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Posted: Thu Dec 06, 2007 12:01 pm
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[originally posted at Harmony Central)

OK, I wrote the review I was hoping to find yesterday. Hopefully this helps some folks. These are good amps, people.

I found out about this little monster two days ago, called all the GC's in Massachusetts -- nothin'. I then checked all the online usual suspects -- half had it half didn't but none could get it to Boston by week's end. Finally a last ditch call to old Mister Music who had one sitting on the shelf...left work as soon as I heard and grabbed it.

First some perspective. I'm 37 and have been playing 20 years. I play jazz with an ensemble, Allman's with friends, and just about everything in between. I have many vintage archtops, a Les Paul with Classic 57's, a 1983 Strat with Texas Specials, and a Tele with dual 'buckers as my main axes.

For amps I own a '83 Fender Rivera Concert (2x10 PTP), a 66 blackface Champ, a 72 silverface Princeton, and a 74 Fender Music Master. So Tube amps of the Fender variety make me happy. I'm also a guitar "geek" so I also own Guitar Rig 2 with Rig Kontrol2, Waves GTR2, and Amplitube Hendrix. When I play with models they play through Mackie HR824s to get full spectrum sound. I do plenty of casual jams, home studio recording, and gigs.

Things I got kind of sick of were *always* needing my laptop (and cables) to play with the sims. I was equally, however, tired of lugging my 60lbs Rivera to ensemble in order to be heard. My Champ, Princeton and Music Master are great amps each in their own way, but in a gigging situation they all begin to get too dirty at the volumes that an ensemble plays at (not bad for the Allman thing, but that's not what I want at Jazz improv). I should also say that I don't have a small fortune in pedals, though when I want effects I rig up the amp sims and use those effects (even more cables!).

I wanted an amp that was small enough to grab-and-go *anywhere* with the volume and tone that allowed me to play with ensemble, grind out "Statesboro", or play "Canon in D" in a classical duet. So, enter this new little "tribute" to the Super Champ.

INITIAL REACTION:
It's a neat little box. Size and weight are just right. Tolex job is very nice. Cab is made of particle board (so is my "vintage" music master), but it seems very solid (it looks a lot more dense that old particle board). The knobs at first appear to be cheaper smaller versions of the originals, but along with how the the pots turn, I grew accustomed to them very easily and now find them quite nice to use (and you will be using them a bit for your tweaking pleasure). Grill cloth is classic Fender as is the jewel light, handle, and metal logo with "blackface" underline for authenticity. The power supply is internal so the AC plug is removable (nice!) and from across the room the amp is a dead-ringer for the '66 blackface it's sitting next to as I write this.

The speaker baffle construction is nice and some of you may not have known this, but the original blackface champ had a speaker baffle that was removable. This one does too!! I thought that was a nice tribute to the original build quality and it allowed me to very simply swap in three different speakers. It would have been cheaper to just glue in a stationary baffle (like my SF princeton and music master), so it was really nice to see this feature. Also the speaker bolts are pre-tapped which makes swaps too easy.

INITIAL SONIC REACTION:
OK, so 10 minutes of warm up time for a brand new amp...I haven't owned a "new" amp in 8 years...what could a $300 amp possibly sound like? I started simply with no effects, no voices and just channel 1 (blackface). Compared to my Rivera (a huge 50 watt 2x10) it sounded a little small and boxy...but there was plenty there. "Speaker break-in" I figured and went back to playing. With my Les Paul it was sounding a little thinner and brighter than I thought it might. It seemed prominent in the mids, but it sounded very blackface, and very "champ-y" (remember I have a 66 champ to A/B with). It was very good and I was starting to think that this is going to be a very popular amp for Fender.

After some digging in with the blues I eased into some finger-style jazz progressions and the chime became nicely evident...but the speaker was a bit thin. Impatient as I am...I decided it was time to do some modifications.

DISASSEMBLY & THE MODS:
I proceed to take her apart. The two rear baffles it should be noted are solid wood, not particle board so that immediately surprised me...even the screws that hold them on are the same as on my vintage fenders. I then pulled the preamp tube 12ax7 and replaced it with one of the best NOS tubes available, a Telefunken smooth plate ECC83...wired it back up, powered on, Ahhhh, a little bit "more" was there...more depth and smoothness. I was onto something.

