MGR/Steve Thomas « Fender Champion 30 »
Published on 01/19/03 at 15:00It was a gift, but was purchased at Guitar Center. I liked the features, price, and sound, and recommended it as a good gift.
The sound is more than adequate. Nice clean tone, decent overdrive, and plenty of volume for a home use only piece of gear.
It regularly blows the line fuse when switched on. I've replaced it 5 times in a year, and now usually just leave it on.
Both input channel jacks quit working, also the channel select switch jack.
Poor soldering (actually solderability) on the input jacks and poor mechanical design of the jack results in fractured solder joints and loss of contact. The solder does not wet well to the leads (process defect), and any stress from use or just tightening the panel nuts (mechanical design) breaks them loose.
Until they fix their manufacturing problems in Mexico, don't even go near it unless you like to solder and have the unit die on you regularly. Even routing your cords through the handle will not fix this one because it's close to failing before it ever leaves the factory.
This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com
The sound is more than adequate. Nice clean tone, decent overdrive, and plenty of volume for a home use only piece of gear.
It regularly blows the line fuse when switched on. I've replaced it 5 times in a year, and now usually just leave it on.
Both input channel jacks quit working, also the channel select switch jack.
Poor soldering (actually solderability) on the input jacks and poor mechanical design of the jack results in fractured solder joints and loss of contact. The solder does not wet well to the leads (process defect), and any stress from use or just tightening the panel nuts (mechanical design) breaks them loose.
Until they fix their manufacturing problems in Mexico, don't even go near it unless you like to solder and have the unit die on you regularly. Even routing your cords through the handle will not fix this one because it's close to failing before it ever leaves the factory.
This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com