I actually still have one. I haven't powered it up in about 10 years. I should dust it off and see if it still works. Allegedly, they are very Ampeg-ish internally.
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Whatever happened to Crate amps?
- Thread starter Analogeezer
- Start date
I actually still have one. I haven't powered it up in about 10 years. I should dust it off and see if it still works. Allegedly, they are very Ampeg-ish internally.
I bought this in the 90s when I was in college and needed something to practice on with a headphone jack that I could hide under a bed. It's sturdy enough, just a small wooden box.
After reading this thread, I guess I should be amazed it still works? That it doesn't sound awful? (It's nothing to write home about, tone-wise)
Am I supposed to start hating it now? lol
It still works fine and I still use it with my synth rig when I'm trying to keep the noise down at night.
Maybe we should start a "Oh, you still have a Crate Amp?!" club!
After reading this thread, I guess I should be amazed it still works? That it doesn't sound awful? (It's nothing to write home about, tone-wise)
Am I supposed to start hating it now? lol
It still works fine and I still use it with my synth rig when I'm trying to keep the noise down at night.
Maybe we should start a "Oh, you still have a Crate Amp?!" club!
My first amp was a BX-40, back in 1993. It was a great practice amp- the overdrive had a really unique sound, which I loved. My second amp was a BX-100 with a single 15 in it. That amp was heavy, and not loud enough to compete with a live drummer (who was also a teenager). I traded it in on an Ampeg B2 350 with 4x8, and a SVT Classic 15 under it. Still not loud enough for that drummer.
Played a house band type gig in the early 80’s with a rhythm guitar player that used one of the early crate looking amps. It looked bad and sounded worse. Every week at tear down that amp ended up in the trash can outside the back door. Every following week the guy would show back up with it knowing we all hated it. Haven’t thought about that in years.
My dad has one of those; someone gave it to him. It works fine and sounds OK from what I recall.
I played a lot of gigs with a BT-350 head a long, long time ago. It was a step up in power for me at the time and it sounded pretty good through a 1x15. I don’t remember having many problems with it and ended up selling it
You know from a marketing perspective it made a lot of sense for SLM to develop a cheaper line of amps for their customer base (the mom and pop music stores, not the actual customers).
That gave these kinds of places something to sell to the kinds of customers they had. Not many people walked into a place like this to buy a full SVT setup, a lot of times it was broke kids or the parents of kids who just wanted a small, cheap amp for them to start out on or was affordable.
Also - I bet these kinds of stores didn't exactly want to invest in some SVT's to sit around on the showroom floor for years while some kids without money came in and ran all the customers out while playing the Ampegs at coliseum volumes LOL.
Circa 1978 (when Crate was created) I gotta believe SLM also looked at Peavey, who sold a crapload of cheap and affordable amps to just these kinds of music stores; and the people who came into these kinds of music stores bought Peavey in droves.
So no doubt the SLM folks said "hey we want a piece of that action, lower profits per amp but we'd sell a lot more of these than Ampegs"
Nothing wrong really with entry level gear, as long as it is cheap and durable; everybody has to start somewhere.
Interesting how they just seemed to kind of float away as a brand, sounds like when Loud bought SLM they realized that brand and made in USA production didn't have a lot of future in it so they just dropped the line.
Hell as it is they offshored Ampeg but Ampeg has a name and a lot of great models that people wanted to buy, better to cut costs on a flagship product and hope the buyers didn't care (which apparently they did not) it was made overseas....than to try and offshore Crate too but compete with like Behringer.
Sounds like Crate had a pretty good almost 30 year run so I guess in that respect they were a successful brand for SLM.
Analogeezer
The BX80 was my first "proper" amp. It was pretty nice and really really heavy - and the practice spaces we used were really cramped. Not fun moving in and out.
I inherited a small Crate guitar amp which I used as a practice amp when I lived in a dicey rental back in 2019. It sounded like crap, which made it an excellent practice amp. If you can make that sound good, you can make anything sound good.
I eventually stowed it and a SUB Bass in a closet in my office at work. Came in late one night and the janitor was playing it. I told him I was OK with that.