Next, I removed the speaker baffle from the cab (how awesome that they built it like this!). First I put in an Eminence that I had from my Rivera. When I compared this Eminence to the stock speaker in the XD, it was laughable. The magnet looks like a chicklet on the original and it's the lightest speaker I've ever held. The speaker replacement now introduced "punch". There was more of everything in all the good ways, but my eminence breaks up a little early, so I decided to swap it for a Jensen Italian re-issue, a C10Q. This speaker was the magic. The combination of the smooth NOS telefunken and the C10Q was fantastic. This amp can generate some very nice, very authentic sounds now and has very nice dynamics...more in a bit.

BUT BEFORE THAT...
In channel 1 mode, the tone knobs are crucial because the introduce a fair amount of variability. At first it was as if the tone knobs didn't do *that* much...but the differences are subtle. Unlike my Rivera where tone knobs can take you from one extreme to another, the XD's aren't so broad. However, I found that with the XD's treble on 3 and bass on 6 with my Les Paul was the right setting to be able to get great range with the guitar's tone and volume knobs. The Rivera is more precise with more flexibility, but that's a different animal altogether. The tone stack for example destroys the tone stack on the Music Master, fwiw. Basically, with channel one on 4 for volume and the above-mentioned tone settings, the XD sounds *really* nice...and it sounds like more than a vintage Champ has on tap.

THEN I TURNED IT UP:
As I just mentioned, I had a good tone coming out of the little toaster at about 4 on the volume – but what happens at 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, & 10 you all ask? Well to put it simply, she overdrives…and it’s nice. I am happy to say that even with the stock speaker, the 10” driver never farts out or burps…this has never been the case with any vintage champ that I owned and even my SF Princeton will sometimes fart when overdriven. Also, this was not buzzy as in the pre-ampy kind of overdrive. At 7+ on the volume dial (in channel one) the amp definitely gets gritty and plenty freakin’ loud. I powered up my ‘66 Champ to compare and the XD had more dynamics or I guess what I would call “texture” than the BF…and the overdrive came on in a more controlled way. I was happily surprised by this – the ’66 at 10 is a wall of distortion, the XD still has note definition in there at that level…curious. All in all the XD seems to have a bit more refinement in its tone than a vintage champ in BF-mode and turned up. I don’t know what going on inside the amp’s signal path at that point, but I can hear what’s coming out of the speaker and it’s nice!

THOSE “NEW” KNOBS:
Now that I had what I considered to be at least as tasty a tone as my original BF champ (in the BF mode), it was time to explore some of those "new" knobs -- F/X and Voice. This is where it got pretty fun and all the extra value of the XD came through. At this point my feeling was that the BF tone (after mods) was more than worth the price of admission, and then the fun started with the extra knobs.

THE F/X KNOB is pretty straight forward and you can see the list elsewhere on this thread so I won’t list them here. I will say that they are presets for which you can only set a global level for. That is, you can select “short reverb” or “spring reverb” and the only control you have over that effect is the “F/X level”. While this may seem limiting, it is actually a plus. The preset is a baseline and then you can mix in as much or as little as you’d like. Only a few effects let you mix two effects like Chorus/Verb, Chorus/Delay, Verb/Delay…and then you still have the one F/X level knob to mix it in. I found that the short and medium reverb with 2 on the level knob was a very nice natural reverb. On my Rivera with a tube driven ‘verb and full size accutronics tank (a gorgeous reverb), set on 2 where I leave it, the reverbs were close enough in quality “for rock n roll”. The Rivera was better…but of course it was…that is to say the XD’s verbs were better than I expected and I would say pretty close to my Holier Grail.

But here’s my sense of them:
Reverbs – Like I said above, pretty good. Can get cavernous if that’s your thing, but as a mild verb it sounded 100% ready to go (which is how 'verb should be used). If I was taking this amp to a gig or a jam session, I would not additionally take my holier grail for ‘verb (as I do with my Princeton, music master and champ). I haven’t tried surf sounds yet…but I will tonight.

Delays – These were fun and they sounded really nice. A few different settings of which the slap-back I liked least. I don’t often “reach” for a delay effect, but it was really, really nice to have it there just a knob twist away…and I think like the ‘verb, that that’s the point of this amp…the stuff is all just kinda in there and you pull out what I want.

