1951 Fender Champion 600 5B1 Two-Tone -- SOLD!!!!

This is an amazing unmolested vintage Fender amplifier.  Everything is original, right down to the leather handle and the old 2-prong electrical plug.

There are no cracks, tears or rips in the tolex , and the grill cloth is perfect.   I have never seen a 64 year old Champion 600 in such perfect shape.   I have done nothing to it, not even cleaning off the patina.  It has been sitting in a closet for at least 40 years.  No mouse turds or insects.  It is time-capsule find.

The amp plays perfectly.  The pilot lamp glows.  There is no hum or static, and there is no smoke or smell.  The sound is pure vintage Fender tone. 

I decided to leave it a perfect example of the era rather than making any upgrades or changes.  I will leave it to the new owner to decide if he wants to change the plug or replace the caps.

The price is $1150.  No trades.  The amp is offered AS IS with no warranty.  Payment through PayPal.  You can contact me via FB message or email at bluesharpamps@gmail.com.

Big Iron = Big Tone

I was talking to an very well-known and respected amp maker about the weird notion that smaller transformers are good for tone. Here is a quote from the conversation:

"A slightly bigger output transformer with the proper impedance, turns ratio, leakage inductance and parasitic capacitance.... will always be a better choice unless you are tuning for a junky, cheap ass sound."

There you have it. That's why we use beefy transformers in the Memphis Mini amps.

A Review Comparing the Memphis Mini amp and the Harp Train 10 amp

In this amp category, the Memphis Mini is the best. It is far above the others.

I have finally been able to compare it to the Lone Wolf amp I have read and heard so much about from my recent customers.

The two amps do not compare to each other. Really nothing! Their sound and their tone are very different.

Lone Wolf has a less toned sound, more plain.

With respect to power and volume, the MM would tend (and I mark my words to not offend anyone) to overwhelm the Harp Train.

The MM is worth every penny, and the Lone Wolf is way too expensive for what it does. You can get better, more powerful amps for the same money or less
.
The MM is very seducing and I can see why people like it. It makes you feel as if you are on Beale Street in the 40's. The tone is wonderful! And it makes average players sound good and good players sound great. It is very powerful as well. More power and much more guts than the Harp Train.

--Nicolas Fouquet

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(Nicolas Fouquet is a French-born harp player from Limoges. He is the son of a famous French guitar maker, Claude Fouquet, grandson of a Jazz Musette soprano sax player, and great grandson of a Spanish flamenco guitar player. He is a respected harp tech and well known for his expertise on harmonica playing, amps, and mics.)

Cost vs Tone

Two years ago when I first began researching the idea of producing a small harp amp I considered importing a finished amp from China using all Chinese parts  and selling it as a low priced bargain amp.  I talked to several vendors in Hong Kong and Shenzhen and tried some examples they sent me.  But I gave up on that strategy over time because the tone just was not there.  Yeah, there are ways to save money and build a less expensive amp, but at some point you just have to face the cost vs. tone conflict.  Which do you want more?  Low cost or killer tone?

To get to that low cost you have to make some pretty serious sacrifices.  Printed circuit boards are WAY cheaper than hand wired circuits on a turret board.  But, the PCBs are built with the cheapest components possible which are soldered by robots.  Cracked solders and noisy connections are an issue.

Chinese counterfeit power and preamp tubes are notorious for poor tone.  And Chinese speakers lack the warmth and character of more familiar brands.  All the bargain amps I tried had a common sound I didn’t like – a kind of metallic tone lacking in warmth and overtones.  I hear that today in harp amps imported by other companies.   I just didn’t want to put my name behind an amp that sounded like that.

The MM amps are all hand wired and soldered, using turret boards.  No printed circuit boards.  The power tube is an Electro Harmonix 6V6.  The preamp tube is a JJ 12AU7.  The speaker is a Weber Signature smooth cone ceramic.  The tone is warm and colorful, rich with overtones.  The breakup sounds natural.  No gimmicks, just pure vintage tone.

The MM Delay Pedal will begin shipping soon

Here is a photo of the final production version of the MM Delay pedal.  They will begin to ship on April 12.  Only $69 with free shipping in the US.  The pedal has a very nice slap-back effect; really fattens up your tone.  Or you can set it up to do an echo effect.  Very well built.  Check it out HERE.

Coming soon: The Memphis Mini Blues Harmonica Delay Pedal

In this video Nic Clark plays the new Memphis Mini Blues Harmonica Delay with the Memphis Mini amp. it's a warm sounding digital delay pedal built to our specs. The delay tails have a nice organic decay. True bypass, metal housing, very well built. Introductory selling price will be $69 with free shipping in USA.

I shot this video at Ziggies in Denver before the Sunday Blues Jam. The club is kind of dim and the camera is a little shaky and low res but the audio is good. It gives you a very good idea of the sound of the new MM Delay in a small to medium sized club.

This is a great sounding delay for a player who wants to get his tone a little wet. I think less is more with delays (as with most effects). In this video the three controls (Level, Delay, and Repeat) are all set at the 9 o'clock position, giving the tone a nice fat slap-back sound. The pedal has the capacity to get more of a Space Echo sound if that is what you're into. The delay intervals can be dialed in from 25ms to 450ms, and the number of repeats from one to infinity.

