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Don't get buyer's remorse. You got the better of the two choices IMHO. Even though the Bandmaster has a rep I liked the BF Bassman head much better when I played through it. And who knows, you may have ended up with Oxford speakers in the Bandmaster cab... Yuk.
Too bad the guy sold it without you getting your shot though. At $150. with your resources here it could have been a really good investment.
Don't be fooled by the inputs. The low gain input really is for higher gain signals like keyboards and such. You won't get a louder clean tone playing through the low gain channel, it'll just be at a higher number on the volume knob than on the normal input. What you will get is a different level on the "bright" switch. If, for example, your plugged into the "normal" channel high gain input with the vol on 3 and the bright switch engaged you have the bright cap across a much higher resistance than if you are using the "low gain" input with the amp on 7 and the bright switch engaged. So you have three flavors of clean... input 1 or 2 without the bright switch (which won't be too much different except for the vol knob setting) and input 1 with the bright switch engaged or input 2 with the bright switch engaged. The latter two will be very different because the bright circuit intensity is volume setting dependant. And since the bright switch accentuates different frequencies than the treble control many different tones become possible. This doesn't even account for the "Bass" channel. Since the two channels are in phase it's easy to A/B with a pedal for two distinctly different tones too. You may even choose the channel you DON'T use for you clean tone to mod for a dirty tone so that you can actually "channel switch" with an A/B foot switch. This trick has been done a lot. Not a real high gain tone but enough to drive solo's for blues and rock. To get high gain you could "stack" channels (ala Dumble) but this wouldn't be foot switch-able without adding relays. It would however be do-able without altering the "normal" channel clean tone at all and you would need to physically plug into the "bass" channel for the channel stack feature to engage. All mods are easily revrersible so if you don't think you'll use the "bass" channel much then it's like free stuff. Great amp with lot's of tubes and options.
Too bad the guy sold it without you getting your shot though. At $150. with your resources here it could have been a really good investment.
Don't be fooled by the inputs. The low gain input really is for higher gain signals like keyboards and such. You won't get a louder clean tone playing through the low gain channel, it'll just be at a higher number on the volume knob than on the normal input. What you will get is a different level on the "bright" switch. If, for example, your plugged into the "normal" channel high gain input with the vol on 3 and the bright switch engaged you have the bright cap across a much higher resistance than if you are using the "low gain" input with the amp on 7 and the bright switch engaged. So you have three flavors of clean... input 1 or 2 without the bright switch (which won't be too much different except for the vol knob setting) and input 1 with the bright switch engaged or input 2 with the bright switch engaged. The latter two will be very different because the bright circuit intensity is volume setting dependant. And since the bright switch accentuates different frequencies than the treble control many different tones become possible. This doesn't even account for the "Bass" channel. Since the two channels are in phase it's easy to A/B with a pedal for two distinctly different tones too. You may even choose the channel you DON'T use for you clean tone to mod for a dirty tone so that you can actually "channel switch" with an A/B foot switch. This trick has been done a lot. Not a real high gain tone but enough to drive solo's for blues and rock. To get high gain you could "stack" channels (ala Dumble) but this wouldn't be foot switch-able without adding relays. It would however be do-able without altering the "normal" channel clean tone at all and you would need to physically plug into the "bass" channel for the channel stack feature to engage. All mods are easily revrersible so if you don't think you'll use the "bass" channel much then it's like free stuff. Great amp with lot's of tubes and options.
) If it's a plain "Champ" I might skip it only because they're not that versitile and that circuit makes for a fun homebrew project anyway. Also and especially true with the SF (opposed to BF) model Champs the voltages for a single ended amp run especially high. I worked on a SF VC with 423Vp. Way high for a single ended 6V6.
at least thats what I am telling my girlfriend...
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