Under rated Tone Beast Amplifier

Crate Vintage CluB VC5212...

If anyone is in the market for an amp for Clean, Blues, Classic Rock & a bit beyond then I can recommend looking at a Vintage Club. They are so under rated you can pick them up second hand for well under £200 (ie second hand, low end, solid state money). And that's for a well built, 2x12, 30kg beast, 4x ecc 83, 4x el84. It has two channels and independent master and reverb for both. Channel switch jack, efx loop via TRS and all the usual controls.

I can promise you won't just be surprised at the incredible tone the vintage club can produce but honestly shocked. These amps would happily mix it with some of the most sought after amps avail or boutique amps but in a lot of cases will actually produce better results.

The Vintage Club VC3112 is also an excellent option. Same 2 channel setup but a 30w 1x12 version coming in at under 20kg.

In the market for fender cleans, an epic blues gain that will shock fellow players, a seriously good classic crunch, a little bit more gain lIke early hotrodded amps...... But can't afford the usual candidates? We'll bide your time and one of these will come up for an almost entry level budget.

You can thank me later.

that crate? its a watered down ac30, not unlike the 30 watt laneys... and both thsoe amps sound good, however when you put them against a really old ac30 in good health they sound less good by comparison. All the extra features are useful, but theyw ater down the circuit a lot... and they'renot overengineered like amps used to be. I'm surprised you found a working one. I sued tos eemore Crate Clubs broken, man.... baby her. if you must have 2 channels with a master on each channel? well good call! a Crate's a lot cheaper then the channel switching ac30 based amps orange has had on the market. Everyother ac30 style amp with a master that I can think of has 1 master on the 'gain' channel or a shared master after the phase inverter (which sounds great but precludes channel switching). Versus the Chinese AC30C2 and all those amps I might go crate, the new voxes don't sound right. They have chipboard cabs and I cant remember if those crates had plywood...

its a tough one for me to contribute to this thread, because anything we say here will cotnribute to inflated secondhand prices of some amp or another that i don't own yet

I would say the msot udnerrated amp I've owned was when i had an 80s Marshall Studio15 combo. Thatw as a one helluva rock n roll amplifier. They're becoming quite expensive already second hand (which is why i sold it, HUGE profit turned) but not a lot of people know about them. A lot of dudes are collectors just buying them to be completists and own every old marshall amp. Until very recently they were Marshall's only 6V6 design. They're sort of weird batard step child of an 800 and a tweed deluxe in sound. They come in a pint sized 1x12 laoded with a 1st gen V30 (tagged 'Marshall Vintage spealer'), back when the V30 sounded good. The onl down sides are that the amster volume, though tis a cool post phase inverter design (the only amrhsall amp with that design stock) it has some clipping diodes bult onto the the pot adding dirt at low output settings and this may not be to everyone's taste although iw as surprised how good that gimmick actually sounded...the amp is also from the ebginning of Marshall's bad build quality era. The tube sockets aren't on the PCB but everything else is and the PCB isn't as sturdy or well laid out as the earlier PCB amps. 1985ish was the turning point where marhsall build quality began going down and today i wouldn't hit the road with any new marshall model without 2 or 3 backups. Anyway, that's my unknown/underrated beast of an amp eveyrone shoudl try some day.

I had thought about saing soemthing from Gibson, but its so easy to get a abd gibson from the wrong year and get turned off to them. Frome ra to era gibson ahd amps with the same name and model number that had non-related circuits. You gotta really know your gibson to go looking at their amps. There are some real dogs even in the 50s.

so my runner up is actually going to be original Traynor amps. Any of them. They're all great. But don't tell anyone, they're still cheap in the USA and Canada

It's not an AC30 copy only el84 power stage is similar so you compare it to a ac30 it's not going to sound the same... the preamps are nothing like ac30

It's its own amp and can tell you it produces a top of the line and increddible tone that although you can say is similar to x,y,Z yep but its still its own sound.

I have no issues with build qual. Very heavy, good transformers and plenty people out there still using them regularly. Admittedly valves off board would be nice but it is a thick strong single layer board.

Imho the reliability worry and build qual of other crates has unfaily been attached to these. Often confused with later v50 which is over 9kg light

Cant think of much else in league you can get for £100-150 and yeah you do worry about pushing prices up.

