Fantastic series. If I had one of these amps I would sit on my deck all day and play. I love these pure and natural tones. Congratulations on bringing these treasures back to life. Thank you Sir.
I am glad I found your channel. You are clearly very knowledgeable and experienced in your craft. Thank you for sharing your expertise and giving us an inside look at your bench every week.
WGS speakers freaking rock! Almost all of the Gibson made humbuckers are way too hot and wooly sounding for my taste. I’ve played old PAF’s and they don’t do that. The Mojotone 59 clone low wind humbuckers do that “Telecaster on steroids” thing really well. They’re affordable and sound great. Even the hotter wind bridge 59 clone still holds things together better than a Gibson equivalent BB3. And no, you didn’t ruin a damn thing with these amps. They’re paperweights with those old caps. I would have used Jupiter film caps, F&T or Sprague electrolytic caps and NOS carbon comp resistors, but they’re not my customers. Those parts you used are perfectly fine. I really like the Vishay MKT film caps in a black panel/2204 hybrid I built. They definitely have a sound.
I agree with you on the gibby pickups, I put filtertrons in my sg and it's such an insane sound now, stays tight but fat and still pretty gainy when I need it.
@@vayabroder729 Yep, all the genuine PAFs I’ve played through have been fairly low output pickups, even when the DC resistance readings might’ve suggested otherwise, with lotsa treble clarity.
I know this is an old video but i thought I’d chime in. I have a 58 champ all original. Like the one in the video, it too does not play well with my Les Paul. I thought it was just mine, but it’s good to know others have this issue. It sounds great with my strat and even my humbucker in the neck tele, but it’s far too harsh and noisy with my LP. I know it’s not the LP, since it works great in my 66 princeton reverb, my 64 AC30 and my modern day Marshall. I guess those Gibson Humbuckers drive that tiny champ a bit too much.
Is the OT identical in both of those two? In very simple SE amps like Champs the quality OT very much affects the sound, especially low and high end performance and distortion quality. I have tried several output transformers taken from old radios and amplifiers which have had SE EL84 or 6V6 output stage, and in good quality radios OT size is sometimes twice the size of lower quality ones. Very small low quality OT makes the amp sound weak, lacking low and high end, and clean can sound is always a bit dirty in a bad way. Very often the importance of OT is overlooked and people are focused to capacitors and resistors and tubes. Of course if you have an original 50's Champ, the OT is what it is, but if you are for example buildind a Champ clone to yourself make sure that you get a good quality OT and you will be surprised how full it sounds, unless you like the sound of a tiny OT which saturates at 40 mA and cannot deliver frequencies under 100 Hz and over 5000 Hz. In case of push and pull output stages IMO the quality of OT seems to be less important and very underrated OTs often sound quite good for some reason.
Sounds great!... My "new" 57 Champ Reissue cant break up anyway near that! Using a Telecaster with Twisted pickups and a 4th position pic up switch (and new tubes from tube depot) ... Compared to your beauties... I feel like I have 100% head room (sorry my ears maybe messed up -commercial aviation for the last 30 years or so?)... am I doing something wrong or has Fender changed the formula of the 5F1 (new champ won't break up like old one) ?? Im guessing those amps have NFB with 22k resistors ? I must confess at least once a week I grab a pair of wire cutters and head for the NFB speaker wire.... (I am no expert -ha!) and a voice in the back of my head says: don't do it -the amp is too young to die! ... I would take it somewhere were there are experts - but all I have is Guitar center here, and they don't seem to know much about the arcane art of "tubeology" ... funny when i was a kid, there were tube testers everywhere... Radio shack, TV repair places, some grocery stores - Its pretty neat tubes have made a comeback- but there just isn't that army of repairman (sometimes literally on every corner) like there used to be- So, that makes your wisdom that much more of a gift to those in need - Thank you for sharing.
Eric Johnson put up a post on Instagram today of him playing a Firebird through a '58 Champ. He finishes the 1m vid with a few comments on the amp itself. Very cool! (He's demo'ing a bit of “Sitting On Top Of The World” by Howlin’ Wolf, on his new album “Yesterday Meets Today”.)
