B Stock Surprize

[DiamondJig]

I saw a V18-112 B stock on MF site for 149 free shipping and took a shot. It was not due to come in for a month, then I got an email that it was delayed again, I was thinking about cancelling the order when about two weeks later I got an email that it shipped. When it arrived I was shocked at the size and weight of the box and more surprised when I opened it to find a V18-212 and not the V18-112. I went over the amp and had to take it apart and tighten every screw, the speakers where mounted one with 8 screws the other with 3 and they where all loose, I put 4 in each and put the rest back together. I took note of the tubes where 2 Sovek EL84, V1 12AX7WA (gain), V2 12AX7WB (tone) and V3 12AU7EH (drive). The manual says they should all be 12AX7. The Cabinet is made of Plywood and is built very nice, well worth the 149 by itself. Two 12” 16 ohm speakers that are poly coated, seem ok. The amp has only one tap 8 ohms. It’s 18 watts of Class A. One input, one channel, controls are gain, volume, treble, middle, bass and reverb, standby and power, with a preamp output. I plugged her in and was disappointed, well worth the 149 but not magical, very noisy and not much volume, the reverb after 2 is ping pong, it’s a small 2 spring Ruby Tubes tank, very warm/bassy ton of gain not much clean. I started to play around with some of the tubs. One nice feature is the amp section can be unscrewed and drops out the back in one piece and looks like a head chassis. This made tube testing very easy. First I replace the SOVTEK EL84’s with another set I had and that made a big difference. Then I start playing with the stock preamp tubes. With the 12AX7 in the V1 she has a ton of preamp breakup/gain, which sounds kind of buzzy, not much clean head room so. One thing the controls do seem to have a wide range to them. The low volume is because of the 12AU7 in V3 drive, this is a very low gain tube 20% where an AX is 100% gain. With the preamp tubes set as AX in V1 and V2 and an AU in V3 she had a very warm sound with a ton of gain, I needed to keep the gain on 1 to stay clean. I swapped the AU to V1 and AX to V3 and that cleaned up the preamp with clean gain now going up to 6 and then crunch, was able to keep preamp gain low and turn up the volume to get the EL’s to sing. This work very well with my GNX4, one of the best sounding amps I have used with it. I tried a 12AT7EH (80% gain) in the V1 and didn’t like it at all, not a good sounding tube in V1, will try in the V3. I replace all 3 tubes with 3 12AX7 Tung-sol (100% gain each) and WOW. That really opened her up, very loud and musical, sounding like a Vox AC30, with this setup she wants to be cranked, need a power soak of some type loud. Overall not a bad amp, with the swapping of the tubes you can get many sounds. I swap the reverb tank for another I had laying around out of a cheap amp, not much better, that may be something a better tank can fix. Overall a surprising purchase.

 

http://www.crateamps.com/products/pindex.php?prodID=3

[Riffster]

I comtemplated buying one of those Crates that are so cheap and tighten it up too.

 

I heard all kinds of bad reviews like transformes coming loose and breaking just about everything inside the amp, loose speakers, etc. If you are the tinkering kind of guy all of these are easy fixes just like you did.

 

The plywood cabinet is definitely a surprise at that price.

[MikeRom]

Awesome deal. You would have wound up replacing those output tubes anyway. I like my little 5 watt V8, great house amp. Paid about as much for it as you did for yours -