I am so impressed with tone i will be adding a 30w one and building my spare gsp1101 4cable into it as an all in one grab and go setup.

I love a good ac30 but find tone limited to one style but for me the crate suits the tone i want more and turns its hand to a lot more besides the everyday tone I like.

Gotta be with a shout at the money

Don't get me wrong though although i rate crate as a stunning tone bargain and you rate other stuff higher I still really enjoyed reading your reply and will, if get chance, try some of the items you listed :)

I love a good ac30 but find tone limited to one style but for me the crate suits the tone i want more and turns its hand to a lot more besides the everyday tone I like.

I guess, i never worry about getting one amp to do a little bit of everything. I just kinda like stuff that's like "here I am doing my thing, like it or lump it!" If I don't like it I don't play that amp. I don't think that's everyone's thing, but the odler I get the mroe it works for me. Plus I have a whole ton of aps to choose from. So that's why I threw the rare, unpopular little marshall and the traynors on. They're my kidna thing. Amps that do what they do ith a minimum futzing aorund with the controls.... but I like the ac30 versions without the top boost a lot. Who needs dedicated treble bass and tone/cut controls when the amps sounds pretty good without the tone controls and the tone cut wide open?

its really surreal to ehar someone hoenstly say they prefer the crate club to an ac30.... when they were new amps in the 90s people would buy them ebcause they wanted a vox but couldn't get one ( think when the club was released your only option was vintage or the marshall/korg joint venture reissue whichw as very expensive for the time). But if you're digging all the extra stuff crate added them more power to ya. I think Billy Gibbons used them on one tour although its very likely they were dummies... or were those crate palominos. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, I'm getting old here.

yor pick has me beat for the money, but I have qualms with the st louis music build quality... I guess for the money you cna just buy 4 of them! But they're just full of budget cuts. I like mt shit pretty stoutly built, anotehr reason I decided to aprt with the little amrshall from the 80s. It was well made by today's standards but I wouldn't throw it off a roof, replace the tubes and go play a show with it like a blackface fender.

That's because to me and my music i prefer it's tone to an AC30. As did Mark Knopfler who played live and recorded with one for a long time from 92 onwards. I don't want it to do everything I am just shocked and stunned by tone it produces and with my playing and guitar its as close to what i always wanted sound wise as i have heard yet.

Nobody would pick it to replace an ac30 as it doesn't sound like an ac30 although its not as badly built as you seem to think. Very heavy constriction and good components.

Though i am happy if people think its a crap poor mans ac30 as it keeps them cheap. All i can say is i love the tone and other guitarists I've shoved it in front of have been chins on floor shocked.

Like I say they are often mistaken for later v50. It's the v50 Billy Gibbons had on tour (palamino was white v50 in one sales chain iirc) and although based on vc50 it was made cheaper and cost savings applied (a lot of changes were made with designer finding out after they made change). The v50 was over 9kg lighter than vc50. Had about 5 people so far mistake the VC for V and yes V was still an ok amp the club is far better and due to that confusion itself and how people rate other crates it has meant this truly is under rated by miles...

Guy I got it off (after it was sold) said he only got rid as flat was too small and got a pre CBS fender twin in a swap deal. He reckoned he was hard pushed to choose tone wise between them for preference (he plays clean). Said he only went with fender in end cos it felt like he was custodian of musical history and would likely never own another (this was all after the sale so not a pitch to off load it). On his sales thread on local instrument sales group an ex owner and people who'd used it while others had owned it before him all said it was a tone machine of highest order and if weren't skint woulda snapped his hand off to have it back or buy it. It truly is an under rated sleeper.

