Mac DeMarco’s 1960s Fender Vibro Champ

This is the amplifier that Mac DeMarco used on his early records, at least up until Another One (2015). The amp belonged to Mac DeMarco’s grandmother, who aside from being an opera singer, was also a music teacher, and shed this exact amp to teach her student micing techniques.

The amplifier that I used to record my guitars – my grandmothter she gave me this, what is it, a Fender Vibro Champ. It’s a small 8-inch speaker guitar amp.

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My grandmother once gave me an old amp, a Fender Vibro-Champ, which I’ve used to record all of the guitar parts on every one of my albums.

When she first offered it to me, I was like, “Wait! There’s no distortion switch? No reverb?” But it’s the best sounding amp I ever played through and I’ve come to appreciate it so much.

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Occasionally, Mac used this amp live. However, since it’s such a small amp, he’d usually have it miced up, and run the mic to a Roland KC-550 – which is a 200W keyboard amp.

What I’ve been doing recently is to bring a really big 200-watt keyboard amp, take a really small Fender amp — actually the one we use to record the albums with — and put that on top of the big one,

Then I’ll mic that small Fender amp with my own mic, which goes into the keyboard amp, so it’s just a giant cab for the little guy. Then I run all the keyboards on the stage into that big keyboard amp as well.

Mac DeMarco – original source needed.