I bought it used, so no manual. It was quite a bargain, $85. And yes, I'm well aware of Crate's reputation. See my username...
I'm interested in a manual, the functional diagram and especially the
electronic schematic if anyone has access to one. The PDF of the manual is not available on the Crate website. If any of you own or have owned one, I'd be interested to hear in your experiences, tips and EQ settings. It has an XLR out, does anyone know if it's pre or post EQ?
Since you're going to ask: I play country, my main bass is a G&L SB-2. The cab is a new G-K 4x10,
4 ohm (not the Neo). Tweeter OFF. Yes I know with a 4 ohm cab I can't add another cab, I made that decision to go with a half stack setup. I've only used it for one practice, and it sounded pretty good. I ran the EQ with a slight bass boost at 50 and 100 Hz, pretty flat thru the midrange, and the rolled off the highs a bit on the last two sliders of the 7-band EQ. I did not turn on the bass boost or treble boost, and kept the contour control at the 'flat' setting. One thing I noticed at the end of practice, the heatsink got hotter than I expected. Not warm, HOT, but not so hot I couldn't put my hand on it.
When I bought it, it had some crossover distortion. However thanks to this lovely forum I was able to fix the problem!
The bias for the power transistors was off. I found a thread about this problem in an Ampeg, apparently these SLM designed amps have a common architecture, because my Crate also had the bias trimpot. It was very easy to locate the emitter resistors, hook up my voltmeter, and and adjust the pot to get some current flowing thru the transistors.
I hope to upgrade to an Ampeg PF-500 soon! 200 watts isn't that loud with bass, it's pretty easy to get the limiter light to come on.