I just don't know how you stand the strain of having to play thru these great amps, I know I would buckle under the weight. But, someone's got to do it, and it looks like you are up to the task. :)
As I was selecting parts from my stock yesterday for purposes of rebuilding a pair of old Heatkkit monoblock hifi amps, it occurred to me that although there are lots of simple and affordable (typically battery-operated) devices for both the professional and the hobbyist to use in testing capacitor values/ parameters, and to match tube and transistor gains before installation, there doesn't seem to be any such commercial devices for measuring resistor noise (none I could find in a quick search anyway, though I vaguely recall Nuts and Volts magazine having printed an article years ago about building such a device). It sure would be nice to be able to test new old stock carbon comp resistors for noise before installing them, perhaps with some kind of "PEAK" type tester that puts high frequencies through them, similar to how an ESR meter for capacitors works. If it could test resistors in circuit without lifting one lead, that would be even better, and perhaps the resistor could be heated up with a hair dryer or hot air pencil to see if it exhibits any appreciable level of Johnson (thermal) noise. (Okay, cue up your Johnson jokes now; you know you want to!). Otherwise, a purpose-built high-gain tube preamp with real-world voltages and clips for temporary resistor installation, and either a built-in amp and speaker, or an output to an oscilloscope, would allow you to hear or measure resistor noise, but would also expose your fingers to high voltage, just as a vintage or modern high-voltage cap tester does (whether its, say, a Sprague Tel-Ohmike with a magic eye, or a Sencore LCR meter with digital readout).....
@@Murry_in_Arizona I do watch his videos occasionally but I didn't find anything about measuring resistor noise. His videos are extremely thorough but they tend to run kind of long, in no small part because he speaks so slowly and haltingly. I usually use the RUclips tools to speed up his videos by at least 25%!
@@goodun2974 about a month ago he started a rebuild on 1930's RCA radio, maybe the thrid video in the series he was testing the resistors for noise with one of his rehab devices
If the glass bottle is a bit too large (how the hell does this happen, when the glass is manufactured in tubing form and sliced to length, or perhaps individually blown into molds that determine size and shape ?), and the mica spacers therefore do not snugly fit to the inside of the glass, I would definitely expect the tube to be more microphonic. This indicates some crappy quality control on the part of PSvane or their suppliers. Or, perhaps the bottle distorted from the open flames used during the assembly and sealing process (the glass button base containing the pins and the tube elements has to be sealed to the glass tube using an open flame, and then the tip has to be sealed with a flame as the air is pumped, or sucked, out). I've watched a bunch of videos of tubes being manufactured, and it is a fascinating but complicated procedure! The other possibility is that it could be a counterfeit tube. I have seen all kinds of counterfeit electronics come out of China, from CD laser mechanisms to MosFets and transistors to integrated circuits. Parts sourced from China are kind of like Forest Gump's box-of-chocolates analogy: you never know what you're gonna get.
Question... If the "P" in Psionic is silent, then why isn't it with this tubes name? Such importance eh...?🤣 Thanks for the sonic goodness. Wonderful work indeed😃 Personally prefer the WGS😉 😎👍❤🖖
I've never been a big fan of single ended amps.Not much sustain and I think too much difference in harmonic overtones between clean and overdriven states..kinda splatty sounding.Class AB amps seem to moderate the harmonic content(with some cancellation as power section clips) so you don.t as much a swing in the upper order harmonic content.I guess I just favor more moderate balance of overtones between picking lightly and heavily.
Can I just say the thing out loud? The ceramic sounded so good and the Alnico had no definition and sounded flat and compressed... and terrible. Maybe I would feel differently if I were in the room.
Les Paul’s are too hot for these tiny amps. I have a 58 and my LP sounds like shit through it. It doesn’t like gibson humbuckers. Also larger tweeds do a better job in my opinion, of conveying the typical tweed sound. They’ll give you that wooly sound people liken to tweeds, without farting out like the champ will at times.
I have a ‘60 Gibson GA-8 which is essentially a tweed Princeton with two 6v6 run in Parallel. The Princeton and the champ are very similar. I put a secret switch to change the first .022 cap to .0022, and old Marshall trick. It allows me to crank the amp while keeping the low end from flubbing out. I can still choose the larger cap for a fuller sound when quiet. Ever done that to a Champ?
Hi I just don´t get the point of havig a tweed amp, cleans are meh and when pushed into overdrive they sound like the worst overdrive pedal I had when I was 17. On top of that they cost an arm and a leg...volume and not enven tone control ?, just don´t get it, I want to like, had two of them, sold them both.
Sure am glad YT recommended your channel. I think tube amps are a relic of the past and have easily been bested by digital emulation. Lets face facts.....Digital trumps analog in every way at this point.....except for nostalgia. And for what it's worth, nostalgia is pretty important.
