TONY POLECASTRO: Hi. I'm Tony Polecastro from the Old Town School Music Store here at the Old Town School of Folk Music. I'm the instrument buyer and I get to see all the fun new stuff that comes in and we just recently got our fun, new and exciting VIbro Champ XD and Super Champ XD from Fender. These amplifiers are truly wonderful and extremely versatile from varying tones to varying effects to kind of the classic tube crunch that you get from tube amplifiers. They're new to us here in the store and we've been playing with them for about a week now and we're pretty excited.

We're going to run through these amps here real quick and we're going to take a look at the 16 different voicings that they offer, some of the different effects. These tubes are really unique in that it's kind of a solid state and tube combination. The distortion are gain stages are solid state so you don't have any problems with tube replacements and tubes wearing out, and the output stage is all tube powered so you still get the classic tube tone. So if Tim's going to run through a couple of the voices here, I'm going to play some electric guitar.

[TONY POLECASTRO PLAYING GUITAR RUNNING THROUGH THE FENDER VIBRO CHAMP XD]

It's fairly obvious that there is a range of tones that you can get from this amplifier from jazz to country to metal to rock to you know, the classic Vibro Champ sound, you know. You can vary the gain setting. You can vary the volume to your, you know, to your discretion, and really it's an extremely versatile amp, not only with the voicings but also with the effects. What this amp offers is chorus, delay, tremolo, Vibratone, all the classic kind of Fender sounds and effects, and you can control both the level, how much along with the amp voicing so it's really just a monster mutant Frankenstein of an amp that allows you to play in a bunch of different styles.

[TONY POLECASTRO PLAYING GUITAR RUNNING THROUGH THE FENDER VIBRO CHAMP XD]

And then we also have the Super Champ which essentially is the same amp with a totally separate clean channel you can add your own effects to. It's also got a little bit more wattage, 15 watts on the Super Champ and 5 watts on the Vibro Champ. Great, great amps. The Super Champ offers a little bit more of that clean tone if you want to do that.

Another great thing about these two amps is that if you like [CLEARS MOUTH AND THROAT] -- Another great thing about these amps is that if you have a Twin Reverb that weighs 65 pounds, if you have a Super Champ, if you have a '59 Bassman, you don't want to necessarily want to lug that everywhere and they're not always completely practical. You know, the Super Champ has 15 watts and a bunch of different voicings over those classic amps, and you can fill a small room with it. Also, for something like in a studio, if you're looking for different amp tones, this is like a godsend because it takes up two cubic feet or whatever and you have all these different sounds in one piece of equipment.