Opening Up An Amp's Dial

Yea I don't think a 15w amp would be loud enough for anything more than solo practice. Even the Peavy that I'm using that's 40w has a hard time when I play with the band . Now I will admit sometimes I have to compete with the Marshall half stack but even when the other guitar player uses his solid state amp it's just barely there.

You might get away with it if you do the convalescent home gig you've been talking about.

Even the Peavy that I'm using that's 40w has a hard time when I play with the band .
Wow, that's some volume. Here's where we were last night: We were in my house's bonus room. 12 X 19, which is small for a house like ours. My 40W Fender Blues Deluxe stayed on 2 the whole time. My pedals did make it a bit louder, but not a lot. I was heard very well with my son's drums and my friend's bass amp. The bass amp is 15W and on 8 (out of 10). The electric drums were on the big PA amp and both the Master and channel are about 4. The vocals were on another channel and only about 3. Doors closed. Down stairs and accross the house was my wife who could heare each instrument in the mix "just fine", including the vocals. I had the ear plugs going, but we were still quite loud I thought.

Sounds like you guys are playing a ton above our levels. It does make some sense now that I think about it. One of my neighbors, 2 houses up, has a couple teens. One of them had a band and held their practices in the garage a time or two a week. They were LOUD. I used to sit on my front porch and listen. I imagine our volumes would quickly disappear in a pub situation or outdoors even.

Thats the nice thing about electronic drums. You can play at any volume. Acoustic drums are loud and depending on who's playing them they can be extremely loud. If this is the case, whats a guitar player to do? :lol: Back in the days of the band, I had the nicest little tube amp, a 30 watt Peavey Bravo. It just would not do the job. Like a fool I traded it (still kicking myself) and got a 2 X 12 Peavey amp that was stereo at 75 watts a side. The other guitar player had a Fender 2 X 12 that was 65 watts a side stereo. It was around 1990 and stereo chorus built into amps was the big thing at the time. The bass player had a 150 watt Peavey TNT. We were loud, way too loud especially for the enemic PA we had. Could I get them to play at lower volumes? Heck no! So, I bought ear plugs. The wind from my amps speaker would cause the pant legs of my jeans to flutter. Just plain crazy.

The wind from my amps speaker would cause the pant legs of my jeans to flutter. Just plain crazy.
:shock:

Yeah, that's how it was for the Def Leppard show a few years back. I was four rows in front of the catwalk, so quite a distance for those amps to nail me.

It must be quite an experience to play something with that much power. Maybe skip a riff because you don't feel like changing the rhythm of your heart-beat. :P

Roy, I bought a Super Champ XD this morning. As they say in the McDonalds ads, I'm lovin' it!

I like Channel 1 in particular; warm clean Fender tone, with a nice smooth breakup when you dig into the strings a bit. Great bang for the buck. Real tube amp, pre- and power. I didn't know that until I sat down with it.

It cranks out some volume and I think it could easily keep up in a lower-volume band setting with a light hitting drummer. If you needed to push more air, I bet it would cause tornadoes through a 2x12 cabinet. You are correct about it opening up when played loud; I think that's a characteristic of tube amps. At a certain level you get a three-dimensional "bloom" that is glorious. I think this is more of a power tube thing than preamp.

Why did you swap the speaker? What's the sonic difference with the Cajun? Is it more efficient?

Congrats for your new XD! Welcome to the club. It's tube pre and pwr? Wow, I didn't know that.

I use channel 1 almost exclusively as well. I think people say that voicing 4 is the same as 1 to start with, but not so after you increase the gain, of course. So, if you wanted a bit of dirt on channel 1, use 4 and adjust to your heart's delight.

OK, speakers. I did not like my speaker, and I made that determination after my 3 day grace period. (That's a good thing though.) It was way too tinny. Not thick enough. Even made my LPs neck positions sound weak. I put the Eminence Ragin Cajun on it and love it. Only $65 and only 15 minutes to replace. Now my tone is bright, thick and full bodied. Night and day difference for me. Rememver, though, mine is what, 2 years old now? They might have switched speakers by now. Oh, I lso used a pedal with this one for the longest time. An EQ pedal. It helped to hide of the thin, tinny sound. The amp does not come with a mid tone control. I was thinking that this was probably dialed down to low. At any rate, I always used the pedal since I got that bright idea to do so. Not using it was back to tinny tone.

