How to repair rebuild Fender 5F1 Champ tube guitar amp kit basic troubleshooting 

super impressed with her analysis and interest in these topics! you lucked with this grandkid Terry!

I really enjoy these videos. Especially if Emi is featured. Fantastic grandpa/grand daughter relationship. This is so much better than having her playing video games.

Grandparent time is vital to a grounded and stable society. Thank you for teaching if not a skill, and appreciation for the trade of electronic repair, to the next generation.

When Emi decided that the green/yel wire was connected to the wrong terminal strip lug- because it was not the grounded lug- because one of the lugs was soldered to the chassis- that is no small feat in reasoning at her age. Troubleshooting electro-mechanics is to a large degree, in my opinion, an innate trait. You have it or you don't. Emi has it. Sure, you can learn to troubleshoot if you're not a natural at it- but you'll never be good at it. Emi can be if she chooses to be, given your wonderful gentle teaching ability. She's a lucky little girl. GREAT video! Thanks. 73 old man

A blessed man to have such a wonderful , beautifu, intellegent grandaughter ! Cheers to you and the misses Terry

So nice to watch. Hope Emi keeps the interest for electronics and amps.

Excellent for teaching your grandaugher the art of electronics craftmanship. Also, make her get her ham radio license.

She is such a good little troubleshooter. Good set of eyes. Keep mentoring her and she will be making her own repair videos in short order. She is already better than a lot of "technicians " I have met.

These kits, especially the cheaper ones have crappy documentation so that is where people go wrong. I also admire the kid who built this... No one invents things by mistake. Failure is the catalyst for success. Well done Terry and Emi.

Props to the guy who had the guts to attempt this as a first build. Doesn't matter if it didn't work right off the bat, what matters, is, as you said, that he tried. And now, with your analysis he can see what needed to be done in order to fix the mistakes. That can only give a hobbyist a nudge toward trying again. To all those interested in getting into electronics as a hobby (or more), find someone who is willing to teach or mentor you. We're out there. All you have to do is ask. (Just look at how Terry lights up when he gets Emi interested in a project!)

Looks like you've got yourself a new workshop supervisor.

Great video, and props to the guy for his great attempt and that's how we learn as you say. Learning lots from all you guys on You Tube..Thanks for sharing your invaluable knowledge. Great fun to have your granddaughter helping, I'm afraid she stole the show..Ed..U.K..😂

Great video, you have a lot of patience trying to teach your young future tech how it's done. She's lucky to have such a clever grandad!

We've all been down the learning road and there are still things that catch us out.. After 26rs doing this stuff, there are still things out there that get the old gray cell's thinking. It's good to see tech's that show the good fault finding skill and strip it back to bare bones.

Kudos to Emi for hanging in there. She’s seems like a great young lady. You never know what will happen in future years.

Great effort there Terry, and of course your co-host Emi. What a team!

EMI at 13:14 is hilarious!! Based on my experience with my daughters, while you might not necessarily create a life long love of electronics, Terry, what I'm sure you will do is imbue EMI with the bias towards tackling her problems on her own, whether it's repairing a radio, or fixing a toilet, or adding an electrical outlet. And she'll be much more confident in talking with experts, like car mechanics. Nice chassis on that champ kit!

Terry, I absolutely love the clarity of your videos, the audio the visual everything is spot-on!

I was sitting in my room last night frustrated, yelling at my non-functioning 5f1 diy kit I bought a few months ago with a very similar story. I've searched through plenty of forums and documents for similar kits and have yet to find sufficient help for my errors, from the quality of videos on this channel, I have faith this video will help though!

Thanks for training the next generation of electronic repair technicians

LOVE the way that Emi mugs at the camera when you're not looking! Reminds me of my own hammy self as a kid. GRIN!

Very inspiring to see you work closely with your granddaughter. Those memories will be with her forever.. thanks for sharing !

I pulled up the StewMac amp building diagram to follow along since I couldn't see in to the amp. Really helps make the parts where he is checking the tube connections make sense.

I enjoyed this for a lot of reasons. You are a great teacher, your granddaughter is a great student (and she cracked me up a few times), and you ended on a positive note. I hope the owner takes your advice and builds another one.

