Crate VFX5112 112 Combo

Year 2003 2 channel tube amp. cheesy printed circuit board makes amp sound real thin NO bottom end. Amp is way to heavy for a 1x12, cabinet made from chipped lead wood. Effects not for my taste. Amp really needs more power to fatten up the tone.

I use humbuckers pups in my guitars, have used some single coil pups to thin and noisy with this amp. Thin and very bright tone not enough distortion week bottom end. sounds like a Chinese made amp.

Amp has week chassis-cheap plastic parts can't take road duty unless you have road case. Never use this amp with out a back up.

Crate tells you take to some service center where they tell they can't fix the problem or don't know the amp.

Playing for 20+ years Marshall's Fenders are the amps to own. No more Crates for me just the name should tell you something.

bass mid and treble for each (2) channel with a global presence
clean channel has volume, dirty channel has gain and volume
footswitchable channels and fx
rotary digital effects selection with level

fx loop

I don't really use the digital effects, maybe some reverb every now and again, but they sound fine
I wish the tone controls on the dirty channel had more effect,
the amp is a bit too trebley but good sounds can be had
the fx loop does not seem to work all that well ... my EQ works in the loop, but my flanger can barely be heard? I don't know why, the flanger works fine on my other amps.

I use the dirty channel exclusively. It can get a good overdriven rock / metal sound

I mostly use it with humbucker equipped guitars, but single coils come through fine on this amp as well

I just wish it had some more low end kick and less treble

I needs a little more volume too, but that may just be a speaker change away. I currently have a Celestion G1275T in it (the factory speaker sounded way dull and lifeless to me)

Also, I put some lower gain pre-amp tubes into the sockets that drive the dirty channel ... just to tame the gain a bit, and darken up the amp a bit. It did help.

I bought it used off of Ebay. When I got it and plugged it in it sounded like crap, hardly any sound, and I smelled burning.

I pulled it apart (well constructed and easy to get inside) and saw that the factory Groove Tubes looked shot. I put some JJ EL34L's in, biased it up (it has a factory internal bias pot) and she fired right up and has been fine ever since.

never had to contact the company

I've been playing for 13 years. I own teo other 100watt Carvin X-100b's and a Mesa Boogie Subway Rocket. I also own about a dozen guitars, tele, strat, sg, lp, semi-hollow ... etc

I play heavey hard rock stuff

For what I paid for it, this is a great amp.

For what it retalied for new? ... ehhh

Bought two years ago, 2003 model. Lots of great tones using the effects on board. Keep the effects level below half and amp is quiet, turn up past that mark and lots of extra noise from the efx section. Two channels with their own eq's, effects loop and ext speaker out at 16 ohm just like the on board speaker. Smaller gigs and jams, also at home practice. Sounds very warm and Marshally when cranked, not the the classic Marshall tone but sweet and with a great edge like a Mesa. All el34 powered, mine came with EH tubes throughout !

I am playing two Gibson SG's, one with stock hums and the other with Dimarzio hot hum P90's. Amp sound awesome with both ! With a touch of reverb and delay I can nail the Petrucci "Glassgow Kiss" tone off G3 in Tokyo. No bs, turn your head and we have the same tone and harmonics he just shreds a little better than I do on the solo parts. OK, quite a bit better but I have been playing 30 years so I got some chops too. I can get great classic rock (ZZ,Clapton,AC/DC) tones as well and with the best sustain I have worked with on an amp. Craps all over my Marshall DSL I sold recently. Clean is amazing as well and I sold my Fender Deluxe after getting this as I can get a great clean sound with chime then switch to OD city with no pedals. I use a Barber DD on the clean side for my Blues with bite, Robben Ford tones. This is not the Holy Grail but the best I have ever had and am still very happy after two years with no problems at all. I use a Traynor 112 ext cab (perfect size match) with a Hellatone 30 in 16 ohm with this amp, just sings. I also bought the V30 for smaller gigs and it is a better Blues amp with a clean channel my old Fenders wished they had and a boost for blues leads. I am sold on these V Series amps and will stay with these until I find better.

No problems at all with either amp in two years use.

Called and emailed support with tube questions and cover order and they where fast and cool to deal with. A nice experience after calling Carvin and made to feel like I was wasteing their time, Carvin sucks, the reps know nothing about their gear.

Best I have found in the price range I can afford. Great tone for the bucks! The difference between this and botique tone is just splitting hairs, and I have played them all. Every amp is a compromise so get one of these and work on your skills, turn the TV or X-box off and play your guitar !