As I mentioned above the pedal housing is metal. It feels very solid. The controls rotate smoothly with a good feel, and the On/Off button is hefty with a solid click. You can power it with a 9v battery or power supply, which are not included.

There are lots of delay pedals out there, some of which are way over-priced. This MM Delay is a lot like the Memphis Mini amp: It sounds great for a lot less money. It's a quality, no-nonsense addition to your rig that won't break your bank. $69 delivered is a very fair price.

The roll-out date is coming soon for the MM Delay and we will begin taking pre-orders, so stay tuned!.

How to Set your Memphis Mini amp up in the PA mixer

This is how you get great sound when playing the Memphis Mini amp using the line out to a PA system. This photo is the channel strip on the house Mackie 808 mixer at the Ziggies Blues Jam last night. It's simple, and it gives you a huge lush sound with no feedback: A little signal to the monitors, none to the effects, Highs and Mids rolled off, Lows boosted. That's all there is to it, no pedals or gimmicks or gadgets, it takes about a minute to set up. The amp was on a chair behind me, the settings on the amp were Volume on 5 and Tone on 5.

The Heumann Element

I had the opportunity to play Greg Heumann’s new “Heumann Element” microphone twice at SPAH in St Louis this year.  The first time was at Greg’s booth in the vendor area.  He let me A/B it against an identical mic with a good CM element, playing into an amp modeler and headphones.  (They do not allow amps to be played aloud in the vendor area at SPAH.)

The amp modeler was set to “Tweed Champ” and although it sounded nothing like the Memphis Mini I was immediately impressed.  I know the sound of a CM very well, having been playing through them for years.  The HE element smoothed out some of the spikey overtones in the model and broadened the bottom end when compared to the CM while retaining the punch and definition.  I immediately knew it was going to play right into the wheelhouse of the MM amp’s tone.  I got excited.

Several of the talented “young guns” at SPAH later gathered in a room to try the Memphis Mini amp, and the microphone they used was a Nic Clark’s loaner from Greg with the HE element.  The results were beyond impressive.

The HE element has not come to market yet but I really hope that it does.  The supply of good vintage elements that are used most by good blues harp players – the Shure Controlled Magnetic and Controlled Reluctance elements and vintage crystals – is dwindling.  Another alternative is needed and it looks like Greg’s HE element is the next step.  That’s a big deal.

I know how hard it is to develop things like this… to negotiate with vendors and manage a tricky supply chain, to build a new product and make a market for it.  I hope it happens.  From what I know of the mic from my own playing and from hearing some great young players using it, I can give it an unqualified endorsement.  The combination of the Heumann Element wood mic and the Memphis Mini amp is sweet and nasty at the same time, one of the coolest sounds in blues music.

What I have been doing....

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while but I’ve been kinda busy. I wanted to apologize for making this blog into an All-About-The-Memphis-Mini-All-The-Time thing. But, that is what has consumed all my time and energy and money for the last 6 months or so. And it is a very cool little amp.

The original idea came from a conversation I had with Bruce Collins about building a small Champ clone that would sound great and sell for a very modest price. His excellent Delta Sonic amps start at under $800, so the new amp had to be less than that. After working the numbers Bruce decided to not produce the Champ clone and concentrate instead on the DS amps. I asked his permission to produce the amp and to adopt the name we had talked about: The Memphis Mini.

I had been impressed with the quality and sound of the VHT Special 6 amp, which is made in China. The tone was not what I was looking for but the amp blew away all my preconceived notions about Chinese amps being necessarily inferior. I contacted several Chinese vendors and factories to see what was possible, ordered a few examples, and eventually settled on what is now the best-selling custom harp amp I know of, The Memphis Mini.

The MM amp begins its life in a factory in Shenzhen, a very modern and prosperous city that is part of the Hong Kong mega metro. The chassis and cab are assembled there, along with some of the basic circuitry built to our specs. The amps are shipped to Denver where we add the speaker, tubes, a line-out circuit, and much of the tone stack circuit. I play every amp before it ships.

There are several things going on in the tone of the Memphis Mini amp: First, there is a bit of grit around the edges of the note. This is what some players call "a little hair on the notes." It is the first thing you notice when you first play the amp. The second thing is a nice crunch on the overtones when you play chords or octaves or multiple holes. Just opening your playing aperture a bit on draw notes to get a little of the adjacent notes will excite the tubes.

And finally the amp has a big punchy sound with a nice low end. All those things together make up the tone of the Mini amp. That is the sound I was going for when I first worked with this amp. I'm pretty excited about the way it turned out.

Changing your playing technique and the pressure on the microphone will change how these tonal parts interact with each other. You can get a lot of expression out of the amp that way. The line out circuit is designed so it carries these effects in its signal to the PA, so you always sound great.

Almost all of the buyers of the Memphis Mini amp say they plan to use it for gigging. That was my goal; to produce a moderately priced amp that had great tone and would be a tool for working players. I am very proud of it.

There is much I would like to tell about the whole experience, and I will over time here on this blog. Thanks for reading this.

Memphis Mini Amp at a loud blues jam