Imight have it confused with the V50, it looks cosmetically the same as the oens without the white tolex. I remember at the time those amps ebing a maintenance nightmare,... I've also dealt with a lot of people's st louis music ampegs from various epriods, like when they did the higher gain channel switching heads at various points from the 80s into the 90s and those suckers sounded sweet until they took a crap, which they always did. And it was always some critical place that was udnerengineered for anything but light bedrooma dn weekend warrior use. But maybe Crate threw all their resources into the VC50. I just assumed it was pretty uch the same amp... the basic design seems the same, some marshall front end ideas stapled to a 70s ac30 power section (not that there's a world of difference ebtween the abssman/marshall premap topology and a top boost... same cathode follower setup with all the gains tacked up front). Guess its a pretty underrated amp.... the design reminds me a lot of this one vox from the 80s that was kind've a an 800/ac15 sort of mutt only with 2 channels or like those 20 and 30 watt 80s hiwatts actually. Good building blocks sonically, but also a lot of heat and stress on componenets that I wuldw wanna see WAY overengineered. PCBs and channel switching in a cathode biased amp make me twitch. I guess it depends on your usage. When i toured I rpetty much went with fully bulletproof basic stuff because I knew it was taking a beating, but for home use I'm less finnicky. Amp's a deal though, you have me there. Those are some low, low prices... were I to buy one I would just score a backup right away just in case my opinion of crate products turned out to extend to the VC50 even though tis sounding like it doesn't.

as for what an ac30 sounds like, I don't think a lot of people really know what a good one sounds like, the new ones are anemic other then the handwireds which are still quite a bit brighter and tighter then the best old ones. A lot of the 'jangle' thing in people's heads is something you have to dig for in an ac30.... its more what a good ac50 did. My old ac30s spit flames, even their clean is fierce.

If it was me I reckon I'd chassis mount valves (actually looks like that would be not too hard to do. And possibly upgrade the jack sockets which is other area they Could do with an improvement and if space wire them to board as well rather than soldered direct.

Should reduce heat and reslultant expansion stress on circuit And any stress from jack sockets being battered or bashed.

Should remove most issues they develop. If i could be arsed I'd do a point to point wired version of it as a project but that's for down line.

its got board mounted 'valves' (tubes for my fellow americans)... see that's what i'm on about. THAT is a recipe for failure in this type of amplifier evne with the larger vents then even a reissue ac30. You've just been lucky sofar. Pretty much all amps with PCB moutned sockets will have some big issues eventually, I always see it happen, but man, the cathode-biased 4xEL84 amps with board moutned sockets? ticking time bomb!

Years ago when i first got my 1962 ac30 it literally blew up and even ahd a small fire in it. Previous owners bad maintenance (wrong type and value fitler caps, super dangerous) coupled to higher wall voltages than 1962 and lower grade power 'valves'.... long and short, a stressed tube shorted and arced a socket. There were sparks and fire, a fuse blew, and the choke got jacked.... but, put the fire out, replace the choke, add a new socket and recap the pweor sectio properly and the amp was good as new and hasn't given me a lick of trouble for over a decade. If you have a problem liek that with a PCB mounted socket the CB will be toast. The way vox is alyed out seems rpettys tupid for ehat dissapation with the separate section split up in the L shaped chassis but its brilliant inc ase of catastrophic failure! eachs ection is isolated by metal so the preamp is still 99% original (I think there's like 1 replaced signal cap right now, the rest are 1962 Mullard mustards still)... for real, on a PCB the whole power section woulda toasted. And the amp shouldan't have failed like that anyway, it was my own fault for not investigating what the previous owner had done to the poor old girl... I guess in the sub $300 price range you're getting baord mounted sockets these days but it really scares me! That causes me to say 'bad build quality'. I'm not entirely against PCB, when its done right its bullet proof, but its ahrder to get right then more traditional ahnd-wiring methods. And its especially ahrd to do when you're trying to keep the price WAY down.

I think they compicated the circuit enough that only an amp guru would wanna point to point wire it... and doesn't it have channel switching? I eman, if its relay based you'll need a PCB for that, the good relays are all designed to be on PCB, you can't flying-lead them to a turret or tag strip. You'll need to make a small floating PCB for the switching crcuit and then flying lead the whole thing to your actually preamp circuits

rrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRROLAND CUBE!!!! Seriously, the thing is fucking nuts for what started as a little solid-state practice amp. It's one of the few solid-state guitar amps I actually like the sound of, and it kicks ass. Some of the newer combos have bigger cabs, not sure what the speaker dimensions are, it's been ages since I've played one.

Don't deny any of it and that i guess was compromisesto get It to its original selling price. but none of that stops it being an incredible sounding amp (it is) and a whole lot more sound quality and ability than you'd expect at anywhere near the price.

