Fender Champion 50 XL

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.

Ok wow. I only got this recently but I'm already in love. It's all i ever wanted from an amp and more. Originally i was going to go for the Champion 40 but then this came up as I was browsing Thomann. I did my research and was instantly won over by the gorgeous sound of the Celestion speaker.

What a step up from the other champions I heard in store!

As other reviewers have said, it's so simple to use! Plug it in, mess around with the voicings and effects for a bit (without having to dive into messy computer menus) and you are off. I play a little bit of everything but mainly punk, blues and country and i can honestly say this handles everything with ease. I also love that you can mess around with different effects without having to shell out loads on pedals.

To condense things down a bit:

Pros:
Its bloody light! really surprised at this considering how sturdy it is.

It can take a lot of abuse, far better than any tube amp.

Love how easy it is to choose what voice and effect you want.

It looks AMAZING. Obviously that's not on the top of my list of priorities but I'm loving the sleek black looks along with the angled control panel.

The open back is great for stashing leads/picks. Even a cheeky drink and some ciggies if you're careful.

The tap button is great for changing how long you want your effects to go on for, really useful to have that option.

The Aux in and phones out is so useful for jamming solo or in the night when you don't want to disturb everyone in a 5 mile radius.

Cons:

If I'm nitpicking it would've been nice to have an fx loop but I can't really complain as that would've made things pricier and I knew that from the get-go.

Selecting the voice was a tad confusing at the start due to the use of LEDs but soon i worked things out. Now I might even say its a pro due to its simplicity.


To wrap things up this is a brilliant amp at very affordable price point and could easily surpass amps twice, maybe three times as expensive. It begs you to pump some tunes out and at the end of the that's what counts.

Pros:-
Got mine today and it nails the Fender clean tone 100%. Has that hard but warm attack on the treble and a deep but not flubby bass. You can play it as quietly as you like as it's solid state so no need for a voltage drop switch. The effects are really good and the only time you get the fizz (that all other solid state and modeling amps have) is on the Brit setting + distortion and high gain. Every other voice is fantastic. It's also dead simple to use, no menus or tiny LCD displays or apps. Just a few choices on the front panel knobs. I love it. I usually play clean/crunch on a Fender 68 Vibrolux and don't need 100+ effects. I honestly don't think anyone else does either. This amp is a perfect quiet practice substitute.

Cons :-

I'm not sure if I'm doing something stupid but the effects (delay, reverb etc.) seem to go on forever and never stop unless you play another note. For example if you mute all strings to check how much reverb you have and then hit them, the reverb continues endlessly. Same for delay and chorus. It doesn't happen on single notes, only if you hit multiple strings. I'll mail Thomann and if I get an update I will also update this feedback.

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.

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.