1. Do you know what year the amp was made in? I have the 1x12 version and apparently this was one of the floor models from the NAMM show from this year. I think this series with effects is new for this year, so maybe a 2005.

2. Is the amp versatile enough for you and the styles of music you play? I noodle around in most styles at home (jazz, old country, droney-mellow stuff, blues, rock), but I've only used it for a reggae-side project live (one show only). My main band is a hard rock-metal-reggae band (think a heavy 311) and I rely on my Mesa DualRecto Setup for that.

3. What are those styles? see above.

4. How many channels? The amps has two channels, but the distortion channel is lacking, so I don't use it nearly enough.

5. Does it have channel switching? Effects loops? Headphone jack? Yes, yes, no.

6. What features do you wish it had? Why? modulation of the effects aside from volume. I'd like to be able to slow the delays down a tad. Noise gate would be nice.

7. Are there features you never use? Channel two because the bass frequencies suck (gonna look into a repair/mod shop tho). External cabinet (but only because this is just for jamming and my extra cab is elsewhere).

8. Where do you use this amp? Mostly at home. Once at a gig. Soon to be jamming with friends on it.

9. Does it have enough power for you? 50w is 50w. It's loud enough for home. Haven't tried it over metal-style drums tho.

1.What guitar and pickup styles are you using it with? Custom Strats with Duncan noisecancelling single coils, Custom Tele with Duncan JB/Quarter Pounder, and PRS McCarty (stock).

2.How does it suit your music style (and what is that style)? The clean tone is amazing and reminds me of the Fender Hot Rod, but with less grit. I like to fake jazzy sounds and it does a good job.

3.Is it noisy? On what settings, and in what environments? Distortion channel is ridiculous. Lots of hiss under high gain. Haven't tried a noisegate yet, but I'm gearing up to avoid this channel at all costs anyways and just use pedals over the clean tone.

4.What kind of sounds can the amp make? How much variety? Vague question, but the clean tone is great and boomy with a lot of low end--roll back the tone knob on a solidboy electric and it sounds kinda like a hollowbody. Channel two is missing all low end, but gets a good metal chunk out of it. Reverbs are good.

5.Is the clean channel distorted at high volumes? In what settings?
Haven't tried it yet. The gig I had was mic'd and the volumen was maybe running 40% capacity.

6.How brutal is the distortion? Good enough for metal, a little brittle for blues, but I have a Ibanez tubescreamer reissue that handles that.

1.Can you depend on it? Would you use it on a gig without a backup? Seems like it should hold up. I played it out once and it was fine. Plus you would think for the NAMM show, you'd want your best product on display and functioning perfectly...

2.Has the amp ever broken down? Because of neglect of regular servicing (as in tubes), or just plain neglect? No, no, no. But the channel 2 is in serious need of a tone check...

1.If you've dealt with the company, how helpful/friendly were they?
2.Ever try and get it repaired? Was the repair done under warranty?
3.Were you able to find an authorized service center easily?
No, no and no.

4.How long is the warranty?
no clue.

1.How long have you been playing? What other gear do you own?
16 years. My other rig is Dual Recto half stack with Rocktron Replifex and Patchmate and a midi floorboard. My main guitar is a PRS McCarty Rosewood (stock but with Sperzels). I have 2 Custom strat clones and 1 Tele all with Duncans in them. I also have a POD 2.0 but I use the Crate instead because it's tube and the POD doesn't sound very good thru my mixer/computer speaker set-up.

2.If it were stolen or lost, would you buy it again or get something else? Well I got a killer deal on this amp, so likely I wouldn't re-buy it for $500-700. I would try to find a Mesa Boogie Rocket 44 or possibly invest into a Fender Bassman or Twin and more pedals (assuming the ones I have aren't stolen too).

3.what do you love about it? What do you hate? I love the price I paid for a 50w tube amp retailing at $999. I wish the distortion sounded good to me and that there wasn't any noise issues, and that the FX had more control of time and modulation.

4.Did you compare it to other products? Which ones? Why did you choose this one? Compared it to a Genz Benz, Fender Hot Rod Deluxe, Mesa Recto combo, and some Marshall valestate combo. I chose this one because my friend works at the store and I got just above cost on the NAMM floor disply models. I really wanted a tube amp with good clean tone. Good distortion is a must too, but I figured I could always put a pedal in front of the clean channel if I truely hate the distortion.

5.Anything you wish it had? Um..the distortion of a Dual Recto...and the quietness of a handwired boutique amp.

