The Sunday blues jam my band hosts at Ziggies in Denver was a madhouse last week. There was a full house of jammers and fans, and it cranked up to a really gonzo level. It was loud, rockin’, and fun.
AC Blue came in late with a cool little Fender Champion 600 amp he wanted to try in a live setting. This is a little 5-watt amp with one 6V6 power tube, way too wimpy for blues jams. It sells new for about $150.
Earlier in the week AC had taken the amp to Bruce Collins at Mission Amps to make it more harp-friendly and add a line out. Bruce changed out some of the tone capacitors to reduce the highs and boost the low mids. He lowered the preamp tube plate voltages and dropped some of the first preamp stage gain.
AC is also a wicked keys player, so his idea was to use the new line-out jack to route the little amp’s signal through his big solid state keyboard amp when he is playing harp. That’s what he did at the jam.
It sounded great. The tone was warm, with plenty of rip and grunt. It cut through the loud blues jam like a hacksaw.
He was using the little amp like a pedal; you sure couldn’t hear it by itself. But, after the jam was over he still had a cool little practice amp with nice tone.
The jam was so busy and rowdy I neglected to get photos or video of AC’s amp. Bummer, maybe next time. I’ll update this post then.
AC Blue came in late with a cool little Fender Champion 600 amp he wanted to try in a live setting. This is a little 5-watt amp with one 6V6 power tube, way too wimpy for blues jams. It sells new for about $150.
Earlier in the week AC had taken the amp to Bruce Collins at Mission Amps to make it more harp-friendly and add a line out. Bruce changed out some of the tone capacitors to reduce the highs and boost the low mids. He lowered the preamp tube plate voltages and dropped some of the first preamp stage gain.
AC is also a wicked keys player, so his idea was to use the new line-out jack to route the little amp’s signal through his big solid state keyboard amp when he is playing harp. That’s what he did at the jam.
It sounded great. The tone was warm, with plenty of rip and grunt. It cut through the loud blues jam like a hacksaw.
He was using the little amp like a pedal; you sure couldn’t hear it by itself. But, after the jam was over he still had a cool little practice amp with nice tone.
The jam was so busy and rowdy I neglected to get photos or video of AC’s amp. Bummer, maybe next time. I’ll update this post then.
1 comment:
Hi Rick
could you advise the details of the Mods for the Champ 600
we are about to start a project here in West Australia
me n the reeds
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