Crate GX15

This is a basic beginner amp. The features are pretty much barebones. It has your basic clean and OD channels, L/M/H eq, and headphone + speaker out.

I play mostly rock and alt rock, and some older stuff (Simon & Garfunkel, etc). The clean channel is decent, but not great. It starts to distort at fairly low levels and seems to distort at even lower levels through the headphone out. I use high quality headphones but by the time I turn the volume up enough to hear the nuances it breaks up all to hell.

The OD channel is terrible. With the gain up, it sounds really cheesy. There's no body to the sound at all; it sounds more like static than distortion. With the gain low... well, it still sounds cheesy. If you're looking to play any type of music that relies heavily on distortion, stay far away from this amp. I have to use a distortion pedal just to get decent sound out of this thing, but even that doesn't compare to the OD of a decent amplifier.

I drag the amp around constantly and have not had any problems with it. It is very reliable.

I have been playing for about a year now, and my main guitar is a Mexican Fat Strat. Occasionally the amp lets the strat shine when playing clean, but not often. If I could go back, I would not buy this amp. For the price or a little more you can get something that sounds much better like a Ibanez Tone Blaster 15. The only positive thing about this amp is that it's cheap. If you're picking up guitar and need a cheap practice amp until you're sure you want to stick with it, maybe this amp is for you. On the other hand, you have to be pretty good to make this thing sound decent.

my crate was made in 2002 i play almost every kind of rock i dont use the channels because you can get much much better distortion through any kind of pedal then through a small amp like this i like it the way it is but it is too small and not loud enough i use it in my room and sometimes to play with friends and it doesn't have enough power

i use an Ibanez Icemen which has two humbuckers the sound is good for what i do but it ins't loud enough but what can you expect form a practice amp yes the clean chanel is distorted at high volumes and the distortion sucks

it will be gone in about a year or so because i play it so damn loud because it is so small but other then that it is reliable if you use it as a practice amp

i have been playing for about a year if it was stolen or lost i would do the unthinkable and buy a new amp i love how simple it is and i hate how quiet it is

This amp is a great begginner/private amp its got two channels clean and distortion with separate volume levels and master low, mid, and high knobs. this is perfect for my taste in music which is punk, and rock. I give it a seven because its not the best but its one of the best and i have had it for 3 years.

I use a fender strat with the regular single coil pickups and a gibson sg standard with humbuckers they both sound great through it. Like i said before it goes perfectly with my music style because you can find that perfect distortion. The amp isnt noisy all of the time its just like you would find in a regular amp. If you find that perfect standing spot you can have no noise. But with any amp you cant have absolutly no noise so I think its really good. The clean channel stays clean with high volumes. I give it a ten. with confidence

Like i said before i have had this amp for three years and i havent had a single problem and i have knocked it over accidentially i have transported it over 100 accumualative miles. I blast the amp at full volume whenever i want. Which is pretty often because i like to hear loud music. Its very reliable.

havent had to deal with them

I cant give the amp a ten because it is not perfect, no amp or anything for that matter is.

Very basic, but useable. I use this amp for practicing and as a monitor in low volume applications. The distortion is kinda cheasy sounding but I never use it(I like to practice clean).I always find myself wishing it had reverb though.

For what it is I think it sounds good. It's just a practice amp(obviously at 12 watts with a 8" speaker it was not made for gigging) and it works great for practicing. especially since it's small and dry so it makes you work, and it brings out mistakes in your playing. The clean channel is decent for practice purposes. The distortion is pretty cheasy at high gain settings but actually sounds good on lower gain crunch/overdrive settings.

I have been using this amp as a home practice amp and stage monitor(low volume applications) for about 6 years and i have never had a problem with it. Works great low maintanence

Don't know, no problems with amp

Great little practice amp. sounds decent enough, has never let me down. i do wish I had gotten the one with reverb though.

Crate GX-15 solid state probably made in the late '90s. I play pop, rock, folk, metal, anything and everything. Two channels, clean and overdrive. Three band EQ. Speaker, headphone jacks. I use this amp for practice only.

The main guitar I use with this is an Epiphone SG Special (two humbuckers). I have also used a Peavey TK-15 and an Ovation acoustic through the amp. It is a bit noisy but I am pretty sure that is the cheap SG Special humbuckers. With the SG the amp is fairly one dimensional. The clean is too bright and twangy and the gain is too muddy. The distortion sounds like really bad grunge (Mudhoney). With the Peavey TK-15 I played through it I could get really nice bluesy tones on the clean channel. Lately (after owning the amp a year) I have figured out that you can sometimes dial in nice sounds by being very exacting with the gain knob. I have never played this amp at high volumes nor would I. It is too noisy.

