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The differences are vast. You're talking about a 5W single-ended Class A amp with an incredibly simple Fender Tweed era circuit design vs. an 18W (or ~25W with 6L6's installed) class AB push-pull circuit with many more features (TMB tone stack, tube-driven tremolo and spring reverb). So really night and day. The Champlifier has the typical mid-heavy Tweed tone and is very easily pushed into a really nice bluesy overdrive. The treble is pretty mellow, and the bass is definitely on the soft side, and will get pretty muddy sounding if pushed too hard (the term "farting out" is often used for this characteristic). Head room is pretty minimal, so it's not a good choice if you're going for a clean tone with any appreciable volume, unless you can mic the amp. But it's a great blues & classic rock tone, if you can live without a tone control or a lot of volume output and bottom end. And it makes a great bedroom/practice amp.Originally Posted by piebaldpython
The Sweet Spot has the quintessential Blackface amp tone--clear, sparkling highs and nice, firm thumpy bass. Mids are noticeably scooped, though the Sweet Spot has a combined "mids/raw" control that acts as a typical mid control for about the first 25% of its sweep, but thereafter it basically dials out the effect of the tone stack, adding more mids and a lot more gain, as signal normally lost through the tone stack is added back in. At that point, it sounds kind of like a Tweed-Blackface hybrid--plenty of mids and overdrive on tap, but with the BF treble twang and firm bass. Really a nice sound! But where this amp really stands out is its clean tone--many players consider the Fender Blackface cleans to be unmatched, and it's easy to understand why when you hear this amp. Add in the spring reverb and the lush tube-driven tremolo and you have a very versatile tone machine. It won't do high gain stuff, but it takes pedals well, so you can get to harder rock sounds that way. Forget about death metal, though. It's also quite loud for home use, so if you want to push the output stage into overdrive, you'd better plan on using attentuation of some sort.
