My new Tone Beastie

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mr-macmr-mac Frets: 200
edited April 2018 in Amps

Picked up very cheap indeed.

1st impressions are very very good indeed.  Gain goes a lot lot higher but so far for clean, blues and rock crunch its a very serious tone beastie indeed.

like fact it has a master on both channels so can easily tune volume for practise or venue size.

30kg, 4x ecc83, 4x el84, 50watt, efx loop (via trs), 2x12...

I give you the Crate Vintage Club VC5212
https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/938/27654697258_a1d6a60d4f_o_d.jpg

https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/850/27654696658_3e0902ae1a_o_d.jpg

https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/930/27654695838_fe87755d6b_o_d.jpg

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Comments

  • mr-macmr-mac Frets: 200
    edited April 2018
    Not sure what's up with photos shows an x and the photo on desktop site but just shows the x on the mobile site
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  • p90foolp90fool Frets: 31367
    50w? 
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  • mr-macmr-mac Frets: 200
    p90fool said:
    50w? 
    Yep 50watt 
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  • p90foolp90fool Frets: 31367
    Cool, I gigged a Crate 2x12 valve combo in the 90s, it sounded awesome at stage volume. 
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  • paulphoenixpaulphoenix Frets: 141
    Nice - I have been eyeing up a Vintage Club 20 (in blonde) advertised for sale within striking distance of me and I was wondering about these. They seem to be quite underrated.   

    How much is cheap? - if you don't mind me asking.
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  • mr-macmr-mac Frets: 200
    edited April 2018
    They are very very very underrated.... Even ay lower volumes the big beast sounds good as it has master Vol on both channels.  Also has reverb control for each channel on the vc5212 anyway so can set reverb on both channels and choose how much on each channel which is quite cool too.  I am playing it through underwound PAF copies (about 7k iirc) and still piles and piles more gain than i need even for say smells like teen spirit.  So shouldn't be lacking in available gain for most situations though not sure I am qualified to comment if any good for really heavy stuff myself.

    Remember Mark Knopfler actually played a VC5212 live and for recorded sound from early 90's for a long time.  Inc the DVD/official you tube footage of his night in London thing (with his uber expensive les paul for brothers in arms).  Whether you like him or not there is no doubt he is capable of producing a tone and is a bit of a tone geek.

    Canny give exact price but how does a chunk less then cheapest epiphone lp studio from andertons do for getting you ball park???  It's been gigged so has been some tolex damage though glued it back in that looks a lot better already.  

    My hint, people see crate and tend to ignore it and suspect its low end crap.  The vintage club, palamino and US built V series are all of similar design (though v series 2x12 are 9kg lighter than vintage club).  Don't rush out and buy if local gumtree of Facebook group.  Give it a week and ask for best price or try adds that have been up for a month or so.  The one i got was for sale on fb group for 1.5month before i saw it (though a couple of previous owners and people who'd borrowed in past or heard it when another owner played it all appeared and said how crazy good that amp sounded (luckily all were skint).

    having had a good read about them everywhere it seems the odd person who didn't love theirs out of box and tried things rather than moving on has found a lot of millage swapping to their favoured 12" driver (one guy swapped for fender as he liked fender sound and another common is green or gold back).  Guy who sold it has a pre cbs fender twin of some sort and he said he couldn't pick between them for clean sound.  

    very good amps indeed.  

    My next experiments will be running 4 cable with my gsp1101 to see how well it takes pedals.  Following that i will run my Groove Tubes trio preamp into the power amp in and compare it to the amps own preamps.  Will report back as I try these things to let you all know how it sounds.
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  • mr-macmr-mac Frets: 200
    Though as i get used to it I may look at a suitable power soak solution so its easier to change volume bit keeping sounding the same.  Will live with it for a while and see how i go 
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  • mr-macmr-mac Frets: 200
    Will get its first run out tonight at my friends open mic.  so looking forward to opening it up a bit and seeing how it responds :)
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  • mr-macmr-mac Frets: 200
    We'll even in a larger venue open mic I didn't get to crank it very high.... Think gain was at about 6-7 and level made it to about 2 or slightly over.  

    still very happy with sound and the guitarist presenting open mic was seriously impressed with the o/d tone produced.

    If keeps going well I would defo consider adding the 30w 1x12 version for a lighter grab and go amp for smaller gigs/open mics (hatching plan to incorporate a Digitech gsp1101 into smaller version so its an all in one grab and go for a similar reason as some are buying katanas for.
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