This was a fun little project.  I learned that Hammond makes these enclosures with an optional CAGE TOP!!!  How cool is that?  Its like they’re practically begging you to build a Vox Night Train or an Orange Tiny Terror or the equivalent.  Well I decided to take that down a notch and try an ultra simple tone machine:  the Fender 5C1 Champ.

The 5C1 Champ was an early-ish tweed Fender that made its debut in 1953.  These early models used an octal 6SJ7 grid-leak biased preamp tube (later replaced with a cathode biased 12AX7), and I had heard about the sweet sounding front end that these had and was ultimately curious about the inherent LaGrange-y-ness of the circuit (uh huh huh huh huh).  The results were as sweet as promised.  Its a different kind of breakup than other amps….a bit more smooth and compressed feeling.  Kind of blues-y, but it does rock really well also.  It sounds positively whipass plugged into my Sunn 4×15 (dont ask).

These photo are early ones from when I was testing the amp with a solid-state rectifier (the copper tube) which I have since replaced with a NOS RCA 5Y3.  The power tube in the center is a 6V6 and the 6SJ7 is on the right.  The 6SJ7 is a metal-envelope tube instead of glass.

These enclosures also come in a bunch of different sizes.  Im sure i’ll be building in one of these again…and it’ll be a more ambitious effort.