:o seriously, bear with me here, tonehounds... :lol:
I understand there's quite a few folk for whom this might have been their first "cr@ppy" amp. It didn't exist when I was starting, but I've owned a second/third/wotever hand one for 8 years or so.
I bought it in a used electricals shop in Islington (I was served by Brian Robertson!) for not much money. It was light and cheap, I was thinking of playing electric guitar again after a lay-off of several years, and there was no way I was playing my old gigging amp in the flat...
When I got it home, it turned out to be as horrid as I was expecting for what I paid, I used it for few days, then went back to accoustic and it ended up in the bottom of one of the wardrobes. I got into modellors a year or two later and haven't looked back...
NEway, me and the missus have been wondering what to do about each other's chrimbo pressies, and I was under instructions to try out the two small amps I'm possibly GAS-ing for (a Vox AC4TV and a Laney Cub 10). I had the day off, and that's what I was meant to go out and do... But it was raining a lot, the trains are all b*ggered, and I played my strat too long this morning... so I didn't leave the flat :roll:
After lunch, it was still raining, and I suddenly remembered this Crate thing in the wardrobe - I could at least find out whether I fancied the idea of playing through a small amp again (instead of studio speakers).
I got it out, and it was as horrid as I (and probably some others) remembered. It was "boxy" and it seemed to make all pickups on a strat sound the same... It did muddy and fizzy well, but not much else...
And then I started applying some of the stuff I've learnt about tone controls and pre-amp gain over the last few years... I also taped a board over the back to make it "closed back", that was a major improvement to start with. And then, suddenly, I hit a "sweet spot". And then every single guitar, with the same settings, started sounding good. Strats sounded like strats, teles like teles, SG like and SG, etc... It even responded to guitar vol/tone controls for cleaning up the tone...
I am seriously, I mean SERIOUSLY surprised and stunned... I'd completely written it off as useless. But this afternoon I have spent hours playing through it, and deadened the strings on all of my main guitars. It's still a tranny practice amp, it's not going to seriously compete with anything that most of us on here are lusting over, but it was usable and, more importantly, inspiring to play through :o !!
If you've got one of these hiding under the bed (and under a cloud of "you sorry piece-of-sh1t, I'm so ashamed I own you..."), get it out and fiddle with it a bit - you might find it can actually do something for you as a practice amp...
Of course, I'm now GASing even more for the AC4TV or the Cub 10, or even for both :roll:... (luckily, depending on whether the lovely lady decides that she really does want what she wants for chrimbo, both would come in under budget! :lol:)