Messa used the same valve sockets at some point iirc the are kinda attached sideways to board which Has a hole through board where socket is mounted. so it's no quite a socket popped onto a circuit board which would be Disaster if all went wrong but still not ideal. Makes it easy enough with only a little work to move valves to chassis mounted sockets though especially the el84 to get heat away from board. If you can do this yourself then amp is a bargain and you loose a lot of the issues very easily.

marshall used thsoe sockets in the notorious JTM30 and 60 amps too... ugh! I gave my JTM30 away ebcause Iw as sick of fixing it. When it worked? the clean channel souned great turned up and the dirty channel had its charm, but man.... as it got odler and older every bit of that amp started failing piece by piece. FUCK THAT... I took the sockets off and chassis mounted them but it didn't help that much in the long run. It probably prevented CATASTROPHIC melt down, but the PCB was just getting too much heat... not saying that's the way with the crate because the chassis looks bigger and you might be able to get the tubes further away from the PCB then on the little JTM30, but how far you can get those sockets mounted in the space allotted becomes a real concern, especially with those EL84s! Still, point taken, the Club is a good bang for buck amp, especially if you're just looking for something for casual gigging and home use. If just tone is the test you have a good one, I remember those crates sounding really, really good... but when I'm talking abng for buck I'm looking for tone beast coupled to ROAD beast.

I'ma nominate one more amp... the quilter microblock45.... its the size of an mxr pedal, it does a good 45 clean watts. its bulletproof solidstate with a drive circuit that's very tube-like, more tube like then anything else I've ehard that's not digital. It costs less than $150 US new. You can fit it in a coat pocket or in your guitar case/gigbag and take it on the subway. It also sounds VERY good with fender cleans and a drive sound all its own that harkens to the dirt produced by various 50 watt non-master UK amps. Takes pedals like a dream. And also? it costs less than $150 new with warranty. Did I say that already?

Don't hear a relay clicking and can't see one on circuit diag...

http://www.blueguitar.org/new/schem/misc_amp/crate_vintage_club_50.pdf

Think i heard a quilter once and was pretty impressed. Sure guy who had crate before me had one for his light weight small setup. Small 1x12 cab with modern light neodIum driver and the pedal sized amp.

Tbh i reckon building a metal plate i could mount tubes vertical under vents without any issue (even if its just the el84's) though if going to trouble may as well do pre tubes too. would mean very little valve heat anywhere near board.

Alternative is a metal plate over where old holes were on standoffs from amps case to reduce heat transfer plenty room to move valves out 3-4cm and again it gets them closer to underneath vents.

Don't hear a relay clicking and can't see one on circuit diag...

http://www.blueguitar.org/new/schem/misc_amp/crate_vintage_club_50.pdf

there have been silent relays for ages, but it doesn't appear to use relays... it looks like a mechanical switching system which makes sense on a 2 channel.... I always think 'relay' when i think channel switchers because I run into people's broken mesas and other 3 channels with verb and lots of junk that has footswitch controls and panel overrides and needs a crazy analog logic circuit to keep it all going... I don't have a lot of truck with channel switching in my personal life though. Last switcher I had in my mits was a Sodano and I never looked inside, never needed to.

Tbh i reckon building a metal plate i could mount tubes vertical under vents without any issue (even if its just the el84's) though if going to trouble may as well do pre tubes too. would mean very little valve heat anywhere near board.

Alternative is a metal plate over where old holes were on standoffs from amps case to reduce heat transfer plenty room to move valves out 3-4cm and again it gets them closer to underneath vents.

I would go with plan A and I would do it in the near future while the amp is still performing perfectly... better to work to prevent a problem then to repair as wella s modify an amp that's acting funny! I like plan A because EL84s radiate a LOT of heat in cathode bias and every centimeter will be a big help in prolonging part life and board integrity. I also know modern EL84s are built pretty poorly,e ven JJs. They tend to fail ebfore they go dead and that has a chance of a socket arcing. You want that away from the board as far as you can get it. Its not guaranteed it will ever happen, but if it does I am telling you, you want that nowhere near a PCB. I have seen some shit go down with tube failure where the fuse doesn't blow in time. The survivors are hand-wired amps and early marshall PCB amps. You probably know this bit but I'll say it anyway; if you tackle this project (and I think if you love the amp as much as you say you should go for it) make sure to pay attention to lead dress, especially on the heater lines. You may wanna put thought into wire type. This effects the sound of an amp more then people think. Ken Fischer of Trainwreck spoke about this at length , look it up.