damageed??

[old_picker]

i know this is really pretty lame newbie issue but hoping someone can give a little advice on this one.

I ran a champ [5f1 circuit] for a couple minutes on standby and then switched to full power with no speaker load. foolishly i forgot to connect the speakerbox.

my question is whether under this scenario, would any damage likely to have occurred? and if so what component would be involved and what should i be watching for??

thanks

[JJGross]

Most likely if the amp doesn't work after running it with no speaker load - you've fried your output transformer. When there's nothing for the output section of the amp to output signal and output voltage to, an OT tends to feedback until the windings get so hot they short out rendering your OT useless and unrepairable.

Normally that's a very expensive mistake but luckily a Champ OT isn't very expensive. You can grab one from Weber for about $30 or so delivered in the CONUS and many other places in the same price range.

If the amp works, don't worry about it. You might have problems down the road later from overheating the OT but until that actually happens, just play the thing until it breaks. Worst case scenario is it fries out later from damage to the windings in the OT. Usually that's the only thing I've ever seen from doing this. It seldom takes out other things in the process. If you're worried about it, just stick another OT in it and be done with it.

You never mentioned whether this is a vintage amp or a modern clone. If modern, who cares about replacement OTs as long as they work and sound good? (not me anyways) If vintage, you're looking at depreciation in value from the replacement unless you get really lucky and find a vintage OT with all the right number on it. Even then, some people will get really picky about the solder joints being original.

But then I'm no feculator-investor, I'm a player who just likes my gear to work. You should see the fretboards on my gigging Strats. A collector would poop if they saw the "damage" they've gone through in decades of playing. A player usually looks at them and says something like 'cool guitars!'.

Just so you know for the sake of perspective, I don't care what others say is vintage or valuable, I'm a pro player and have been since 1973. To me - gear is gear & collector value is for cork sniffers & collectors (which I am neither, AFAIC). I have vintage and modern gear and use both side by side onstage all the time. To me the country of origin, age or era of things means nothing as far as how playable things are on stage.

Cheers,
- JJ

[old_picker]

thanks for the info
is it likely the amp would be noisier after such an occurrence?

[Firestorm]

Two things: that's a noisy amp to begin with -- two gain stages with no tone stack attentuation; was the speaker jack a shorting jack? A decent output transformer can run into a short way more comfortably than it can run into an open.

[old_picker]

unfortunately its not a shorting jack