Crate PowerBlock Head

I got this amp liek a month ago, and I've played on it every single day + one gig-
I wish it had two channels, nothing else, for this price and lightweigt, IMO this is the best you can get.
I'm using the effect loop all the time, ad when I get another cab, I am going to use both, I got a pedalboard of 2 multi-fxs, a wah, a dist & a noise gate.. so i got all the fxs to tweak, (I must have more than one knob).. well.. power is not a problem. i play with the control round 7-8 .. and it is enough for normal practise (with one 100W speaker that is.) turn it up past 12 and it ERUPTS.. the whole house shakes. I play With EMGs' and started out with gain at 11, ,now I play halfway distorted clean-tones with gain at 3 + a full out jackhammer in front, it is a beautiful combination, for only clean w/EMGs this is a maybe.. haha.. this or a veery expensive tube amp I say.. It is tube- emulating, but I compared it with a vintage tube peavey and the dynamics ARE TH SAME, It knocked me on my back. I give it a nine cos' it would have been really fun with another channel and stuff. the rest kicks ass

K' This amp is not good for "suuper scooping" the mids cos' the middle tone control got a little too large bandwith to make that sound, I use my dist. pedal to do that, then boost them at the amp a litle bit. It haves a tiny, tiny bit of noise there is cos' it has 150 watts of power.
Now, I took it for a test ride to see what it was good for, the kurt kobain "clean sound" on the song "about a girl" from the album bleach. It IS THE SAME, and kobain uses a MESA!. I got stunned.. the distortion is kinda guns & roses on full,, slash-ish, but with a decent dist-pedal in front it is a reaper. go harvest som souls:D think of it as a tube amp with invisible tubes. flexvawe 6 works awesome

this is the most rugged amp head I have ever seen, no sh't.

didnt deal with them,, but 5 yrs guarantee for the head.

I got this, the 112 cab to it with celestion. a marshall jackhammer, boss pw-10, yamaha magicstomp v2.10, boss ns-2, zoom g1x. My guitar is a n over-modded strat with EMGs' 81, SV & 89(85 w/split) a PA2 & SPC, sperzel locking tuners.

If I lost this I would mourn over it as if my girlfriend had died then proclaimed a Vendetta upon the person that stole it. and buy a new.

I love mostly everything about it, some things could be more fun like two channels and stuff, but for the price it is unbeatable..

I bought it after I had heard a different crate amp with flexwave 3 in it, after I got it I discovered that with a bit of tweaking on the knobs (& some of my fxs) I could get any sound out of it.

It is now my main amp and will be until I'm payed for using something else.

150 Watts/ 3 knob EQ/ drive & volume/ 8 ohm or stereo speaker imputs.
carrying case.

The sound quality of the Crate Power Block is very good. It will also
depend on what speaker(s) your using with it. An old Silvertone with
Jensens sound great/ a Epiphone cab with a Lady Luck speaker is pretty good. Great for carrying in you effects bag; just lug a speaker cabinet. Set it clean and use a good processor. Use it for a back up. It's a good product but I don't see them offered in magazines or stores anymore at all. Careful tweaking gives a sound you can jam to all day long. Not too clippy with the gain cranked.
I wish the circuitry of the Power Block was used in some solid state
amps I've tried.

I would be confident using this amp head without a back-up. So far very reliable.

I've played about 40 yrs. I own 3 tube amps & 3 solid states. There are some great solid state amps. Amps are about the last thing in electronics hanging on to tubes. Playing in a band I mostly used a solid state, occasionally bringing out my tube amps. Many good solid states are great "work horses" that never "cough" or hiccup or any problems whatsoever, admit it. The speaker(s) used with this amp head
factors into your results. This amp head is not a dud.

Well described already in other reviews, but this is a one-channel, solid-state head with 150 watts mono into 8 ohms, with a capability for 4 ohm stereo. This amp, run through a 2x12 Avatar cabinet with Celestion Vintage 30 and a Celestion Classic Lead 80 has plenty of power for me to gig clubs with a 4 piece band including a loud (aren't they all!)rock drummer, but remember,its not 150 TUBE watts. Still, I keep the volume at about 3/4 and the gain at about 1/2. The line out XLR is a nice feature, as is the CD line-in RCA inputs. The features on the back are nice, though I don't love the split 1/4 stereo cable for the effects loop, but there are limited features on the front of the head (i.e.: reverb, a second channel), so I give this head a 3.

This amp, as described elsewhere in other reviews, has limited flavor of its own. I play classic rock covers in a gigging band; I don't use modeling pedals, but I do use a lot of stomp boxes, and I can always know that this head will just amplify the sound I create with my stomp boxes, and not impart any flavor of its own. That said, I find it really hard to get a convincing distortion out of this head...sorry solid-state lovers, but even with a Big Muff going full bore, this head still doesn't growl like a Hughes and Kettner or other tube head. On its own, even with the gain at full bore this amp cannot produce a distorted sound, but rather just a mild overdrive sound that might be similar to a Boss Blues Driver or a Tube Screamer dialed in about half-way. That said, this amp makes nice sounds when tweaked correctly, and is quite versatile due to its lack of fixed tone. I don't find this amp too noisy, though I use a Boss NS-2 Noise Suppressor as well. I do find that I can make this amp feedback easily, but that is often my own stupidity. I'm giving this head a 6; I don't love the sterile sounds and I would like more onboard distortion, but it does the trick for now, and will make a great backup head once I upgrade to a tube head.