I doubt you can depend on this amp. I've never used it to gig and I never will. Nevertheless, for light daily use in a practice setting it works fine.

N/A

I've been playing guitar for only two years. I am primarily a bass player. I bought this amp because it was reviewed as the best of its price range. I would have to agree. The Fender Frontman 15W is even louder than this one, but it has better bluesy tones. I have also listened to one of the Ibanez 15W amps and it was horrible compared to the Crate. The bottom line is that you can't expect much from a 15W amp, but the Crate is definitely the king of the 15W amps.

It has 2 channels cl/over, 3 way eq (low, mid, high), annoying channel select button. quiet.

I use a Washburn WG-248 and i play death, this was my first amp the I learned on. The clean channel sucks after mid way, the overdrive channel is ok. It sounds better with a high quality distortion pedal. Its a good amp for learning though.

I would never gig with it. The sound isnt good enough. and it is kinda bad about breaking out sometimes, when i play on my other amp, that never happens, so I know its the amp.

havent dealt with them.

been playing a year, and will only use it for practicing at low volumes.

basic featured solid state amp single channel used in room single 8" speaker.

i am being very generous here, this little git has the boom of a little girl. If u stick any FX pedal into it which may add bass the amp cant handle s*it. i play alot differnet music from metal to the occasional pop tune an it can handle things like the beatles n the verve but try an play korn or anythin like that then is farts at u an cuts out the sound makin u turn down the bass.

i havent had it a year an it still works fine though. it is quite tough althouhg i wud of prevered it to hav a bak on it.

dunno

i havent even bin playin a year but i can tell when somet sounds good an this little turd doesnt go the extra mile an get somet decent if ure serious.

bought this in 1985' as a mini practice amp.
when you compare it to other amps for $79.99 new it shines.
great for small rehearsals so small it almost goes in your pocket :-)
I would never gig out with it.

its like 12 watts rms and I get decent tones from this little sucker
in spite of what it is. I have jammed with guys that cant believe this little box creates so much tone. 8" speaker...
sounds great for what it is.
Compare it to its peers.... size and price and it rates a 10.

I have done everything to this amp for 17 years and its like new.
Once again I would never gig with it.

never dealt with them.
It came with a 5 year warranty and it could have been 17 yeras and they still would have never heard from me.

I have been playing for 25+ years, I own many guitars and amps all superior to this little crate in every way imaginable and I know not to judge a $79.99 crate GX-15 against a amp that costs much much more. When you gain that perspective this amp rates well. Just the fact it still like new after 17 years it should rate a 10 and Because of its size and portability,features,price and sound I give it a solid 10

- Clean and overdrive channels with gain controls.
- Low, mid, and high tone controls.
- Headphone jack and line out jack.
- This amp is pretty versatile for a practice amp, especially one so cheap. I would probably buy the model with the reverb if I could go back in time but it's ok. One feature it could use is a pedal to switch to overdrive or at least make it easier to switch than to press an incredibly small button.

I have been using it with an Ibanez RG-220. I've been playing for a few years, but am really quite the begginner. I play mostly classic rock tunes and attempt some newer indie stuff. I play mostly on the clean channel because the overdrive sounds best turned way up and I don't want to piss off the neighbors. The clean channel is really clear and at the lowest volume I can barely tell it's on. With the overdrive on and it turned way up the distortion is really interesting with a lot going on. The sound is better than I expected.

I won't be gigging in the foreseable future since I'm not a good player - but I would like to use a larger amp so I could have room to play with it. As far as contruction though - this amp COULD NOT BE BUILT ANY BETTER. This thing is tough and just reeks of quality contruction. I've had it for a over two years now and it is still just like new. As long as you don't purposefully wreak havoc on this amp or do something stupid it will last longer than you ever expected.

I never dealt with Crate and am not sure what the warranty was.

If it were stolen or lost I think I would buy another one at this point in time. I would rather the one with the reverb though. I had only bought this amp because it was so cheap at Guitar Center and it sounded same or better than other similar amps. I now think that I made a good decision that day to choose this amp. By the way, all my ratings are based on the price/size category of this amp and are not comparing this amp to anything obviously out of it's class.

