrainor

Eoin Madsen wrote: »

You can get Weber speakers directly from Weber at www.tedweber.com.

Try www.watfordvalves.com in the UK for new valves. You don't have much choice regarding type anyway (it pretty much has to be a 6V6 and an ECC83 unless you're looking for trouble) but they might be able to make a good recommendation re brand. Don't skimp on the valves anyway.

Actually funnily enough, it worked out cheaper to buy the alcino 6" speaker off of ebay! And when i emailed ted weber for the postage cost to ireland i was told that he wouldn't know until i had committed to buy and he took it to the post office to weigh "as the postage cost changes all the time", i thought this was very weird so decided against going down that route.

Eoin Madsen

I was going to add that actually. I think they overcharge on the shipping a little, so I'm not surprised an Ebay seller was cheaper. I got a 10" AlNiCo speaker and a pair of SE transformers from him, and the shipping came to $180.

Dord

$180 is a bit steep on shipping.

BostonB

Alanstrainor - Nice tone and vids. The comments to your vids are LOL.

Alanstrainor

BostonB wrote: »

Alanstrainor - Nice tone and vids. The comments to your vids are LOL.

Haha, cheers man, i know i say it to everyone who leaves a comment, but it does mean a lot to me!

punchdrunk

I've got the gretsch version,which is exactly the same electronically as the 600,I love the cleans but it needs a little help wit the drive sounds
I was going to get this for it...
http://www.mercurymagnetics.com/pages/mainframe.htm
unfortunately it's 160 euro...

now i've spotted this...
http://www.thomann.de/ie/orange_ad5.htm
and it's got a 10" speaker...
hmmm...
what to do!

Alanstrainor

Have you modded the gretsch at all? i would definitely recommend a speaker upgrade, the tone will improve 10 fold and the speaker will give a compressed drive at high levels which is really sweet. That mod kit is really pricey, i mean the amp cost almost that much!!! I'd rather do it myself tbh, it's more fun creating something specifically for me rather than a "kit". I've never seen/heard the orange, looks nice alright.

Eoin Madsen

Joe Robot wrote: »

$180 is a bit steep on shipping.

On review of the receipt, it was actually $120. Which isn't great but I guess isn't awful either, given the weight of a speaker and a pair of light transformers.

pickin79

I was reading on the Weber site that the Sig 6" AlNiCO doesn't fit with some tubes. Did you have any problems at all installing the AlNiCo?

Alanstrainor

pickin79 wrote: »

I was reading on the Weber site that the Sig 6" AlNiCO doesn't fit with some tubes. Did you have any problems at all installing the AlNiCo?

To install it i had to pretty much take the the whole preamp out of it seeing how small the thing is, but it's very easy. I have a Electro Harmonix 6v6Gt at the mo, and there's about 6/7mm clearance between it and the speaker, 'twas close but fine non the less.

pickin79

Are there any precautions I need to take if I'm going to remove the chasis to replace the speaker with my Weber AlNiCo? Not going inside the chasis, just removing it. Any precautions?
Thanks!

Fingers Mcginty

you have seriously long fingers dude

punchdrunk

O.K rather than start a new thread,I thought i'd just tag it on here as it's related to the same subject

previously i had installed this kit here
http://www.watfordvalves.com/product_detail.asp?id=1916

which made a big difference to the tone,it got rid of most of the farty Bass

i still didn't like the amps driven sound though I wanted more of a Kills/Black Keys sound
then I found this kit made by Ebay user Alnicomagnet
http://cgi.ebay.com/Alnicomagnet-Mod-Kit-5E1-5F1-Champion-600-Gretsch-G5222_W0QQitemZ360101784663QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_MusicalInstr_Amplifiers_RL?hash=item360101784663&_trksid=p3286.m63.l1177



so far i've installed the tone stack mods only (there's other mods to reduce noise for recording whoch i will go back and do)
from the factory this amp has a non adjustable "blackface" tone circuit inside which sucks alot of gain and scoops out alot of mids...good for clean chords but not much else
,this Modded it to sound closer to the 50's Champ sound which adds alot more mids and smooths out the distortion

I LOVE IT!!
definitely worth getting this done lads

fish-head

How complicated is it?

punchdrunk

wasn't too bad,de-soldering the original components without damaging the PCB was the hardest part,there's about ten components to remove
and about four to put in instead not too hard at all