Crate Blue Voodoo 60

[Fishblister]

Help! I'm thinking seriously of acquiring one of these 50 watt heads. I'd like to hear from you all concerning reliability and do you think 250 is a decent price?

[Riffmeister]

Re: Crate Blue Voodoo 60

I played a Blue voodo 120 watt head and it sounded pretty good through a Vintage 30 loaded cab. It had a different sound to it, but it wasn't very verastile. THe clean sound was VERY bright.

But I liked it enough to order a Red voodoo head, same thing but red, and it had something wrong with it, and it went back within a week. That's when I got my DSL. But for 250, I don't think you could go wrong.

There is a lot of discusion going on about whether this thing is actually a tube amp or not.Something about a diode being responsible for the distortion or something like that. THis was stated by some of those people on Harmony Central, and we all know that they have no clue sometimes. I say try it out and if you like it get it, especially for that price.

[Fishblister]

Re: Crate Blue Voodoo 60

Thanks for the input. I checked it out at the pawn shop and They wouldn't let me really crank it. I am looking for something to drive my 4x12 that's not gonna make my ears bleed like my MOSFET Marshall 100 watt does. Plus this one does have tube power stage and there are at least four 12ax7 size tubes in there. One is definitely for driving the reverb, and hopefully two for the gain channel and one for the clean?

[Fishblister]

Re: Crate Blue Voodoo 60

Good of you to weigh in, Pete. The sound of the thing is definitely all I care about. I have an ancient Randall head like you describe, too. I love the sound of all my amps, I'm just attempting to get a live rig happening. For the clubs I'm playing, we don't use a soundguy so I need a pretty good boost for leads. So far a volume pedal isn't quite delivering what I need. The salesman said I could have five days to return it if it doesn't work out. Anyone have horror stories about these amps?

[OklaStrat]

Re: Crate Blue Voodoo 60

Why not just use the mosfet marshall with a cheap boost pedal? I think I owned one of those like yours (mosfet marshall - mine was made in the 80s, and had a kinda tan cloth behind the marshall logo instead of black) and I think it sounded better than the BV heads I've heard.

I'd even think a Mesa VTwin pedal direct into the power amp return or into the guitar input on the marshall would sound better than the BV most likely.

Pete

[Fishblister]

Re: Crate Blue Voodoo 60

You're right, if the Crate doesn't sound any better than the Marshall, I'm definitely not keeping it. It's just that I can't test it out where it's at and I've played a hundred watt BV that sounded better than my Marshall. If I can make the 50 watt version sound like the hundred did, just not as loud, then I'll be happy. I realise that may be asking a lot. [img]graemlins/eyes.gif[/img]

[OklaStrat]

Re: Crate Blue Voodoo 60

Well, if you like em, COOL! I'm just speaking from my taste/experience - if we all dug the same stuff, the world would be a boring place.

BTW, the 60 watt isn't going to be 1/2 as loud as the 100 watt - more like 3db. that's not much.. biggest difference is the 100 watt will likely have a tighter bottom end and more headroom: you can get 3db louder easily by using more efficient speakers!

Pete

[StuTDavis]

Re: Crate Blue Voodoo 60

I'm totally with ya...who cares WHAT something is, the only thing that really matters is "do ya like it?". Knowing "what something is" really only allows you to briefly categorize something into neat and orderly pre-conceived classifications. If, after finding that a piece of gear does not fit into your pre-conceived notions of what you consider "acceptable", you then decide it's not even worth the shot to try it out, you are most likely only doing yourself a disservice. Even if it's only used in order to clear up and hone in on exactly "what you like", experience trying gear out is almost always a postitive thing in some way.

Hrm...did any of that make any sense? Oh well...

I had a BV120 myself for a while. I'm really not much of a head/combo kinda guy, mostly because I can't crank anything very loud being a home player, so I prefer rack gear. But, for me, the BV was one of the most "usable right out of the box" amps I've tried. Meaning, I generally have to have a lot of outboard gear to get an amp to sound how I want it to, but the BV, alone and by itself, came closer than most amps to the sound I like...which is very cutting, tight, brilliant, thrashy metal. Okay "brilliant, thrashy metal" might sound like an oxymoron, but I'm talking about the sound, silly... [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[777SteveVai777]

Re: Crate Blue Voodoo 60

I don't know if this helps any, but I was playing through a Crate Blue Voodoo combo, and it sounds like it has solid state diode clipping when the volume is at 2 or 3, but then when you go to 4 it immediatley starts sounding like the diodes go off and you get a more of a tube sound.

[OklaStrat]

Re: Crate Blue Voodoo 60

That's not how diodes work - they clip when voltage gets past a certain point, so as you turn it up, the diodes are going to clip MORE, most likely.

Diodes get a bad rap - but they are in more amps than you think, and if they are LEDs, they help smooth the amp's response out. Just having diodes again is NOT a bad thing, and to be quite blunt, a lot of people who talk about how terrible they are wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a diode clipping or a tube clipping, in my opinion.

Pete

[777SteveVai777]

Re: Crate Blue Voodoo 60

Ah, thanks for clearing that up Pete

[StuTDavis]

Re: Crate Blue Voodoo 60

Trying to crank 60 tube watts is still gonna be a major kick in the ass volume-wise, if you're in a small area. Don't know if you play just at home or if you are in a band...but it's still gonna be pretty damn loud hehe.

[Fishblister]

Re: Crate Blue Voodoo 60

Yeah, I play covers at the local bars. I'm using a Boogie mark 1 with a 4x12 underneath it, and just started putting a Digitech RP7 in front of that, so now I wanna try a channel switching amp to get that extra whomp when changing from rhythm to lead. The clean sound is all I really need from the amp, and I'm hoping I can get basically the same sound just louder with the channel switch.

[OklaStrat]

Re: Crate Blue Voodoo 60

Guys, understand something - an amp being totally solid state or totally tubes means nothing regarding tone. It's what is done with the parts and design.

I personally would rather have many other amps than the crate BV series - even an 80s solid state Randall sounds better to me.

Pete

[nograveconcern]

Re: Crate Blue Voodoo 60

Not to butt in, but technically speaking volume doubles every 3 db. So, if the 60w amp put's out 3 less db that the 100, then it is half as loud. [img]graemlins/scratchhead.gif[/img]