6.Anything else you'd like to share? This is my first rating on Harmony Central. I enjoy the amp as it is. I use it on clean with some reverb in conjuction with a tubescreamer and a delay pedal, so I can set the timing of the delays that I want and a good blues ditortion. I'll probably get another distortion pedal for heavier tones and just run the amp clean the entire time. The clean tone is what sold me on this amp. If I could fix the distortion channel to my liking this would be a 10 for what I paid. But since I used it mostly for clean and noodling at home, it serves it's purpose well and gets a 7.

As for my opinion on tone (as some of you may disagree)...I'm not a cookie cutter PRS/Mesa player (though it appears that way!). I've tried Genz Benz, Marshall, Fender, Framus, Hughes & Kettner, Soldano, Rivera, Carvin, Behringer, Vox, Line6, and a few other amps I can't remember in search of a perfect amp. I still haven't found it yet. The Dual Recto in my opinion does what I need it to do which is why I play it. I like a jazzy clean tone (Recto falls short here) and a clear (non-nasal) nonscooped high gain distortion. I use the Orange channel on my Recto and I have the gain and mids set to the 1 position (~60%). I've played in live original bands since 1994 and I've gotten to understand frequencies and how the other instruments interact with and can squash your tone. So under other circumstances I may have given this amp a lesser rating. But since I was able to get a tone i liked for a price I could afford, it got a 7.

New model V Series with Celestion 70/80 speaker. 50 all tube watts EL34 powered with cool cab design and tolex. Cheap plastic pot shafts are a concern but all most every amp today is going to these, too bad... DFX section OK but leave this out and remake this amp with quality parts like the new Palamino series and a good spring reverb then this is a keeper.

This is a sweet sounding tube amp! Sound quality makes up for the cheap parts and this thing crunches and sings like a vintage Marshall. The clean is also outstanding, as good as I have heard in any tube amp and I have owned and played them all in 30 years playing. Great tones everywhere in this baby!

No problems yet but have heard good and bad about this series.

This is excellent here, I have emailed them and they are quick with help anytime.

I great sounding amp that is everything a Marshall should be but is not. Quality is suspect but time will tell. At this price I say buy two and keep one for backup.

This is an update after several months of playing the amp AND after the fried resistor problem AND the several problems I have had since.
What features do I wish it had?? Reliability.
It sounds fantastic when it is up and running. There is no denying it, when it works, it is the best sounding amp I have. The other feature I wish it had was a company that would back their equipment 100%. Instead, I just get lame emails telling me to take it to their local Tech. This is the same Tech who has never filed warranty repair tickets on this amp. So, it sounds like their Techs are as lame as the Crate company is.

I play Blues and Blues rock. I play a Strat and a MFT Telecaster.
The amp has full time hum, similar to a Traynor. No matter what you do, it is there. And not just this amp, I played one at the Guitar Center and it had hum, too. Also, the sound changes from time to time by itself. If I am in channel 2 and rockin' away, it will reduce volume by itself. ( I have changed the tubes 3 times and it still does it, so it is the amp). This is a problem I and the Tech have yet to resolve. I resent having to have the bias adjusted EVERY time I change tubes and yes, it does make that much difference. I put in one set of tubes and it was so bad, harsh & brittle, it sounded like Sovteks in it, just awful. After bias adjustment, it was like before, smooth and creamy. Until it craps its pants. Without a doubt, this is the best sounding amp I have ever heard WHEN and only WHEN it is up and running.

Reliability is absolutely the worst. Wait, let me change that; Reliability is non-existant. It has quit on me 5 times now. St. Louis Music says they can't replace it because their Tech never made warranty tickets on it. Next time they will say it is Wednesday and they only exchange crappy amps on Thursday or some other lame excuse. These guys suck. First time I contacted them I had all kinds of people contacting me to make sure I was happy. Once they found out I had a lemon, they wanted nothing to do with me. My brother has one of these amps and his is fabulous, no problems at all. So it must be a manufacturing problem or quality control problem. I have always disliked Crate products. I saw them as cheap beginner stuff. My opinion was changed for a while, but after the repeated failures of this amp, I am convinced their products are cheap beginner products and they couldn't care less if their customers are happy with their products. If they did, they would have me send this amp to them in St. Louis and get it fixed once and for all (or swap it out). But they want me to take it to the local repair Tech. and it just keeps failing and failing and failing......