This is such a lovely video, I can understand why you want to teach Emi this sort of stuff, problem solving in general is a great and essential skill and tends to be transferrable - the London Underground map was intentionally drawn as an electrical circuit diagram, other systems and organisations can mostly be distilled to block diagrams as can amp circuits (I know you know all of this). She seems a bright young lady. Respect from the U.K.

Showing others how to do things at my gig, I realize the only reason I know how to not screw things up is because I've screwed pretty much everything up sometime in the past. I hope your friend's not discouraged. It gets better. I always thought electricity was impossibly mysterious but you've got me imagining I might understand it someday. Soon I'll get brave enough to solder some stuff together. Hopefully I won't let too much of the smoke out of it!

She has the best teacher in the world. Very lucky girl and also lucky grandad. Exactly what my dad would have been like with my kids. Except he was called very early on and never got to see them. :(

Everyone has to start somewhere. Some vets say you learn more if a kit doesn't work the first time than if it works on the first power up. If you don't fail you are not doing anything. Great advise at the end sir. " If at first you don't succeed, keep on suckin.". Emi was great!!!!

Good things to watch out for in any F51 build. Oh boy! Parts in the mail. Thank You.

Tube amp emi girl With a pout and the victory sign behind your head when your not looking caught on camera funny haha. Good work on the amps. Terry and emmy.

I appreciate your closing statements in this video. I just got this kit as my first amp kit attempt and after probably 30 hours of work I just blew a fuse. Felt like a failure and that I have money in the hole now, but gotta keep trying.

I havent actually read it, but there is a do-it-yourself radio repair book for antique radio collectors titled "Don't Plug It In Just Yet!". Which always strikes me as the best possible advice.

Damn Old Grandad Terry!! Emi is the Professional here! Stand back and watch Emi show how its done! Listen and learn!)

Great repair! I can't agree more with you! You'll never accomplish anything if you never try. I wish I had a dollar for every time I failed on the first try! I broke things, fried em, and some things went to the trash! Didn't stop me at all! Once ya get old, you make it look easy. You have a great helper there too! She had me lol a couple times! Great video!👍😎🎸🎶

yep. my first amp project failed. and since then , I've built others. most had a new problem for me to learn about. which is good.. only because I understand more now.

Great job Terry!

Once again another great video.

Smart little girl. You should be proud Terry.

Another great video! Thank you! I'm about to build the same amp but I will be designing my own chassis. Hope I won't need to call you!

Fender tweed amps didn't use stand-offs but I like to use them myself. I put the OT mounting bolts through from the bottom with nut on top of chassis to gain clearance for the bottom of the circus board. Naturally I use a isolation board underneath the circus board as you have shown. Nice job shortening the leads and it sure looked good on the scope. Mark

Soo cool ya get to do this with your granddaughter!

Great job Emi, I believe you could have done a better job building this amp then the owner did. High 5!

Nice!! Great teacher!

Laughed my %^%$ off during this video. Not because of the build, mind you, but your granddaughter is hilarious! If I had a nickel for every time I've messed up a project, I'd be well on my way to buying an HP Spectrum Analyzer, LOL! Your words at the end are very inspirational. Thanks!

I remember the first build I made, it was a little 5W thing from AX84. I didn't know about kits then, so I built the amp on a lamington tray I flipped upside down. Did it work? Yeah. It didn't go up in smoke. But the volume was no louder than a pair of old earphones. I eventually got it working once I begun understanding how valve amps work. I troubleshooted it and eventually it cranked out the 5W it was intended to. I was lucky it just wasn't a catastrophic failure. I had no idea about bias. I had no idea about power supplies, filter caps, tone caps, AC and DC, etc.

Another GReat Video Terry!!!

Great Video!!

Maybe you could have the builder over and do a tutorial with them like you did with Em. They obviously are interested, and looking at a positives, the soldering didn’t look terrible from what I could see. Keep up the good work, Terry.

She is so cute,,, Good job little lady!!

Nice one . Wise words .

She's very smart! :)

Apple didn't fall far from the family tree there.