Chorus – I play jazz but don’t love that Metheny kind of chorus-y jazz sound, but these, like the delays are so nice to have in there. I turned to the chorus/delay effect and worked through “Bright Size Life” and it was there. Tasteful modulation effect while leaving nice trailing note decay. Truly it was quite nice and unexpected to get sucked into happily playing through two effects that I don’t own and would rarely think to play with. Except that they’re in there and so I found myself getting lost – not twisting virtual knobs like I do on my amp simps, but playing. I got lost *playing*

Vibro – The vibrato was definitely nice. I consider my Princeton the king the tube vibrato so I plugged her in. The Prince pulses in such a nice way that I was honestly surprised to hear how well the XD performs. I am more of a fan of slow vibrato and I think that the slow setting was the best that the XD had, but getting that CCR sound was just plain simple…and it sounded easily as good as the old SF vibro champ I had last year.

Leslie (Variotone) – Sounded like other “leslie” kind of effects, I don’t actually like the leslie tone, but I twisted a knob and there is was.

THE VOICES SPEAK MORE THAN ONE LANGUAGE…and it will put such a smile on your face to have all these tones, some of which sound *much* bigger than the small cab that houses them, all within a knob twist. Basically the Voices knob + the Gain knob = fun. You should consider the 16 voices as “headstarts” to good tone "types". If you’ve been in a session and the engineer sets up your amp after you tell him what tone you want, and he says, “try that” -- it's a lot like that, a very close starting point that you can then customize. It’s like each setting is like that in a slightly different tone vein or genre. It’s a very close version of "just what you’re looking for" while keeping in mind that you then have a Gain knob, a Master Volume knob and Treble and Bass to fine tune these voices and there’s tons to work with within just one voice. This is where you hear people talking about this amp and they say, "there are some great tones right at the point of breaking up..." rolling back the gain knob on the selected "voice" setting gets you to that point and there are many tones to start with...of course you call also push the tone with the Gain knob i f that's your fancy.

The BF tones get gradually more overdriven, then the Bassman settings in the same way, then the British stuff in the same way, then I think the metal-ish stuff, then a Jazz VibroKing (which is *awesome*)…then an acoustasonic. Some of these you may never use, and some you may know every nuance of…for me, of all the "voices" the BF, Bassman, and VibroKing are just awesome, though the British Marshall-esque stuff was a beautiful way to fake that I don’t have a Marshall anywhere in my house. My Les Paul was squealing like a pig on the Marshall settings.

CONCLUSIONS:
I am a very big fan of this amp. I equally despise tube amp purists and the modeling Gestapo of foolish youth. I also hate all the arguing that goes on in forums between the two camps. I am also a pragmatist and a player. I have owned and own some of the best Fender tube amps ever produced and I have also owned almost every amp modeler ever made (in fact one of the best tones I discovered was a Line6 Toneport with the Neve Pre-model into a SF Champ last year -- mentioned above) – gorgeous. I am equally at home discussing capacitor nuances for a PTP amp as I am operating systems and drivers for sims. I have been hoping for an amp like this for many years and I am very happy that *Fender* finally did it.

Is this amp a Champ in the vintage sense? No. Here’s what I mean. It’s not a Champ because that would be a PTP (or turret board more specifically) amp with low wattage, a tube pre (12ax7), tube rectifier (5y3), and single 6v6 power tube. It would also have a small speaker and a minimum of on-board flexibility. The original Champ was the epitome of simplicity.

However, is this amp a Champ in the spiritual sense? Oh yes, very much so and more. The original Champ was in a way both the perfect entry-level amp for someone who would never tweak it any more than to turn the volume up, but was also the ideal tweakers amp. The original Champ offered its curious owners (and later collector/players) simple accessibility to tweak the tubes, caps, negative feedback loop, and speaker for very different tones based on preference. For example my ’66 Champ has been modified with a 10k resistor on the negative feedback loop for a cleaner sound (remove the feedback loop and that amp will scream). The tubes and speaker have been replaced to give me more clean headroom. I love my ’66 because I have modified it to be exactly what I want.

The new XD takes this same basic ability (I can swap tubes and speakers or drive a larger cab with the line out) while also integrating the 21st century into this little box in a very guitarist-intuitive way. No Champ has ever been able to make, much less swap between, the kinds of tones that the XD can and what you never lose is the Fender chime.

So, I strongly recommend this amp. From a “new” store purchase perspective this is easily the best $300 I’ve ever spent on music gear (though Line6’s Toneport at $100 was awesome too). However I also REALLY recommend the upgrades to get the most out it. The Jensen speaker I put in I got off craigslist for $20, and I think the telefunken was $30 when I got a few years ago.

