Fender Champion II 25/Champion 20 Rattle

[JazzerEU]

Hello everyone,

How prone is the Fender Champion II 25 to cabinet rattle? I’m looking for a small amp to go with my Fender Deluxe and also use the speaker in the Champion II 25 with my Quilter Superblock UK. I almost always have the bass knob at zero on my amps and the treble at around 6 or 7 on the dial. With most of the Princeton Reverbs I’ve tried, they all rattle on lower notes even with the bass at 0. Some people say the baffle is to blame.

I once had a Fender Super Champ XD that despite its size, had almost no issues with rattling.

Where does the Champion 25 fall in terms of cabinet rattle?

[pingu]

I’ve used the Champion 20
live a few times and not had
any issues with rattle

[jazzshrink]

Have you tried to isolate the source of the rattle? Check for loose hardware. Can you stop the rattle by gently pressing on any part of the cabinet? Diagnostics are essential to finding a solution, imo.

[John A.]

Hello everyone,

How prone is the Fender Champion II 25 to cabinet rattle? I’m looking for a small amp to go with my Fender Deluxe and also use the speaker in the Champion II 25 with my Quilter Superblock UK. I almost always have the bass knob at zero on my amps and the treble at around 6 or 7 on the dial. With most of the Princeton Reverbs I’ve tried, they all rattle on lower notes even with the bass at 0. Some people say the baffle is to blame.

I once had a Fender Super Champ XD that despite its size, had almost no issues with rattling.

Where does the Champion 25 fall in terms of cabinet rattle?

I have had a Champion 20 for going on 9 years. No rattles. I had a Princeton Reverb for 13 years and have played through many others. No rattles with mine or any other I've tried.

[JazzerEU]

Thanks for the input folks. I haven’t purchased the amplifier yet, I’m waiting on the sale of my current one.

[JazzerEU]

Question, do y’all find the bass knob is pretty responsive and effective of cutting out a lot of low end when you turn it to zero? Are there other amp clean amp voicings on the second channel that have less bass than the clean channel?

My primary use case for this is as a cabinet for my Quilter Superblock UK, but I’d be pleasantly surprised if I was able to get a good sound out of the actual amp.

[John A.]

Question, do y’all find the bass knob is pretty responsive and effective of cutting out a lot of low end when you turn it to zero?

It depends on the amp and how the tone controls are designed to function.

In the realm of Fenders and amps that copy their pre-amp designs, it's helpful to understand that these are designed with a mid-range "scoop". This is a bit of an oversimplification, but in a 2-knob tone circuit (e.g., DR, PR) if you have the bass and treble knobs on 5 that actually boosts bass and treble relative to the mid-range and leaves mid-range attenuated. To make it flat, you have to turn B & T to 1. On an amp with B M T knobs, "flat" is B=1 M=5 T=1. On both flavors, though, the tone controls and volume control are interactive. So even though you nominally can't cut bass below "flat", you can somewhat achieve the effect of doing that by adjusting all the controls (carefully, trial and error).

But all of the above is driven by a pickup and filtered through the speaker and the cabinet, which means that settings that get you what you want on one amp might not be applicable to another (with different variants on this with different guitars). I've also found that, despite the common belief that bigger speakers deliver more bass, 10" speakers can have exaggerated low end relative the other sizes of guitar speaker (with the caveat that this varies with specific speaker and cabinets). FWIW, my experience has been that if my sound is consistently too bassy no matter how I adjust the amp (and through different amps), the solution is to lower the bass side of the pickup.

Are there other amp clean amp voicings on the second channel that have less bass than the clean channel?

I don't know. On a 2-channel Fender, the "normal" channel is usually a darker tone than the "vibrato, and on either channel input 2 has less gain. Subjectively with some guitars one of those options might seem less bassy than the others, but that's trial and error

My primary use case for this is as a cabinet for my Quilter Superblock UK, but I’d be pleasantly surprised if I was able to get a good sound out of the actual amp.

The Champion 20 and 25 are both single channel amps. I guess some voices are less bassy than others, but my experience is that the biggest difference is in degree of scoop and loudness at the same volume and tone control settings (reflecting the differences between tweed and BF/SF in the real world). But I think this is something you'd have to play with yourself with your own guitars.

[JazzerEU]

Hey! Sorry for not replying, work has been busy lately. Question, does anyone who own this can know if the speaker connectors coming from the amp can be disconnected so that the speaker can be used passively? I have a Quilter Superblock UK and some speaker connector to 1/4 inch cables.

[sgosnell]

You can certainly remove the wires from the speaker if necessary, and use separate wires going to the SBUS. That's not ideal, but works if there is no other way to do it. I don't know about that particular model, but many Fender amps use a standard 1/4" plug to connect the speaker(s) to the amp. I use my dead Vibrolux Reverb as a cabinet for my SBUS, by disconnecting the phone plug from the amp and using a cable with a plug on one end and a jack on the other. I made the cable using an endpin jack intended for use in a guitar, with heatshrink tubing over it. There are multiple ways to make adapters.

[ewall]

Well, my Fender Champion 20 (bought used for $50) worked for 3 months then went into a cycling whirring mode every time I turned it on. So rather than send it to the recycle bin and knowing virtually nothing about amps, I decided to turn it into a cab with a Quilter SBUS head by doing exactly what sgosnell above did. It worked perfectly. Only I found that the stock speaker wasn't exactly meeting my volume/tone needs. So I went down the rabbit hole of installing an Eminence Beta speaker which changed everything. And then came the parametric EQ and who knows what's next. Learned a lot about the sound I wanted in the process. Clearly would have been more efficient and maybe cheaper buying a decent amp but....

[pingu]

Apparently the newer Champion II 25
doesn’t thump on power on or off
(which is good)

don’t know any Jazz/clean players
who have actually tried it yet to
cp to the 20

sorry guys
as you were ….