Ok emmy we know He's crazy haha. Crazy professor has alot of good diagnostic experiences excellence At its best

Sweet cheeky little girl being bored to death by silly old Grandpa!! hee hee!" Bless her! x

Some test leads with Pomona or similar "E-Z-Hook" probes on them would be a lot safer than alligator clips, which have an annoying and dangerous tendency to pop off, or simply not make a good reliable contact, which can lead to false conclusions during troubleshooting. We use them at work, and you will also see the Guitologist using them as well. And those probe tips you use are crap. You need something with a hard steel tip that can really be sharpened to a point with a file or Dremel tool. "Extend-A-Probes" are particularly handy, because the thin, insulated steel probe in the center of the handle can extend about 3 inches out from the handle, and they have collets to finger tighten so that the tip can be set to and held at a particular extended length. The actual exposed metal tip length is minimal, reducing the chance of short circuits when taking measurements in tight spots.

Awesome 😎

Very intelligent girl. Thanks for all your vids.

Don't take a lot to bore a kid, does it? LOL. Nice work as always, Terry.

Cozy vid. Funny granddaughter :)

Very cool, thanks ;-)

EMI- ElectroMagnetic Interference? Great video

Interesting how the rectum-fire turns into a more politically correct rectifier in Terry's teacher mode... 😊 Great video, very inspiring. I really should repair stuff with my own shortwave kid!

Best parts of video: 13:14 16:51 17:08 About failing... Emi will surely be familiar with this quote. “Dude, suckin' at something is the first step to being sorta good at something.” ― Jake the Dog.

I see you like to use shielded cable for input connections and have seen where they should be used for internal reverb connections as well...what cable do you recommend? I have search and there's a plethora of shielded cable available it's confusing. One guy suggested buying RCA connector cable and cutting off the plugs...that seems rather wasteful and expensive to me. Thanks,

Two Champs in one video. Cool...

Terry in your opinion, who makes the best 5F1 kit?

Great!

my first build was a small amp for a record changer I had I think I toasted 3 or 4 resistors starting with the 125 ohm dropping resistor the tube configuration 12AX7 35W4 & 50C5 and opon rebuilding the amp in my 45EY2 I connected the input to the wrong lead and that first was more than 50 years ago

Terry, do the Amp kits have good tube sockets and Caps and resistors for a good Kit? Being new at tis I would not know the proper quality. Thank Tom

Does it matter if I use a digital scope rather than an analog scope?

Да, удержать внимание ребенка - это целая наука. Называется педагогика. )

I need a helper as astute as Emi! I feel for the person who assembled the amp initially. I am struggling to chase down some gremlins in a Heathkit frequency generator I am refurbishing. The learning curve is steep but that's what makes it fun. I have been searching far and wide for a Temna 72-1095 isolation transformer/variac like yours but they are more scarce than hens teeth. Great troubleshooting video Terry!

Hey D-lab ;-) remember to give Tubeamp-girl a break every 15 minutes or so. That's the normal attention span for her age. maybe you do already ;-)

I........I....was gonna comment....but the rats nest has me hypnotized....

Get a glass of grape juice for Emmy!

Terry, your granddaughter is adorable....do you use isolation transformer with oscilloscope on amp stuff?

That’s how I talked my son to fix computers in simple electrical within few years he started taking apart MacBooks and building his own computers and getting better than me.

14.45 Emi pulling her teeth out!

She's pretty smart...

Lolololol she said D lab is crazy😂

Are you prior Air Force? Where did you get your technical training?

Emi should find a guitar under the Xmas tree. Perhaps an Epiphone, modified to say EMI-Phone on the headstock!

Your granddaughter takes after you in everyday except she's a lot cuter!

Lol.... Great Video!!

Maybe someday Emi will start doing repairs on her own

YOU CAN TELL EMMY IS AS SHAP AS A TAC!

13:13

127.5

I follow you with interest for some years, I am Italian. Emy is quickly learning a good job, that usually does not appeal to women

I haven't finished watching it yet. lol

This looks lots like a Weber Kit. I will be building a kit in real time on my channel in a few weeks. Prepare for BORING long work videos!

I bought a (very poorly) completed kit Fender 5f10 Harvard clone attempt on eBay.....it’s much worse than this champ.....It’s not close to any circuit.....like the OPT primary is connected directly to the rectifier....and all the connections couldn’t be connected worse and still be connected.

No wonder it's dead. That looks awful!

I am sorry to say this, but grandpapa seems to be loosing it. You don't bring your 7 years old granddaughter even near to a desk with open wires and 350V.