I eventually stowed it and a SUB Bass in a closet in my office at work. Came in late one night and the janitor was playing it. I told him I was OK with that.
Still got this one and an old Jackson dr-6 dinky when my guitarist friends come over. Nothing to write home about, but the distortion channel wasn't bad.
Crate was my first non practice amp, 100 watt 1x15 combo amp I want to say it was a BT100, it was the mid 00’s, though looking at pictures I don’t remember mine having a built in octaver. Left it at a friends house and it died, either on its own or by being misused. Couple years after that I ended up with a pair of real old Crate 2x12 cabs that I ran with a Hartke HA3500 for years and they never let me down. One of the cabs actually fell of the back of our trailer and came apart at the seams and still played the show, I screwed it back together after that and it kept going strong for years. I eventually upgraded and got rid of them.
Would be interesting to see what they would have looked like nowadays.
Would be interesting to see what they would have looked like nowadays.
I was in a band for about a year that rented a rehearsal space that came equipped with amps and a P A . The guitar amps were a Roland JC120 and some kind of Hughes and Kettner amp. The bass amp was a Crate. It was like 100 watts and the cabinet had 2 15 inch speakers. It was about the same size as a Sunn 2x15 cab. Darn if that amp didn't sound great. It had just the right amount of grit. I actually tried to buy it but they wouldn't sell it they said everyone who played it really liked it. After about six months they replaced the Crate with an SVT and a 4x10 but I never did find out what happened to the Crate amp.
My first amp was a 1x15 Crate. This was around 1999/2000. I didn’t even know how to use the 7 band EQ then. It’s probably in a landfill
I had a BT350 back in the day. It had a built in chorus and xover. As I recall, CRATE was SLM's (who also made Ampeg at the time) brand for mostly guitar amps. But they also had a line of less expensive bass amps to go along with Ampeg. (kinda like squire with fender). When SLM sold out to LOUD, CRATE disappeared.
Whoa, there's my first bass amp, a BX160, bought new in '92 or '93. Not terrible, but couldn't keep up at all with loud guitars amd drums.
It's not a bass amp, but Crate had a short-lived line of Class A Tube amps called the Palomino series. A 5, 15, or 30 watt offering. They sounded pretty damned good, honestly.
The best (maybe the funniest) part is that they didn't say "Crate" anywhere on them except for a small badge plate on the back, the one with the voltage info and the "don't stick your hand on the circuit while the amp is powered on" stuff.
They looked good as well.
I think Crate folded despite these amps, which may contribute to the fact that few know about them.
The best (maybe the funniest) part is that they didn't say "Crate" anywhere on them except for a small badge plate on the back, the one with the voltage info and the "don't stick your hand on the circuit while the amp is powered on" stuff.
They looked good as well.
I think Crate folded despite these amps, which may contribute to the fact that few know about them.
Yup, was going to post this too. I have a CA125 acoustic amp that sounds amazing - kicked the pants off the fender stuff for less $.
My first *new* amp in about 1993 or so was a Crate BX-80. I played the heck out of that thing and really wanted the BX-160 so I could run an extension cab. Then there was the 200W head version, which I thought was cool for a bass stack. Hey, I was like 15, what did I know?
When I was ~16 or 17, I got a killer deal on a Fender P-Lyte and Ampeg SVTIII/SVT-215 rig and gave up my silly Crate dreams.
In the pre-Crate days, my first "big" amp was an old Peavey TNT-100 I bought used. I don't have any desire to go back to that, but I do have fond memories of that amp with my '67 EBO and later my Yamaha RBX-350, both of which I never should've sold...
When I was ~16 or 17, I got a killer deal on a Fender P-Lyte and Ampeg SVTIII/SVT-215 rig and gave up my silly Crate dreams.
In the pre-Crate days, my first "big" amp was an old Peavey TNT-100 I bought used. I don't have any desire to go back to that, but I do have fond memories of that amp with my '67 EBO and later my Yamaha RBX-350, both of which I never should've sold...
