What's With Crate Anyway?

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I live in St. Louis. There's a company called St. Louis Music that makes Ampeg, Alverez, Crate and few other products.

So with most St. Louis based companies, we like to toot our horn and brag and stuff about how great St. Louis stuff is (take our beer and baseball for example). But the only way I know that Crate comes from a St. Louis company is that it's printed on their logo. Otherwise, it's never mentioned on the news or by any civic booster or anybody. I think that's clue #1 about how the company feels about this product.

Based on what I've heard at GC there seems to be some good Crates and some mediocre Crates.

So is there a rule of thumb on the good vs. bad Crate?

Part of me says I need to start a petition drive to have them take the St. Louis reference off of their stuff...
 
Fusioninspace said:
I live in St. Louis. There's a company called St. Louis Music that makes Ampeg, Alverez, Crate and few other products.

So with most St. Louis based companies, we like to toot our horn and brag and stuff about how great St. Louis stuff is (take our beer and baseball for example). But the only way I know that Crate comes from a St. Louis company is that it's printed on their logo. Otherwise, it's never mentioned on the news or by any civic booster or anybody. I think that's clue #1 about how the company feels about this product.

Based on what I've heard at GC there seems to be some good Crates and some mediocre Crates.

So is there a rule of thumb on the good vs. bad Crate?

Part of me says I need to start a petition drive to have them take the St. Louis reference off of their stuff...
Click to expand...

I think Crate is made by Fender...but I'm not sure.
 
I've owned a few Crates. I think they are overall mediocre for both the SS and tube models.
But, having said that, they are probably in the top tier of SS amps you can purchase for the money.
 
Crate was a St. Louis company. Ken Hensley of Uriah Heep was associated with them. A very good friend of mine works for them (at least for a few more days). They were recently sold to LOUD Technologies who is now in the process of gutting the company and laying off employees.
http://www.prosoundweb.com/news/0305/loud.php
 
Track Rat said:
Crate was a St. Louis company. Ken Hensley of Uriah Heep was associated with them. A very good friend of mine works for them (at least for a few more days). They were recently sold to LOUD Technologies who is now in the process of gutting the company and laying off employees.
http://www.prosoundweb.com/news/0305/loud.php
Click to expand...

Hey Track, thanks for the update! (I live south of Ballwin, near the landfill ;-)

I remember hearing about someone from Uriah Heep living in town when I was a kid. Now I have confirmation. Cool!

Hope your friend doesn't get totally hosed from the deal. BTW - What did your friend think of Crate?
 
JBL equipped Crate BX-160 Bass Amp

I have a JBL equipped Crate BX-160 Bass Amp that does a nice job.
Very smooth sounding.
Picked it up used for $250.
7-band parametric, balanced out, built in chorus effect, and more.
When I was in Music Retail 10 million years ago, Crate was a new company and their amps were made of wood and looked like a real crate.
They even sold an accessory briefcase made of wood. :eek:
 
Hey, just wondering-is that JBL in the Crate bass amp a 4 ohm model? I got a set of reconed JBL's that were 4 ohm and wondering if they were actually bass speakers?
 
Mine is a 15" JBL model M151-4 and it is 4 ohms.

Anfontan said:
Hey, just wondering-is that JBL in the Crate bass amp a 4 ohm model? I got a set of reconed JBL's that were 4 ohm and wondering if they were actually bass speakers?
Click to expand...
Mine is a 15" model M151-4 and it is 4 ohms.
Massive Magnet on that thing!
 
Thanx for the reply, I have those JBL 15's in a couple of PA speakers and have to be careful not to mismatch the impedance of my power amps with them. They do sound great for PA mains though, just make sure the amp will handle 2 ohms with speakers in parallel.
 
I'm around them every day, and honestly... as far as quality goes, they aren't as bad as what people make them out to be. Their smaller solid state amps are pretty iffy; we've had to send some back... the V series is solid, though. As of now we've had no trouble with parts orders or warranty claims, so I can't complain. Number one in my book is still Yorkville though, great guys up north eh.
 
I owned a few crate amps when i was a kid, actually about 5 em. One sounded decent which I think was a GX130c head? You could get a pretty nasty (good) distortion sound on the clean channel. The distortion channel was'nt bad either. I also had the 2x12 model before getting the head and the 1x12 model without chorus before getting the 2x12. Neither sounded as good as the head.

A friend of mine had a little 1x12 combo with a Celestion speaker in it that sounded great for thrash metal stuff. It was a pretty old model with the red knobs and black carpet covering. There was actually a defect with that particular model. The controls for each channel would bleed into the other channel. If you set everything just right, it sounded really good (to a kids ears anyway). I had the 2x12 version of this amp but with SLM speakers and it did'nt sound near as good.