Zero. Absolutely useles if you have a real problem. The very first time I contacted them, the lady I talked to could say "no" very well. That has not changed.All I get now is some lame email telling me to take it to their local Tech, the same guy who didn't fill out the warranty tickets. I have taken it to their local repair tech 5 times, total, and still it is not half as good as my Peavey Bravo (which in the 7 years I have owned it, it has NEVER failed one second). It all depends on whether you get a good amp or a crappy amp as I did. Crate is latin for crap.
If St. Louis Music (Crate) actually gave a crap what their customers thought, they would have taken this amp back and exchanged it, found out what is wrong with it and made sure it never happened to any VFX again. It is a lemon and I do not think it will ever be right. I cannot gig with it because I can't trust it. I sure do love how it sounds when it is working. But when it is working is a crap shoot.

I have been playing over 30 years. I have had everything from a '52 Fender Champ to a '68 Vox Super Beatle to a Marshall TSL to this brand new Crate VFX5112. I am a tube man and will stay that way. If it were lost or stolen, I would laugh my butt off. I do love the sound (when it works). The super clean tones and the smooth, creamy overdrive. Drawback is I cannot use it for live performances because I never know when it will crap its pants. So, I play my Peavey Bravo and back it up with a Peavey Bandit (I never play without a backup) and this VFX just sits in my music room collecting dust or I can use it to set my beer on.
I wish it had the backing from a company that cared what their customers thought. I will go out of my way to steer people away from Crate products from now on, just because they will not take this lemon back and exchange it with a good one. The kind of thing a GOOD company would do.
My advice is,DO NOT BUY CRATE PRODUCTS. If for no other reason than the experiences I have had with this VFX. It's your money, if you decide to buy a VFX I hope you get a good one, like my brother did. I hope mine is the only crappy one. I will probably trade it on a Peavey Ultra. No more Crate junk for me.

Followup review after several months use. 2004 model, two channels with separate eq's, 50 EL34 powered watts, built in DFX.

I play Gibson SG's, Standard Hums and Classic P90's. I know you read this all the time here but this amp really has that tone you can not get enough of! Best tube clean channel I have used in 25 years playing and my Fender Deluxe sitting next to it is for sale, watch Ebay for it soon. Think Los Lonely Boys "Heaven" on the clean side that pushes up to old Allman Bros sweet sustain. The gain side is a monster with low gain high level being classic rock tone city and high gain gets fat and meaty, not muddy. I did switch out stock speaker for a new Celestion Century Vintage for light weight and tone to the bone. If you can play you will find out on this amp, no more searching for that sound that you hear all the greats have. The DFX is ok but I use med room reverb at 1/3 and good to go.

Have had no issues and Crate is 24/7 response to emails and service questions.

Again I was surprised at how well Crate backs their products.

Yes in 25 years playing I have had a truckload of amps and recently took a photo of my studio with 10 different combos in it. Marshall, Mesa, Traynor, Fender been there. No more! I have a modded AVT 20(tube 10 speaker)for quick jams and to learn new songs plus this sweet tone box that screams the search is over. No more Saturdays playing everything in Guitar Center, this amp is it for me.

This is an update for the fried resistor problem I had with my new amp. It needs to be heard for a full appreciation of the amp and the company that backs it.

Sounds the same, but a plug was not plugged in completely on the digital effects board. It would cause an intermittant squeal for the Technician.

I have to bump the number up, because the amp DID NOT MALFUNCTION, as I originally thought. The resistors are current limiting resistors and are right at their maximum dissipation when used in this amp, so they take quite a beating, but it is not wholly detrimental. It will fail sooner than a amp engineered to, oh say, Peavey specifications, because these resistors are running at 3 Watts and are rated at 3 Watts. Good engineering practice says to always engineer for twice the dissipation, so a 3 Watt use would have a resistor rated at 6 Watts.Looks like a bean counter saved a few bucks here because these are precision resistors and as the Wattage goes up, so does the price. So, though they looked bad, they were not. I needed to clear that up.
Some things did show up worthy of note; the pre amp tubes have EMI/RFI shields on them, spring loaded no less, but the speaker loads from the front with wood screws. One positive, one negative.

I still hate that I live in Omaha, Nebraska and have to send it to Lincoln, Nebraska to get it fixed, but they jumped on it and turnaround was fast. So, they lived up to the warranty and when I emailed the factory, two folks emailed me back making sure I was satisified. Their customer service is open 365 days a year. Not too shabby. Sounds like they are really interested in their customers.