![Megan Thee Stallion - Neva Play (feat. RM) [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/TpYTyAaTRts/mqdefault.jpg)
Fantastic series. If I had one of these amps I would sit on my deck all day and play. I love these pure and natural tones. Congratulations on bringing these treasures back to life. Thank you Sir.
I would do the same only with my rubber boots on cos it's always raining here in Britania.
I am glad I found your channel. You are clearly very knowledgeable and experienced in your craft. Thank you for sharing your expertise and giving us an inside look at your bench every week.
A lot of these older tweed fender amps seem to love the strat, I think the lower pickup output has something to do with it. Classic sounds for sure.
Many say: “Fender guitar with Fender amp is the match”. They might be right; maybe the amps were voiced for their guitars.
Definitely something there
Although the les Paul thru the twin w jbl is a magnificent sound
@@vayabroder729 I believe I also heard that the Vox AC15/30 amps were voiced using a Telecaster. Might be why that combo sounds so excellent
What a wealth of knowledge and experience. Always a pleasure, thank you for posting.
A Tweed Champ might be the best (preamp) tube tester money can buy…
How so?
What is actually being quantified!
How do you know the gain etc?
WGS speakers freaking rock! Almost all of the Gibson made humbuckers are way too hot and wooly sounding for my taste. I’ve played old PAF’s and they don’t do that.
The Mojotone 59 clone low wind humbuckers do that “Telecaster on steroids” thing really well. They’re affordable and sound great. Even the hotter wind bridge 59 clone still holds things together better than a Gibson equivalent BB3.
And no, you didn’t ruin a damn thing with these amps. They’re paperweights with those old caps.
I would have used Jupiter film caps, F&T or Sprague electrolytic caps and NOS carbon comp resistors, but they’re not my customers. Those parts you used are perfectly fine. I really like the Vishay MKT film caps in a black panel/2204 hybrid I built. They definitely have a sound.
I agree; real PAFs are supposed to be jangly. The hot humbucker thing went into overdrive in the ‘70’s but they’re too muddy.
I agree with you on the gibby pickups, I put filtertrons in my sg and it's such an insane sound now, stays tight but fat and still pretty gainy when I need it.
I agree. I use WGS in everything. :)
@@vayabroder729 Yep, all the genuine PAFs I’ve played through have been fairly low output pickups, even when the DC resistance readings might’ve suggested otherwise, with lotsa treble clarity.
Ive been paying close attention throughout this series.
Im in the market for a tweed champ.
You really have that sg dialed in tight, very cool
"If I could choose a place to die ...". Nice. :)
Valve testers are good so you know when the valves in the amp are shot. I find it’s comforting to know the condition of the valves.
Excellent.
SG sounds great through those amps.
Wow awesome job on these two.
I know this is an old video but i thought I’d chime in. I have a 58 champ all original. Like the one in the video, it too does not play well with my Les Paul. I thought it was just mine, but it’s good to know others have this issue. It sounds great with my strat and even my humbucker in the neck tele, but it’s far too harsh and noisy with my LP. I know it’s not the LP, since it works great in my 66 princeton reverb, my 64 AC30 and my modern day Marshall. I guess those Gibson Humbuckers drive that tiny champ a bit too much.
Try input 2. My Paul works well in input 2.
I think compression was used to even out the response of the amp. I accidentally used a compressor and I noticed that the bass response was bigger.
I've asked before but why do you prefer a certain resistor composition for tone? Do metal film sound worse to you?
Alnico sounded top with the vol turned up!
Is the OT identical in both of those two?
In very simple SE amps like Champs the quality OT very much affects the sound, especially low and high end performance and distortion quality.
I have tried several output transformers taken from old radios and amplifiers which have had SE EL84 or 6V6 output stage, and in good quality radios OT size is sometimes twice the size of lower quality ones. Very small low quality OT makes the amp sound weak, lacking low and high end, and clean can sound is always a bit dirty in a bad way. Very often the importance of OT is overlooked and people are focused to capacitors and resistors and tubes. Of course if you have an original 50's Champ, the OT is what it is, but if you are for example buildind a Champ clone to yourself make sure that you get a good quality OT and you will be surprised how full it sounds, unless you like the sound of a tiny OT which saturates at 40 mA and cannot deliver frequencies under 100 Hz and over 5000 Hz. In case of push and pull output stages IMO the quality of OT seems to be less important and very underrated OTs often sound quite good for some reason.