The worst one I owned was one of those mini heads. It had the Flexwave shit it in. Sounded horrible. I mean horrible. I got it as an extra in a trade. I think I got screwed on that one. :eek:

Something to note about all of these amps is they were built on pc boards and every damn one them had problems with the input jacks and footswitch jacks. I don't think I would want to own any of them again except maybe that little 1x12 Celestion amp to play some Kill Em All riffs for old times sake. :D

I remember trying out the Blue DooDoo amp after someone told me to check out a tube amp. It sounded awful and turned me away from tube amps for awhile. Man was I wrong. That particular tube amp just sounded like crap. Give me a well made tube amp anyday.
 
Yorkville and ART

heroics321 said:
I'm around them every day, and honestly... as far as quality goes, they aren't as bad as what people make them out to be. Their smaller solid state amps are pretty iffy; we've had to send some back... the V series is solid, though. As of now we've had no trouble with parts orders or warranty claims, so I can't complain. Number one in my book is still Yorkville though, great guys up north eh.
Click to expand...
I bought one of the first ART GOLD MPA's from a batch that the VU meter panels (with the numeric db info) warped due to normally generated heat as the panels were cut too small in production.
ART had me send it to Yorkville (their now parent company) in Niagara Falls for repair.
When it came back from Yorkville it was totally trashed. :mad:
Both Clear plastic meter covers were cracked, the front panel was scratched , the meter panels were glued on crooked and it looked like someone had used a pair of pliers to remove one of the control knobs. :eek:
Of course, ART jumped right on it :D and replaced the entire unit but it certainly didnt give me any good feelings about Yorkville. :confused:
 
I had a crate combo amp some 15 years ago. I'm a firm believer that Companies like Crate, Marshall, Mesa, etc. have all got amps in their product lines that suck. Question is: Are the sounds coming out if them usable for you? If so, then buy one. If not, keep looking. I've gotten a good overdrive tone from a battery powered marshall amp thing that only stood like 4" tall. It only cost me $35. Now, I have a Fender Blues Jr. and I get plenty of very usable tones from it. $450. Maybe one day I'll graduate to a Mesa Triple Recto or a Marshall TSL but, for now I'm good. Crate makes decent amps and I would buy one like the V50 or something if I hadn't fallen for my lil' fender combo. Thing to do is TEST, TEST, TEST, then buy.
 
homestudioguy said:
I bought one of the first ART GOLD MPA's from a batch that the VU meter panels (with the numeric db info) warped due to normally generated heat as the panels were cut too small in production.
ART had me send it to Yorkville (their now parent company) in Niagara Falls for repair.
When it came back from Yorkville it was totally trashed. :mad:
Both Clear plastic meter covers were cracked, the front panel was scratched , the meter panels were glued on crooked and it looked like someone had used a pair of pliers to remove one of the control knobs. :eek:
Of course, ART jumped right on it :D and replaced the entire unit but it certainly didnt give me any good feelings about Yorkville. :confused:
Click to expand...

Hmm, that does sound strange. I'm wondering why ART didn't just have you send it to them in the first place. They are a division of Yorkville, but I still wouldn't contact them for parts for an ART unit. Did they or Yorkville have anything to say about it? Gimme some dirt in case I have to give them a hard time in the future :D
 
Being a hockey hoser from up north, I can say the first amp I had was a yorkville. It was awsome. I love the yorkville/traynor stuff. Some of it real good. My brother has been playing a 200 watt 2x10 bass combo for like seven years, that thing has been dropped, kicked, puked on, we hosers love beer eh! thrown off stage, even fucked on at least a dozen times. Nothing like walking inot a room and seeing your brothers drunk ass pumping some girl on the top of his bass amp!! And the traynor 40 watt tube combos I have played about a dozen times and makes me beer foam everytime. right on!!
 
heroics321 said:
Hmm, that does sound strange. I'm wondering why ART didn't just have you send it to them in the first place. They are a division of Yorkville, but I still wouldn't contact them for parts for an ART unit. Did they or Yorkville have anything to say about it? Gimme some dirt in case I have to give them a hard time in the future :D
Click to expand...
I believe the repairs are done in Niagara Falls not Rochester.
The ART Tech person in Rochester was a bit miffed about it. Going only on intuition, I think things may not be exactly happy happy in ART/Yorkville world. I have no facts to substantiate that, but you know how you can just intuit things sometimes? Mannerisms, tone of voice, etc.
However, it has a happy ending for me as I have my GOLD MPA which is a nice unit.
 
DeadUnion said:
Being a hockey hoser from up north, I can say the first amp I had was a yorkville. It was awsome. I love the yorkville/traynor stuff. Some of it real good. My brother has been playing a 200 watt 2x10 bass combo for like seven years, that thing has been dropped, kicked, puked on, we hosers love beer eh! thrown off stage, even fucked on at least a dozen times. Nothing like walking inot a room and seeing your brothers drunk ass pumping some girl on the top of his bass amp!! And the traynor 40 watt tube combos I have played about a dozen times and makes me beer foam everytime. right on!!
Click to expand...

Um, Yea... so what's with Crate anyway?
 
I've never met a Crate that I particularly cared for.
 
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