I wish they had this amp when I started playing!! I consider this the *perfect* first amp to give a new player -- great tone to start with and then all the basic effects that a developing player is curious about; there's a huge tonal pallette within this little guy. However, for me this is a like a 5th or 6th amp, yet one despite my large collection that I felt was sorely lacking from my arsenal of options. For the price of two decent pedals (overdrive and modulation) I get an entire amp AND those effects. One final word, this amp is loud.

Kudos to Fender for some really excellent market analysis and product development! They will sell a gazillion of these little powerhouses…and the amp is more than worthy of the name. Very well done Fender!


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Posted: Fri Dec 07, 2007 9:19 am
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h1,

Wow, what a good, thorough review. It seems that you really took the time to go through everything the amp has to offer. The Super-Champ XD and Vibro-Champ XD are fun, flexible, affordable...and of course, if you decide to try other speakers or whatever, it's easy enough to play with that without modifying a vintage original.

Thanks and enjoy!

Shane


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Posted: Fri Dec 07, 2007 11:54 am
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Me and a bunch of other guys have been banging on Fender for years to bring a cheap 6V6-based gigable amp to the masses. Knowing it would be done right by Fender, preserving the BF glassy clean sheen and that killer gnarly overdrive you hear in the DRRI. And Jimmy Page, John Lennon and Los Lobos to name just a few knew and know all about the goodness of 6V6s live and in the studio.

Purists can always have their DRRIs or the originals or their Carr Ramblers for $2500. Fender has upped the ante by lowering the ante to get that great 6V6 tone manna.

Toss in that very excellent FM DSP modeler and Bob's yer uncle. And just between you and me, a lot of studio cats are gonna be hauling this little 25-Lb wonder to sessions and flipping the model knobs for different songs so they don't have to hire their amp techs to carriage in 12 amps. In the studio, time is money, and speed and ease of tone access enhances the creative process hugely.

And I would get a 15-watt BJ @$449 over the 15-watt SC at $299 uhhh...why???


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Posted: Fri Dec 07, 2007 5:12 pm
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Maruuk wrote:
And I would get a 15-watt BJ @$449 over the 15-watt SC at $299 uhhh...why???


So you could bypass the DSP?

. . . or perhaps it was a rhetorical question.


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Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 2:10 pm
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Looking at the BJs advantages is interesting: you get a tube pre-amp stage, and theoretically a bit more volume since a pure tube amp has more transient headroom. A 12" speaker and that cool "fat" switch which is a I guess a midrange booster. I leave mine on all the time, hate the sound without it. All for $150 more.

The XD has 6V6s, which to my ear always sound a lot phatter and sweeter than EL84s. And all the character chameleonisms and EFX from the DSP. With the BJ you get basically one sound. O, plus the line out from the XD. That makes gigging a dream since you can just stick that out into your PA--no mics, cables, stands or fuss. Assuming you're not a purist and want the tubes and spkr vibe going on.

Perhaps Fender should have gone one step farther and added speaker-compensation and a balanced XLR-out to the line out like the Windsor Studio and the Kustom '36 Coupe have.


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Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 2:58 pm
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Bill M's initial tech analysis:

I opened up a Super Champ XD this morning and I was very pleasantly surprised at the overall quality. I've posted a pic of the board in my profile if you're interested.

The board is well made, dual-sided, with plated-through holes, commercial grade thickness. One large board has the power supply, control interfaces, and tube circuits. A small board holds the DSP and a read-only memory chip that contains the SCXD personality.

All of the resistors in the tube circuits are half-watt or better, heavier than they need to be. All of the off-circuit ribbon cables and wires have a bead of hot-melt glue where they meet the board, so that they won't break from flexing or vibration. All of the screws have a dab of sealant; they won't vibrate loose either.

Half a dozen small switching and interface integrated circuits translate front panel controls into tone and volume actions. They're all bypassed to eliminate noise or glitches. The controls themselves are round pots with angled frames, similar to those on the Hot Rod Deluxe and Blues Deluxe, soldered to a circuit board, but attached to the front panel with nuts, not like the shaky knobs on the BJr and PJ.

All of the controls are digital. There's no tone stack or even a real analog volume control--all of the knob settings are translated into instructions for the DSP chip to look up the appropriate response for the chosen voice.

I was hoping that the analog/tube portion and/or power supply would be on a different board, but it's all on one.

Amazingly enough, the SCXD has adjustable bias! There's a big, blue, single-turn trimpot on the circuit board, up by the output jack. Mine was set fairly cold. Warming it up, however. didn't audibly affect the tone.