Tube Depot needs to franchise out!
The alnico sounds like it has more depth and for sure, the strat is where it is at.
Sounds great!... My "new" 57 Champ Reissue cant break up anyway near that! Using a Telecaster with Twisted pickups and a 4th position pic up switch (and new tubes from tube depot) ... Compared to your beauties... I feel like I have 100% head room (sorry my ears maybe messed up -commercial aviation for the last 30 years or so?)... am I doing something wrong or has Fender changed the formula of the 5F1 (new champ won't break up like old one) ?? Im guessing those amps have NFB with 22k resistors ? I must confess at least once a week I grab a pair of wire cutters and head for the NFB speaker wire.... (I am no expert -ha!) and a voice in the back of my head says: don't do it -the amp is too young to die! ... I would take it somewhere were there are experts - but all I have is Guitar center here, and they don't seem to know much about the arcane art of "tubeology" ... funny when i was a kid, there were tube testers everywhere... Radio shack, TV repair places, some grocery stores - Its pretty neat tubes have made a comeback- but there just isn't that army of repairman (sometimes literally on every corner) like there used to be- So, that makes your wisdom that much more of a gift to those in need - Thank you for sharing.
Psvane sounds like something you'd talk to your doctor about
Eric Johnson put up a post on Instagram today of him playing a Firebird through a '58 Champ. He finishes the 1m vid with a few comments on the amp itself. Very cool! (He's demo'ing a bit of “Sitting On Top Of The World” by Howlin’ Wolf, on his new album “Yesterday Meets Today”.)
I got one up on you. I play real crappy guitar thru a real crappy amp... Cheers!
I just don't know how you stand the strain of having to play thru these great amps, I know I would buckle under the weight. But, someone's got to do it, and it looks like you are up to the task. :)
I have a Eric Clapton hand wired reissue but think it sounds better with my tele's better combo. 👌
The amp with the WGS sounds a bit more brittle, as you'd expect until it breaks in.
As I was selecting parts from my stock yesterday for purposes of rebuilding a pair of old Heatkkit monoblock hifi amps, it occurred to me that although there are lots of simple and affordable (typically battery-operated) devices for both the professional and the hobbyist to use in testing capacitor values/ parameters, and to match tube and transistor gains before installation, there doesn't seem to be any such commercial devices for measuring resistor noise (none I could find in a quick search anyway, though I vaguely recall Nuts and Volts magazine having printed an article years ago about building such a device). It sure would be nice to be able to test new old stock carbon comp resistors for noise before installing them, perhaps with some kind of "PEAK" type tester that puts high frequencies through them, similar to how an ESR meter for capacitors works. If it could test resistors in circuit without lifting one lead, that would be even better, and perhaps the resistor could be heated up with a hair dryer or hot air pencil to see if it exhibits any appreciable level of Johnson (thermal) noise. (Okay, cue up your Johnson jokes now; you know you want to!).
Otherwise, a purpose-built high-gain tube preamp with real-world voltages and clips for temporary resistor installation, and either a built-in amp and speaker, or an output to an oscilloscope, would allow you to hear or measure resistor noise, but would also expose your fingers to high voltage, just as a vintage or modern high-voltage cap tester does (whether its, say, a Sprague Tel-Ohmike with a magic eye, or a Sencore LCR meter with digital readout).....
Have you checked out Mr Carsons lab? He's got a ton of old specialized gear he's rebuilt, recapped etc for testing just about everything.
@@Murry_in_Arizona I do watch his videos occasionally but I didn't find anything about measuring resistor noise. His videos are extremely thorough but they tend to run kind of long, in no small part because he speaks so slowly and haltingly. I usually use the RUclips tools to speed up his videos by at least 25%!
@@goodun2974 about a month ago he started a rebuild on 1930's RCA radio, maybe the thrid video in the series he was testing the resistors for noise with one of his rehab devices
@@Murry_in_Arizona , Thanks, I will have to see if I can find that video...
If the glass bottle is a bit too large (how the hell does this happen, when the glass is manufactured in tubing form and sliced to length, or perhaps individually blown into molds that determine size and shape ?), and the mica spacers therefore do not snugly fit to the inside of the glass, I would definitely expect the tube to be more microphonic. This indicates some crappy quality control on the part of PSvane or their suppliers. Or, perhaps the bottle distorted from the open flames used during the assembly and sealing process (the glass button base containing the pins and the tube elements has to be sealed to the glass tube using an open flame, and then the tip has to be sealed with a flame as the air is pumped, or sucked, out). I've watched a bunch of videos of tubes being manufactured, and it is a fascinating but complicated procedure!
