Fender Champion 40 Guitar Amplifier Review

The Fender Champion 40 is a new amplifier from the Fender Corporation.  It features a really nice clean channel with loads warm bottom end and sparkling Fender highs.  The drive channel is a little less conventional than a stock standard amplifier as it features a “voice” knob to dial your drive tone between a selection of really nice sounding amplifier presets including Tweed, Blackface, English, and Metal. The Fender Champion amplifiers have a built in selection of effects on the rotary “FX” knob which includes  reverb, delay/echo, chorus, tremolo, Vibratone, and more.  The video demo of the Fender Champion amplifier below shows you the type of tones you can expect from the amplifier on both the clean and drive channel. The Fender Champion 40 amplifier also comes stock with a custom Fender special design 12″ speaker for a full range of sounds.

The Fender Champion 40 packs a punch volume wise for such a small amplifier.  It would work great as a home practice amplifier or for jamming with friends at lower volumes.  The Champion 40 would get lost at louder volumes on stage with a drummer, but that said it would be okay if you were mic’d up and had some space between the amp and the drummer.  It would suit lower volume gigs and with an amp like this, you wouldn’t need a lot of pedals to get the tone you’re looking for.

In my opinion, I would go for a Mustang III amplifier over this any  day of the week but if you’re after something simple for jamming around the house or you’re happy playing on the stock clean tone with pedals, then this would be a good choice.

Thanks to the Rock Garage for letting me demo this amplifier.

[usr 2.5]

I am rating the Fender Champion 40, Guitar Amplifier a 2.5/5 because I feel like the amp feels a little under-powered as well as not being as tonally nice as the Champion 20.  Check out both if you’re planning on buying one.