So, overall I have to rate the amp a 8 just because I don't like the Sovtek Groove Tubes (yes, they say Sovtek right on them), I don't like the way the speaker mounts, the speaker wires just hang down in the back, looks tacky, and the bean counting on things that should stay Mil-Spec and within good engineering practices. The amp sounds great and I cannot believe it is only 50 watts, this thing cuts like crazy. I think I have revised my opinion of Crate and all because of this amp and their customer service. I may just have a new number one amp.

This one is brand new 2004 I guess. Two channels with their own eq's and DSP then a global presesnce control. 50 powerful EL34 tube watts that sounds great on either channel. Footswitch and cable are solid and switch from clean to overdrive and DSP on or off.

A very pretty clean, the best I have heard next to my Fender Deluxe right beside it. Fat, full and jangly that grinds nice when you crank the volume and very loud. The overdrive side is the bomb for me! From Allman Bros to ZZ Top and Metallica when dimed. Excells in the Classic Rock AC/DC, Van Halen thing with gobs of fat tone. Think of vintage od on steroids. I did replace the speaker with a Celestion Neo Vintage as that is my personal favorite and my amp was one of the last ones with an Eminence speaker stock. The new ones now come with Celestions. This amp is a wonder as both channels sound great.

Can't say just got the thing but some have had problems.

Never needed them before and so far so good.

Been playing 25 years and have owned all but the botique lines. If it holds up this is a bargain for Fender clean and Marshall overdrive in one affordable combo! I would buy it again for sure.

My amp was made in 2002. It has the usual 2 channels one clean, one designed specifically for distortion. The channel switching footswitch has LEDs on it so you know what is going on, that is a nice feature. It has on-board digital effects with set parameters and a control to set the amount of wetness. It does have an effects loop but I wish it had a low-level XLR connector for going to the snake or board. It seems a little large for a single 12" speaker combo. Really nice handle, though. Of course it is all tube, but has the drawback of requiring you to get the bias adjusted EVERY time you change the power tubes, which will be about yearly. Even though it has onboard digital effects, I will still be using my pedalboard for discrete effects and wah. It does have a speaker impedence switch on the back to switch from 8 to 16 Ohms.

I play a Strat with Hot Humbuckers top and bottom and a VERY hot single coil in the middle. It works GREAT with this amp. The clean is great and the overdrive is very good. At high volume, though the stock speaker starts to break up and I don't care for that muddy sound. I bought it to play blues and blues-rock so it fits the bill quite nicely. I will be changing the tubes to JJ's and the speaker out to a Weber. Just my personal preferences. It seems a little noisy around fluorescent lights and such. It seems to come from the on-board effects, because when they are off, it is quite clean. The on-board effects handle everything from tremolo to delay and chorus.
Actually the distortion is quite good. I don't care for the Groove Tubes in it, they seem a little brittle sounding, kind of like Sovteks. Also, the tag on the amp had places to list the color and number of the GT's but they were not filled in, so I would imagine these are GT's but second class ones. The JJ's will change that. But then I will need a bias adjustment, so I am out $66 for the tubes and $45 for the bias adjustment. That part sucks, and I will have to do the power tubes ($24) and the bias adjustment ($45) every year.

Can I depend on it? No. I never gig without a backup amp anyway, but this one really is crap for reliability. Within about 30 minutes of turning it on for the first time, it fried 4 resistors in the power amp circuit. It was obviously never tested at the factory, another case of "end user quality control". I have never liked Crate and even though this is their HIGH END amp, it is still crap. I looked in the back and it was all epoxy-glass boards and all the components look Mil Spec EXCEPT the capacitors, the are cheap China stuff. That is probably where the breakdown came from.

Miserable. I live in Omaha, and I have to take it to Lincoln to get it fixed. There is just no excuse for this type of disregard for the end user. Supposedly the warranty will last 5 years, but I probably will not have it that long. If it breaks down again, it is gone. I am not so far from St. Louis, that I cannot go there and throw the amp through their front window. Also, the lady I talked with on their Customer Support line (so I could find out where to take it to get it fixed)was not very knowledgeable about either the products or service. The one word she knew well was "no".

I love the sound but hate the fact I cannot rely on it. I guess it is because I remember when Crate came looking like a wooden crate. I remember it as junk and this "HIGH-END" amp has not altered that opinion. Had it not been for Billy Gibbons playing one and my getting a good price, I would NEVER in my wildest dreams consider anything Crate makes. I do not forsee buying anything from Crate ever again, unless this amp REALLY changes its ways. The initial failure brings the overall down.