Fender Champion 50 XL Reviews

Decent amp for the price.

Got this amp a while ago for my daughter who’s just started playing and it’s been sturdy. Got the accompanying foot switch too. For the quality range and price, it sounds good. The effects are a nice touch. I’ve given 5 stars based on the price range. Happy with the quality for the price. They’re fairly matched. It’s a good enough amp for someone starting out and performing little gigs. The headphone socket is a small one (1/8”). The amp is quite light to carry. I recommend this amp. The sound effects are good for exploring the sounds of the guitar, and for practising too. The headphone socket is a gem for any parent of a beginner guitarist who lives in an apartment, or anyone with unsympathetic neighbours and family members. The amp goes quite loud too.

Sounds great for the price

The clean channel sounds nice and all of the Fender sims on the crunch channel sound nice as well. The high-gain amps are a little less convincing, but still good enough.

The various modulations are all ok, nothing special, only the plate setting is creating some "hiss".

All in all, for the money, this is very hard to beat, so if you are looking for a first budget amp, this is a very good option!

Really good

Really good for it's price, has a lot of options and sounds great

Sound gets a 3 cause the dirt channels are kinda bad, But I was looking for a clean solid state amp that takes pedals really well But wont break the bank, what a godsent this amp is:) plus points for the tap tempo delay and a really smooth reverb

Incredibile

I needed a good home amp with 12inch speaker. I bought it after trying out champ 40W. Champ 40w was pretty good and after reading reviews about Champ 50XL i tought it might be even better than champ 40. And my hunch didn't gave up on me. Celestion SPEAKER is Amazing gives 3d type of sound. Clean tones on canal 1 are the best part of this amp. Ideal for pedals, amp takes them well, and the speaker with reverb and delays pedals gives awesome sound.

Canal 2 is usable, good 3.metal options which you can actually chug with.

British and Crunch part are also not bad for older rock, and blues.

Effects are quite basic but are usable for home practice.

The only 2 things that are a minus are missing effects loop and mids nob.

Volume i play it between 8 and 9 o' clock and its quite enough for apartment. No issues with police so far.

Bang for buck

Very nice and versatile combo. I have used it for over 2 years in studio rehearsals and live performances indors and outdors. It is realy loud, lots of options for classic fender tones and more. it takes fx pedals in front very well. Again hard to find anything better for the price

The amp is perfect for it's price

A cheap amp

I wanted a cheap practice amp that's good enough for an occasional outing. I especially wanted a good clean sound, which this has.

There are not lots of features and the various set-point tonal settings are dial-in. But there's enough eq on the tone controls for me. I'm not worried about masses of effects. I use four pedals [which includes a noise reduction pedal] on the input.

This amp is light and has good volume. The build quality is obviously down to a price, but adequate. It's not going to stand up to a lot of road treatment. but again that's not what I want it for.

super produit

super bon rapport qualité prix. trop content

Good amp

The greatest thing about this amp is the speaker; that's what you should buy it for. additional to that it is quite versatile and even the build in effects are sometimes useful

But the speaker is amazing.

Amazing combo

I cannot say anything against it, apart from that it is missing that middle pitch control :)

Great Fender Tones

This amp sounds great if it is a fender clean to crunch sound you are after. Serves as a good pedal platform and is easy to transport. Bought for my dad who prefers the more simple layout and ease of use compared to the katana. I prefer the katana but if you are looking for something that sounds good to plug into and not have complicated computer software then this is great.

Fender Champion 50 XL

Very good amp for the money, and loud too.You can use it for gigs with pedals and for practice.I only use it for Fender sounds, because it can do Deluxe,Princeton and Twin very good, especially when it is loud.Effects are ok for practice, delay and reverb ok even for gigs.

You wont be disappointed if you get this amp.