After I put my new speaker on, I wanted to see what it sounded like without the EQ. Perfect. Sold. EQ went back up stairs and sits in my chain for the bigger amp, but not ever used.

In closing, the good thing about missing the grace period was that I really like this amp now with the speaker replacement and doubt I would trade it unless for something outragious....like a Fender Twin . :)

That's interesting about your stock speaker. Mine sounds thick, with a lot of bottom end, but it's tight and not muddy. True, they could have made changes over the years, or maybe you got a dud. Who knows? I have heard that some people change the speaker to get more volume, as the stock one is supposedly not very efficient. I don't need the extra 3 or 4 dBs. :) I'm running bass at 4 and treble between 6 and 7. Sweet tone, to my ears.

Yes, a 12ax7 preamp tube and two 6v6 power tubes! I thought it was all digital and solid state up front, but it's fully tube. It's almost a Pro Junior, coupled with the modeling and effects. Well, the effects are passable at best ... but a little kiss of reverb is all it needs.

I had actually gone out to buy a Vox AC4! But the XD blew it away. No contest at all. The Vox, also with a 10" speaker, sounded like a little cardboard box. XD sounded much bigger, much more 'alive.'

Funny thing is that when I got it home and had it up around volume 4 on channel 1, I heard this annoying high-pitched ringing sound. I thought, 'oh no, it's gotta go back.' Strange thing was, it was every time I hit a C# note, even if that note was in a chord. So something was resonating at that exact frequency. Maybe the speaker? The cab? The tubes? It took me half an hour to figure out the problem ... my recessed ceiling lights! :lol:

That's funny. Ceiling lights. :lol: :lol:

I bet they did a swap. The new speaker mod has been on the Fender forum pretty much since I bought my amp. I wonder if Fender saw this and changed? No, mine very thin. It was missing low-mids, I think. I'm no tone expert.

I thought it was very alive last weekend when I brought it out back to oper her up a little.

Yeah, the effects....not the strong point. They do kind of get the job done though. The third Reverb is neat to play with. The 4th one is a reverb/delay combo that's OK. One of the delays did perfectly for "Run Like Hell" by Pink Floyd. But I agree, not a whole lot to be excited about.

I did some more research and found out the 12ax7 that Fender describes as a "preamp tube" is actually the phase inverter, not part of the gain stage. So the preamp is more than likely all solid state. So, I got punked by the marketing. But who cares? It sounds GREAT. I've bookmarked the long discussion threads on the FDP, TDPRI, TGP, and will get to them later on; mainly looking for shortcuts to settings for Channel 2. Man, people have really taken a liking to this amp; wish I had known more about it a couple years ago!

But back to the original topic, this does suggest that the benefit of "opening up the dial" is power tube saturation; that's the "bloom" I described earlier, and what you heard when you cranked your amp.

I've mentioned the vague and/or ambiguous verbaige from Fender on this amp in other threads.

I do wonder too, it I just got in a run with a bad batch of speakers. There were a few people who did before and after testing and shared results. Some were just like mine, with big differences. Some, however, almost had no difference.

I've got the original speaker in my hand. I wonder if you could take a peak at yours. Just curious. The back side of the speaker has some text, but no model number. Here's what is says.
"Specially Designed For"
"Fender Musical Instruments Corporation."
Two music notes, 18th I believe.One solid color and one hollow or unfilled.
and at the bottom,
"MUSICAL"
"INSTRUMENT"
"LOUDSPEAKER"

The color scheme is very dim and flat looking gold and purple.

Like this?

The amp sounds interesting. I agree too, power amp tubes do their thing at high volume. Thats why eventually I'm getting an attenuator for my Valve JR half stack.

Yup, that's what mine looks like. Too bad no #s on it.

I don't think the Vyper was out when I got mine. I was fairly fresh off of a Line 6 Spider II that I didn't care for, so I was leary anyhow.

Yep, that's same as my speaker. No numbers. Supposedly the Fender "special design" are made by Eminence, but I don't think there's a way to verify that.

Oh well, no info. Does not matter anyhow, as we all have the sound we want. 8)

Oh, and the acoustic voicing (#16) ain't too shabby when running an acoustic into it. HBs over-load it, not surprisingly. My sound-hole pick-up on my other acoustic does really well too.

8) 8) 8)