The amount of sawtooth on the plates is entirely normal, but more than I like. I'll probably add more filtering if I can find room for it. The 6V6s are running at 400V and Fender is using 450V caps. I'd like a little more margin there, but they should hold up OK.

The power transformer never gets more than moderately warm. Plenty of headroom there.

Overall, I'd say that the analog and digital engineers did a fine job with the SCXD. I think they could do a little more work on some of the voices, especially the clean jazz voice. It's way too bass-heavy; I play it with the treble on 10 and the bass no more than halfway. And it hardly responds to the gain control at all. Wouldn't it be cooler if it did some of that Wes Montgomery-style throaty breakup as you cranked it?

Meanwhile, other voices, like the Marshall, sound like they're supposed to, and even clean up to Bassman-like tones when you dial back the gain.

I'm digging this thing. I'll try a Ragin' Cajun in it later.

(responding to the efficacy of an all-on-board)...

It's a two-edged sword. Cleanly divided analog and digital sections would make mods to the analog section easier, but the reliability with a single board is likely much better. Consider the Peavy Classic xx amps, with their multiple boards and jumpers... a servicing hassle.

The SCXD layout concentrates all of the analog stuff into one area, so servicing the things that may be necessary in time, such as plate resistors, screen resistors, and electrolytic caps is relatively straightforward. If the DSP board fails, you junk it and stick in a new one. If the knobs or effect selectors go wonky, they could be harder to troubleshoot.

BTW, the SCXD has a second fuse--a 7 amp fusible link soldered down like a resistor. So if there's a major problem and some clown tries to jumper the glass fuse, it'll blow. That may be a safety standards requirement in some countries.


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Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 12:52 pm
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Thanks to Maruuk, it seems I've already rendered an opinion here!

I've only had the SCXD for a couple of days and I flat out love it. As you can see from the message I posted on the FDP site, I'm very impressed with the component and build quality.

Some of the posters above seem to think that you need an all-tube design to get the advantage of tube-style headroom--compression and graceful transition into distortion, with an extended "clean" range that isn't really clean but not distorted enough to notice. Fender's digital section has enough headroom to process the guitar signal without overloading, it can pass that signal along to the tube section where it undergoes that natural warming and compression that only tubes seem to do right.

I'm pleased to report that the digital section handles the loudest guitars and most overwound pickups I had on hand gracefully--no overloading, no digital clipping. The DSP adds the gain, tone, amp simulation and efx settings and then sends them to a tube stage for "warming," then to another tube stage for phase inversion, then to the 6V6s for amplification. The "warming" stage is a classic Fender preamp stage, which then drives the phase inverter. The SCXD keeps all of the pre-tube signals down at the line level or less, so it's not stressing the digital electronics or causing distortion other than what the DSP is supposed to be adding.

Bottom line, it sounds and feels pretty much like an all-tube amp. Channel 1 and voice 4 on channel 2 sound like a Deluxe Reverb playing through a 10-inch speaker, a very convincing blackface sound, with more clean headroom than you'd ever get from a Princeton Reverb. It has more clean headroom than a Blues Junior, too, and can go toe to toe in overall loudness.

I've done some speaker swaps too, and yes, the stock speaker has to be the flimsiest 10 inch speaker I've ever seen. But it has awesome performance! It produces more, rounder bass than an Eminence Ragin Cajun, that extra bass is great on the clean voices--you can actually have too much of it on the jazz voice. The Ragin Cajun is louder overall, though, especially in the mids and highs. Most users will never need to change the speaker.

I'm going to be testing some other mods and I'll post results along the way, but my hat is off to the design team. The SCXD is a versatile little amp that outperforms anything else I can think of at the price. It doesn't have the ultimate tweak-ability of a POD XT, but it nails most of the built-in voices so that they're instantly recognizable, and they definitely sound more tubey.


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Posted: Fri Dec 14, 2007 11:40 am
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Bill--You mention 3 tube "stages": warming, PI, and the final power stage. I understand 2 and 3, but what's the first tube "warming" stage? Does that use the 12AX7 as a non-PI?

And also, what does the 12AX7 do to the tone beyond just phase inverting? Add any compression or harmonic content? Does it add any gain at all or is the DSP module the only pre-amp component?


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Posted: Fri Dec 14, 2007 12:00 pm
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The phase inverter uses half of the 12AX7, the old concertina style, which doesn't have gain. It has a slight bit of loss, in fact. The other half of the 12AX7 comes before it, and it's a standard Fender preamp gain stage. It takes the signal from the digital stage and boosts it to drive the PI. The fact that they did this with a tube instead of a transistor tells me that they wanted to add some tube warmth. I haven't gone in with a signal generator and a spectrum analyzer yet to see how much harmonic content gets added, but there must be some--it's a fairly high-gain stage.

