just got my first tube amp!!! crate vintage club 3x10

surfmaster

surfmaster

New member
i love the punchyness of 10" speakers and have always wanted a tube amp. i scored the crate for $204+$86 shipping. its an older amp, but it was from the original owner, who had never gigged with it and played it for a total of 4 hours with the volume at 3 or less. he also got it biased and retubed with groove tubes 3 years ago.

and 3x10 has got to be the cool speaker config ever.

has anyone else had any experience with this amp? soundclips? pictures? anything to keep me busy till it comes!

FYI i play indie rock ala saves the day circa stay what you are, braid, the get up kids, hot water music, jimmy eat world, hey mercedes, etc...

so a slighty overdriven clean and a low-ish gain dirty sound with a lot of mids.

thanks!
 
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it has the stock crate speakers in it.

i also have a laney 60watt solid state amp with british made HH invaders installed. would it be worth it to throw them in? otherwise i would sell that amp to offset the price of this one.

edit: realized that they probably arent the right ohm value or wattage because of the crate's weird config. oh well.
 
Flamin Lip said:
Yup! They sound pretty nice, unfortunately the one I had literally caught on fire while dimed out! Have fun with her!!!
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and you thought it doesn't come with effects? :D

if i were you i'd try the HH speakers in the Crate and keep them if they sound better than stock. Then I would sell the solid-state with the crate speakers :)

otherwise just sell the solid-state and try researching aftermarket speakers to find the ones that would work for your sound (it's kinda like shopping for food online, but you can at least get a ballpark, then use a good retailer, which would accept a return/exchange if you're not happy).
 
I actually kind of dig the Crate Vintage Club series. You play the Flexwaves and the Blue Voodoo, and you'd expect the thing to be a very sharp, over gained brittle sounding thing, yet it's actually a rather nice bluesy amp with enough gain on tap to get up to acceptable saturation. I was really surprised by the VC-30 I played.

Though, it DID run awfully hot...
 
alright guys some big help needed.

i got the amp all packed up beautifully, even had the tubes individually wrapped, but 2 of the speakers had stripped themselves of their screws and were jostled around in the back of the amp. its a good thing i had the laney 2x10 just to use the speakers!

heres the thing, the laney speakers themselves don't say what ohm they are, but on the back of the amp, where the speakers plug in, it says 4 ohm speaker out. one plug for each speaker.

the stock speakers are 16 ohm. how do i wire in these two speakers the right way? i dont even know how the originals were wired because the wires had pulled right off the speakers as well.

also i just found out by looking through the manual that the amp has an 8ohm load.

thanks for any help guys!
 
3 16 ohm speakers should be more than 4 ohms and less than 8, so you would be safe running them from a "4 0hm" labelled output.

I have read some ominous things about these and their reliability. I'd gig with a backup. But for under $300, it's worth playing hard until something goes wrong, and sell it on to someone handy.

I personally wouldn't sink much $$ into upgrades for this reason.
 
JPXTom said:
nice music choice...std, jew, circa...awesomeness..post some clips man..gotta hear this thing.
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right now i've got the hh invaders in and want to wait until insurance cash from UPS comes for the two busted speakers so i can have all three rigged up. right now i just have the two in series because they are 4 ohm and the originals were 16 ohms, there was no combination of the three that would work.

but so far the cleans are gorgeous. its unbelievable how good this thing sounds for cleans. the dist. is alright, very one trick ponyish but i'll get used to it. a little muddy and the eq is not very interactive on the dist. channel unlike the clean channel where if you move the treble knob at all it changes the sound completely.
 
$204 you can't go wrong, seems like an excellent deal.

I don't see how the speakers could get ripped out during shipping? whooa:confused: what was the UPS guy doing? fhk?

the speakers that are screwed in, inside the cabinet, came loose and let the speakers fall out? c'mon...something doesn't sound right.

I could understand a torn grille cloth a broken knob or a knick in the tolex.....but two speakers that fell off?

Was the UPS a 6.5ft dewd with Black hair..all over his body with a huge head and eating a bannana?

:p
 
update!

i got $100 for insurance from UPS, just enough to order 3 warehouse speakers veteran 10's. their veteran 30's are supposed to sound like the vintage 30's minus the mid bump weirdness. and the price is right at $30 a pop.

i installed the new speakers today and they sound killer! the low end is very tight now and the high end does not get overdone at higher gain levels like it did with the other speakers i had in it.

i'm busy recording a band this weekend but may be able to find time to record some clips of this thing in action.

edit: i also installed casters. this thing is heavy!! around 70 pounds
 
buy a small fan
Put that small fan where it blows on the tube section and keeps it from ever getting very hot ....... it may help with the reliability
 
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