My new amp(s)

[misterkarlov]

 

So I posted in the metal amp thread about my recent purchase of the B52 LS-100 head. I mentioned that I would post a review soon. I finally got to play a show with it yesterday so here is my review:

It sounded very good. Then it died.

Yup.

It is teh ded.

About 3 songs in my drummer said he smelled sumtin' burning. We didn't realize until later what it was. On our last song it got reeeeallly flubby, then quit.

Everything was set up properly, no mismatched impedance or anything.

So I took it back to the GC ( only had it two weeks ) and got a Crate RFX200s. I never would have figured I would get a Crate but man, this thing ( so far ) is pretty sweet. There are a ton of features and it is loud as hell.

It has 3 channels each with a full eq section. 1 is clean up to light dirt, 2 is a very marshally type distortion. Good for moderately high gain. I like this channel. I play metal but not super saturated and this is VERY punchy. 3 is more mesa like. A little more loose than I am used to but it sounds nice. You can turn the gain almost all the way down and still have a good saturated metal tone. In fact I am keeping that chanel and maybe 9 or 10 o'clock and still getting the metal. You will get some hum from the gain channels. It is actually easier to use channel three and turn the gain down to match channel 2's highest gain eliminate hum.
I threw my NS-2 into the loop and hum is gone anyway. It takes a lil volume away but this is 200watts so there is plenty to spare.

Speaking of the loop...It has 2! a stereo loop and mono. External speaker jacks as well.

Edit- I forgot to mention that it actually has Celestions in it too. I was surprised by that...

The built in effects are okay. Chorus is the most useful and sounds best with clean. The delays are actually nice and with some tweaking you can get  something very useful. The reverb also sounds very nice.
  Another cool feature is that you can assign and save fx combinations to each channel. Each channel has 2 modes so you can have two different fx combos on each ( footswitchable ) making it almost a 6 channel amp.
The on board tuner works very well but It would be hard to use in a live setting  I think.

I have noticed so far that it is very bassy. I'm gonna hear it with the band tomorrow or so so we will see how it sounds in a mix. I may try to use my fish'nchips to give it more bite ( if it needs it ).

On top of the rest of this, it looks cool as hell. I love the retro look. very classy. It is very heavy, but has good casters.

Anyway, that's it so far. Hopefully this one will live for a bit longer than the other 

[mad hatter]

that's a bummer.  I hope the new one works out for you.

I was at a park one day and heard this really heavy guitar sound coming from one of the homes whose backyard fence was also the park boundary fence.  I hopped it and knocked on the shed and talked wit hthe dudes.  The guitarist ahd a B-52 head and either a Digitech multi-effects pedal or a DOD death metal pedal, but it was one of the best loudest fucking sounds I'd heard. 

He ran the amp on clean, so it wasn't the amp's dist. but still, it had amazing headroom and the pedal's distortion sounded really good at a pretty high volume.  My amp sounds killer, but the tone changes a little bit once you crank it.  I don't really like the way it changes, maybe it's the size of my room.  It gets sorta ear-splitting.

So...you decided not to repair it?

[misterkarlov]

Yeah. I just got the Crate. Combos suit me more I think and it's easier to fit in my car LOL.

I wanted to like the b52 but dying at a show doesn't win my trust. especially when it was the 2nd time I had used it.

[JackRobot]

Funny, a B-52 blowing up, Imagine that.

Good thing you owned it, I was using my friends when it blew, lucky me eh?  :duh

[misterkarlov]

yeah. funny thing. Not ur fault though...Oh and to answer your question, nah I don't know anything about amp repair at all