But all of the tone that matters--breakup, distortion, etc--comes from the DSP. The SCXD does not depend, as far as I can see, on the tubes for distortion, just overall warmth and graceful compression as you approach maximum power. Since the 6V6s operate below their maximum rating, I doubt that you'd ever hear power tube distortion from this amp.

Then again, power tube distortion is actually somewhat uncommon in most amps, despite what people think. Most of the time, they're hearing preamp distortion or even distortion in the phase inverter.


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Posted: Fri Dec 14, 2007 12:27 pm
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Great post, thanks! Your explanation should be a sticky at the top of every tube amp forum.

So the SC is a true all-tube amp, it has both pre and power tube-driven amp stages. No wonder it compares so favorably to the old Princeton and Deluxe Reverb.

The generally accepted definition of a hybrid guitar amp is one with an all-solid state preamp stage and a tube power stage (the old Music Mans, etc) so the SC XD should not be considered a hybrid.


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Posted: Fri Dec 14, 2007 12:50 pm
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No, it's not a true all-tube amp. The DSP is always active and provides the basic voicing and controls the volume and tone, even if you're on channel 1 and the the efx are off.

The DSP is always doing some preamplification and tone shaping/voicing. It's kind of the reverse of many hybrid amps, which have a tube preamp for warmth and overdrive and then use a solid-state power amplifier to make the tube tone louder.


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Posted: Mon Dec 17, 2007 10:48 am
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I mean there is at least an actual tube preamp stage and a tube power stage, which is unusual. The old Music Man amps had 100% solid state preamps and tube power stages and were the original hybrids. I never consider modeling amps that just stick a 12AX7 in there like the Cyber Twins or the Voxes as true hybrids.

The SCXD is pretty close to the design concept of the Bogner/Line 6 Spider Valves. Just $400 cheaper.


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Posted: Tue Dec 18, 2007 4:45 pm
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Imho, it's not a choice between a Blues Junior and the new Champs. I would never part with my Blues Junior, for what it is. I love it. Many of us do. For chorus or delay, if I wanted it, I would plug in a pedal. I'm just not interested in modeling.


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Posted: Thu Dec 20, 2007 10:49 am
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I've been reading some of the mail on this thread and thought I would make a couple of comments. My experiences do differ from some. Out of the box, I was not at all impressed with my new Super Champ XD. It paled compared to the other amps I have. The first thing I did was to change out the 12AX7 OEM, and replace it with a NOS GE. That made a big difference. I then started trying different sets of 6V6s.. I have many NOS tubes, and some of the new Russian and Chinese tubes. After trying RCAs, Sylvanias, Philips and JJs, I ended up using NOS GEs. I must say however, that the OEM Harmonixs were quite good (except for the 12AX7). I rebiased the amp as per the schematic directions. While I had the chassis out, I noted that the 6V6s were running 385 volts on the plate, and 6.7 volts on the filaments. Those voltages are above the recommended for these tubes, but that's nothing new. The amp sounded much better with the new 12AX7, but still was nothing special. I tried three different 10" speakers. A Celestion Tube 10, a old 1965 Gibson (Jensen), and a Eminence Ragin Cajun. All were much better than the OEM speaker, but the Ragin Cajun was a TREMENDOUS improvement, and brought this amp into a very special league of it's own. I know that others have said the OEM speaker had a lot a bass, but I've seen hand held radios with more bass than mine had. After these mods, this amp can sit at the same table with my old Gibson and Princeton amps. It even competes with my Marshall half stack for playing time. The Peavey, VOX, and Epiphone have been moved to the back row. If Fender would put a good tube in the front end, and install a decent speaker, no one could touch this little amplifier in its price range.

Snakebite


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Posted: Fri Dec 21, 2007 12:14 pm
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Aspiring Musician
Aspiring Musician

Joined: Thu Jun 21, 2007 10:46 am
Posts: 634
Hm, the Ragin Cajun is part of that new inexpensive Eminence Patriot series. It's only $65. Pretty reasonable mod.

Gotta love these mods which involve buying some $300 hemp speaker or something plus another $100+ in tubes and board mods which often puts you well over the price of a vastly superior stock amp. But $65 on top of the paltry $299 for the amp is one of the most cost-effective major mods ever.


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