The other possibility is that it could be a counterfeit tube. I have seen all kinds of counterfeit electronics come out of China, from CD laser mechanisms to MosFets and transistors to integrated circuits. Parts sourced from China are kind of like Forest Gump's box-of-chocolates analogy: you never know what you're gonna get.
Great stuff Lyle.
You might enjoy the new release by the Tedeschi- Trucks band of the entire Layla album live.
I was stoked for that. Kinda wish they'd left Trey out of the equation (super fine player, but oddly seems a bit lost in that environment).
@@erajad -agreed. I Derek and Susan and Doyle could have handled it just fine. There are some nice moments in there.
@@TheStimpy60 Also agreed. ;)
Your voice is very similar to Uncle Doug's. Wow at first I thought this was Uncle Doug's video. haha.
What about using the lower gain input for the humbucker guitars. I thought that was Leo"s reason for having them
At first amps were equipped with microphone inputs and those were hotter than the instrument inputs.
I’ve tried that. Doesn’t make a difference. Les Paul’s don’t like Champs.
Question...
If the "P" in Psionic is silent, then why isn't it with this tubes name?
Such importance eh...?🤣
Thanks for the sonic goodness.
Wonderful work indeed😃
Personally prefer the WGS😉
😎👍❤🖖
What would your favorite speaker be for a Champ?
I'm just happy to hear humbuckers. Sorry
what are your favorite amp-like pedals
Any idea how the 57 Custom Champs stack up against these quality and tone wise?
I've never been a big fan of single ended amps.Not much sustain and I think too much difference in harmonic overtones between clean and overdriven states..kinda splatty sounding.Class AB amps seem to moderate the harmonic content(with some cancellation as power section clips) so you don.t as much a swing in the upper order harmonic content.I guess I just favor more moderate balance of overtones between picking lightly and heavily.
Can I just say the thing out loud? The ceramic sounded so good and the Alnico had no definition and sounded flat and compressed... and terrible. Maybe I would feel differently if I were in the room.
The Les Paul into that amp sounds like the speaker is broken, I just don´t get the tweed sound...
Les Paul’s are too hot for these tiny amps. I have a 58 and my LP sounds like shit through it. It doesn’t like gibson humbuckers. Also larger tweeds do a better job in my opinion, of conveying the typical tweed sound. They’ll give you that wooly sound people liken to tweeds, without farting out like the champ will at times.
How many of those do you need to stack to be heard over a drummer? :)
I have a ‘60 Gibson GA-8 which is essentially a tweed Princeton with two 6v6 run in Parallel. The Princeton and the champ are very similar.
I put a secret switch to change the first .022 cap to .0022, and old Marshall trick. It allows me to crank the amp while keeping the low end from flubbing out. I can still choose the larger cap for a fuller sound when quiet.
Ever done that to a Champ?
I can't tell if it's Dwayne or Derrick 🤔
what are the pickups in the SG?
Hi I just don´t get the point of havig a tweed amp, cleans are meh and when pushed into overdrive they sound like the worst overdrive pedal I had when I was 17. On top of that they cost an arm and a leg...volume and not enven tone control ?, just don´t get it, I want to like, had two of them, sold them both.
Both speakers need to be broken in properly before they reveal the full sonic perfection.
The alnico is from ‘59. Pretty sure it’s broken in by now.
@@PsionicAudio I stand corrected. Lovin' your videos. Fascinating, and made with great care.
these amps are probably worth a fortune but sound terrible, to me at least.
When you make the excuse that your hands are a bit cold........I know your tech skills are happening....but as a player...please......
To be honest, the sounds of those amps are not great to my ears.
Sure am glad YT recommended your channel. I think tube amps are a relic of the past and have easily been bested by digital emulation. Lets face facts.....Digital trumps analog in every way at this point.....except for nostalgia. And for what it's worth, nostalgia is pretty important.
Oh boy....
Just tools in the tool box. Use whatever tool makes you happiest.
🤡
Tube amps for guitar have not been bested by digital tech, and that’s why so many pros still play tube amps.
Says the guy who’s never been in the same room with a great tube amp.