NOS Fender Champ II

[Larry Guitar]

a few months ago i made a neat little purchase on ebay for about 400 bucks...

a NOS '82 Fender Champ II - never used.  18watts, 10" speaker.  when it came in it was just like they said, with tags hangin' and the power cord wrapped in the original plastic and never unravelled.  clean as a bell.  no fingerprints even.

so here's my question...

usually when restoring a vintage fender amp, i'm most concerned about replacing the larger electrolytic caps, and then double checking the bias on the power tubes.

Can i consider the electrolytic caps on an unused 28 year old fender amp to be like new, or do they dry out whether used or not?

[bigdaddy]

Well since nobody has answered you I will do my best. As far as I know those caps have to be reformed. I would not even turn the amp on unless it was done with a variac.

Electrolytics have a shelf life and those are past it. From what I understand NOT using them is worse for the electrolytics and they need reforming. If you don't have a variac bring it to someone who knows what he's doing and have them do a startup for the amp. Then see how it sounds, it might be fine. But if you just plug it in and turn it on even in standby, if there is a standby switch, your sending high voltages through everything and that can't be good for an amp that has never been turned since it was built 28 years ago. Other then maybe them testing it before it was shipped.

Great score by the way.