12 watts solid state combo with one 8" speaker (4 ohms). Two channels (Clean and Overdrive) with shared EQ settings, no way to connect a footswitch, which is the biggest problem I have with the features of this amp. Headphone out, speaker out for external speaker.
Not much features, low power, but hey, it's a cheap practice amp, so what can you expect (except for a footswitch connecter maybe)?

This thing was my first amp. When I got it, I compared it to the Peavey Rage 158, which costs about the same as the Crate, but the Crate sounds far better.
Now, it's a bit difficult for me to rate the sound of this amp, cause now I play through a Line6 Flextone II (1x12"), which of course sounds so much better, but then again, it also costs much more, so it wouldn't be fair to compare the Crate to that. So I base my final rating on how good this amp is compared to other amps in the same price range.

When I started playing, I used a Yamaha ERG-121 guitar, which I still use, but now I have the stock humbuckers replaced by DiMarzios (AirZone in the bridge position, AirClassic in the neck position).
I haven't used the Crate since a long time, but today I played through it again, just for the fun of it, and decided to note down my impressions.

The sound, which I used when I started (bass on 3, mids on 3, treble on 8, gain on 8, levels at about 4) sounded absolutely crap to my newly developed taste now, but after a bit of playing around, I found that a setting like bass on 5, mids on 10, treble on 5, gain on 7 and, what's most important, levels much higher (6 at least) sounds much better. Most people say that you shouldn't push this amp too far couse it then starts to "break up", but that's exactly what gives some life to the otherwise very static solid state sound.

The Clean channel is nicely clean and stays so until a level of 8. With the right pickups, it can even have a bit of shimmering in the tone, but as this is a transistor combo, the sound isn't really lively enough to sound good (on an all-amps-scale).

The Overdrive also sounds very static until you push it far enough to make the power amp crackle, which adds a lot of life to the sound. There's enough gain for all situations, no need for a distortion pedal at all (and it wouldn't sound any better, I tried the Boss and Danelectro pedals through the clean channel of this amp at a shop and they didn't even match the Crate's own Overdrive).

Overall, the sound of this amp is very "narrow", which can be attributed to the small cab with an 8" speaker. I didn't try it with an external speaker, but I guess that should make things a lot better (but on the other hand, if you invest in a real cab, then better also get a real amp).

The sound of this amp is pretty versatile, which is important for a practice amp. You can easily dial in just about any tone you want, it will never sound right, but always gives you enough of an idea of that sound to match the songs you practice. Today e.g. I played Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters" (both fingerstyle part and solo), Led Zeppelins "Stairway to heaven" (again, fingerstyle, picking, solo), "Defy you" and "She's got issues" by The Offspring, "Back In Black" by AC/DC among others through it, just to give you an idea how flexible it is (but as I said, it never sounded right, just close enough for practicing). I also think that it's very important for beginners not to have to many knobs to turn, cause you should concentrate on your playing and not on creating great sounds (so a Flextone would be exactly wrong for a beginner, but it's great as the next step up, when you already know, how to practice).

It's not loud enough for playing together with a band for practice really (although I did in the beginning when we founded the band), and you won't ever want to gig with it (not only because it's far to silent, but also because you would have to be ashamed because of the sound). But it's definitively loud enough for practicing at home and will even be able to blow away your ears, if just you sit close enough to it (which doen't mean to have your ear on the front cloth, but rather 1 meter away).

The amp itself is pretty solid (I even dropped it once from 1 meter height and it still works), but the reason why I only give it a 5 is that the handle got loose after just a few month (and I didn't even carry it extensively with that handle) and couldn't be fixed, which really shouldn't happen.

Never dealt with them.

So overall, on an all-amps-scale this thing absolutely sucks and would at most get 1 out of 10 points from me, but this wouldn't be fair really, cause if you compare it to the other amps in the same price range, the Crate really outshines them all.

It's basically the best beginners practice you can get, because as I said, it's not really helpful to have too many things you can play around with on your amp when you start playing guitar. The biggest drawback (even as a beginners practice amp), though, is the lack of a footswitch connector (and you wouldn't really want to invest in a distortion pedal, which cost nearly half of the amp itself).

Great for beginners, but if you practice hard, don't expect to be satisfied for more than half a year, then you will want to take a step up and either get a modelling amp (like I did), or if you have some more money to spend, a real tube amp. On the other hand it wouldn't really be clever to invest in such an amp, when you just begin, because you never know, if you stay with playing guitar at that point of time.
If you have never played electric guitar before and want to start playing, get this amp NOW, if you have any experience in playing guitar, DON'T EVER get this amp.