Fender Champ Husk Restored

Tony Oresteen · From: Georgia, USA

Last May I bought a decent blonde Fender Champ husk off of eBay. I wanted to have a light 6 string C6 lap steel 22.5" scale to use at my condo & while traveling. The seller (from Canada) said it was a 1973. The husk had the fretboard and the Fender name plate.

Turns out the seller was parting it out (ugh!). I was able to get the original control plate (serial number 6776) and the original pickup. There was no reason to part it out that I could see (other than making more money than selling it whole).

I had a vintage Fender 6 string nut & screws I bought around 2018 for $30, a new Kluson 6 string chrome tuners tray ($35) and the Kluson chrome tuners for it ($53) - all from a project that I never did but I kept the parts.

I also had some left over Fender parts from a couple of Telecaster projects I did 3 years ago - Fender Tele knobs ($27) and a set of Fender 250K sold shaft CTS pots ($19).

Today I finished putting it back together:

Here's the head stock:

Here's the bridge control plate:

I did have a few issues putting it together. The Kluson tray fit perfectly without the tuners. With the tuners it would not drop in. Pondering it for awhile, I realized that the tuners are square at the end and they were hitting the wood preventing the unit to drop in. I would need to round then out to follow the contour of the tray. Or I could cut some slots in the wood. I choose to mod the tuners instead.

Kluson tuner stock:

I marked the areas to be removed with a Sharpie:

Using a bench grinder I ground the the ends round:

The tuner plate gets hot when grinding and two corners warped a bit but some gentle taps with a hammer straightened them out.

The last issue was one of the Fender knobs would not sit flush with the control plate. The pot shaft hole was not deep enough. I wrapped the knob with some blue masking tape and put in a vice so I could drill it out a bit with a 1/4" drill bit:

Worked like a charm and now both knobs sit flush with the top.

I set it up for C6 as follows:

1 E 4 .. 0.015 PLAIN
2 C 4 .. 0.017 PLAIN
3 A 3 .. 0.021 PLAIN
4 G 3 .. 0.026 WOUND
5 E 3 .. 0.032 WOUND
6 C 3 .. 0.042 WOUND

The number after the note is the ISO octave where the note is.

Well, another Fender lap steel husk has been saved! It is not all original but it sounds original. All in, the parts cost me $623 for a nice Champ lap steel. And I did get an original 70's Fender hard shell case for it but that is another story Smile

_________________
Tony
Newnan, GA

Too many guitars, not enough time to play
'72 Sho-Bud 6139, '71 Marlen 210
'78 Fender Stringmaster Quad black
PedalMaster D8

John Harmon · From: Virginia, USA

Pretty cool and another one saved, very good

Bill Sinclair · From: Waynesboro, PA, USA

Good on ya Tony. It looks great and ready to go! Yeah, pretty goofy to part out a guitar like that. Unfortunately, the date code on the pots was probably enough for him to think it was financially worth his while. I wish some of these guys would just yank the pots and knobs to fulfil their guitar fantasy Rolling Eyes

and sell the rest as one lot instead of scattering it to the wind.

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