No connection with the computer is a plus for me, because I only want to have fun playing :)

Exceeded my (high) expectations

I've had this for a while now and I've played it for 3 or 4 hours a day so far - my wife is away :)

I'm not someone who would want to mess with menus and downloading tones from the internet or anything like that... I'm very much a plug-n-play guitarist who uses very few effects and likes to control the drive of the amp by using the guitar volume. I've played tube amps for the 45 years that I've been playing guitar, nearly always in one band or another, and my experience of solid-state amps has always been very negative.

These amps are reasonably new and there are few reviews, but there are a couple of good ones on t'interweb now that really piqued my interest... and I'm now getting too old (and lazy) to lug a heavy valve amp and pedal board around. So... I bought one.

After trying all the different amp types with different levels of gain I've settled on Voice 02: Fender Clean ('65 Deluxe) with the gain turned up to maximum, the Treble at 1 o'clock and the Bass fully off. The FX Select on 04: Reverb Spring with the FX Level at 9 o'clock.

This gives a glorious sound that's controllable from the guitar volume, from clean to bluesy crunch. (Strat with Kinman AVn '62 in Neck and Middle, SD SSL-5 at Bridge.) If you want more then either add some boost from a pedal or choose another voice, it depends if you want to do this mid-song in a live set or practising at home. For my current band needs then no pedals are 'needed'... but it's nice to have a few. Tuner, graphic e/g with a ~5 dB boost at 500Hz, and a Chorus. I like mixing in Chorus with Reverb as I pretend to be playing an acoustic in quite a few of our songs. Neck p/up with the volume rolled down to 7 or 8 plus the Chorus works well enough for what we do.

Pros:

If you can find a tone you're happy with and you don't use lots of effects, it's a one-box gigging solution.

It's light and easy to carry around, get through doors and navigate stairs.

It's loud enough for what we do - pubs and clubs where the customers actually want to be able to talk to each other while we're playing.

Some of the f/x are great - especially the spring reverb, vib and trem. Vib and Trem being two pedals that are expensive and occasional use only, so it's good to have them built in.

There's no temptation to spend all my time scrolling through menus and 'deep editing' patches etc, only to find what sounds good at home sounds rubbish in a band-mix and you can't change your settings on the fly.

It's really not very expensive at all considering how good, and how convenient it is.

Cons:

The 'clean' channel isn't brilliant, but I don't find I need it 'cos the amp responds to the volume control so well.

There are some obvious omissions like an f/x loop or a speaker-emulated line out... but these would put the price up. Their absence is plain to see if you research the specs before you buy it - if it bothers you, don't buy it.

The 'metal' channel isn't very good... but I don't play metal so I don't care.

Conclusion:

This is a great amp... and not just 'for-the-price'. My choice of Voice sounds great to me and inspires me to play more. I don't think you can ask for more than that.

50/50

I bought this amp primarily for practice and the small bar gigs that I sometimes play.

At first I hated it. Here is why. One big reason I chose it was that it has an angled control panel and I hoped that that would make seeing the settings easier in the poor lighting at bar gigs from both sitting and standing positions. It does not, the font on the amp mode dial and the effects dial is so small that I have to read them from a very short distance even in good lighting. To make matters worse, both of these controls do not have click stops between functions, instead a tiny coloured light indicates which setting the dial is in. Unless you have a photographic memory you will never be sure what setting you have chosen. While on the subject of these dials, they offer pre determined mixtures of amp types and effects and so choosing a particular amp sound and effect combination is not always possible, you have to take what is offered or leave it. There is no supplied footswitch so to move between the clean channel and the effects channel you must push a tiny square button on the confusing front panel, this button is not illuminated so in dim lighting it is not easy to find it. This amp desperately needs a footswitch.

That is enough of the bad, now for the good. The amp is very light, easy to carry. It has plenty of power and volume, particularly in the effects channel. It has good clear tones and sounds particularly good in the clean settings, a typical Fender.

I no longer hate it, but I don?t love it either. I have gigged with it, it has plenty of power for my small gigs and the sounds were pleasing. I think it is best used for practice where a missed setting change is not the end of the world but I will never take it out to play again.

Would I buy one again? No, definitely not.