I gig with this head currently, and have never had any problems. I will use this amp as a backup head once I get a new tube head, and have used it as a bass head before in a pinch. Plus, you gotta love the portability.

N/A

I've been playing on and off for about 13 years or so, seriously for about 5, and gigging for about 1 year. I think this head was perfect for me for the purposes I bought it for--it was a cheap, loud temporary amp for me to gig with until I could afford something better. With that in mind, this has been a great head...it's loud, easily transportable, and doesn't sound bad. I would like an amp with more individual characteristics, but I know that isn't what this amp was designed to do. I would buy another one if it were stolen because it is a really versatile backup amp, and because it's really easy to transport for practice purposes. All in all, I give this head a 7.

The XLR Direct out is great. I use it instead of a direct box. The speaker out is excellent. I have not used the effects loop but it is definately a nice add on.

I have gotten a great blues sound direct to PA. Just add some effects and your good to go. Awesome for its portability. I do not understand the previous review for head room issue. Price point this is one of the best units out there. It is plenty loud and versatile. If you want a tube amp and have the money go spend it. If you have limited funds and need something portable to plug direct and into a speaker cab then this is the ticket.

Never had a problem and have been using it for over 1 1/2 years.

Did not need.

For reasons above anyone who plays live and direct into a PA and has their own pedal board should have one as a back up system. You can't beat it for the price - $100 used on EBAY.

As many have posted here, the back panel of this unit is where the versatility is at. I use it on the mono 150-watt setting.

I bought mine for use as a small back-up amp in case my '65 Bandmaster were to go down. I had been hauling along a solid-state 1-12 combo amp for that purpose and wasn't thrilled to be doing so.

After purchasing the Crate used at a pawn shop, I checked it out once through my cabinet for about five minutes and then it went back into it's bag until our bass player's giganto-rack system went kablooey at a gig and he didn't have time to drive home and get a spare head. I offered up the Crate, he hooked it up through his SVT cab and the whole band let out a collective "Holy s***!" It sounded absolutely ferocious, ballsy and LOUD! Needless to say, he is now looking for a Powerblock of his own for a backup.

I decided to give it a whirl when we were rained out of an outdoor gig and we wound up playing in a bar the size of my living room. I needed to use as little space as possible and the Powerblock fit the bill. I was very pleasantly surprised by the Powerblock, it sounded very good, and as many have posted here, it worked excellent with multi-effects. To be perfectly honest, that was the best that my multi-effects have sounded, even better than through my Bandmaster. Unlike others who have had issues with the sound of the Powerblock, I was very impressed with the tone. None of the buzz or fizziness that has been described, and I was able to get a very comfortable stage volume (comfortable=pretty darn loud). Yes, I noticed differences in tone between my blackface Bandmaster and the Powerblock..duh!..but I still sounded like me. I was so impressed that I plan on using the Powerblock for gigging this weekend at another sardine-can of a venue. I'm sold.

Boy, the power issues I read about here scare me, kiddies. Haven't had any problems yet and I've had mine for about 4 months. Heck, out bass player used mine again at a benefit gig last weekend without any problems..perhaps (knock on mahogany) I have a reliable one. Thanks for the heads-up on the design flaw, though.

If I did call Crate, I'd just say "Did the logo have to be so damn HUGE?"

Been playing about 24 years now, have had lots of amps and I think I may have found the ultimate back-up amp. It's light, portable, versatile and sounds great through my rig. I usually run my '65 Bandmaster through a 4-10 Peavey cab loaded with reissue Jensens with a couple dirt pedals and my multi-effects. Guitars are usually Strats. The Powerblock works perfect for any of the smaller gigs I may play and I don't feel I am compromising on my tone too much when I use it. Although I could hear the minor differences, the rest of the guys in the band couldn't hear any real difference in my tone with the Powerblock. I'm a working weekend warrior musician, not a cork-sniffing tone snob and what matters to me is tone AND the viability of the device. A piece of gear must work well and be able to take the rigors of gigging instead of being a bedroom showpiece. The Powerblock is a welcome tool in the arsenal of the working musician. I love it. The ultimate back-up amp for the working musician.

features are ok, kinda standard.

Ok, I'll make clear here that I'm one of the "tube tone snob" and that I usually play in all tube non master volume amps, without reverb and with flat tone settings.
Said this, when I considered the powerblock it was not because I was looking for the tone of my life, but because I found interesting the idea to have a small, portable, cheap and hopefully just decent sounding amp to play live in some non optimal situations (most of time...).
Basically I expected an average transistor quality sound, packaged in a smaller and ligther box. Crate itself has done some transistor amps decent for the bucks in the past and I presumed this should more or less be the same quality.
More than this, an absolute point of powerful transistor amps is that they are cleaner than tube amps and, if you want to carry two amps, they permits you to have a powerful clean tone togheter with expressive tube distortion. I thougth that at least the powerblock would have been useful for clean tones.
To make a long story short, after trying the powerblock I must admit I was completely wrong.
First, this "wanna be an amp" has no clean headroom! The manufacturer credits it for a 150W when bridged but it has no more CLEAN headromm than a 10W practice amp: disappointing at least (and useless...)!
Then the amp by itsel extremely dark a deadly sounding. No dynamics, no touch sensitivity and no "euphonic" distortion.
I've tried it with tube preamps, boutique overdrives, full range speakers and digital simulation but I've not been able to obtain a decent sound out of it.
Ok, it is really cheap and it is not fair to pretend great things of it, however reputation of crate is really meant to go destroyed if they continue to produce and sell items like this.

New out of the package, ther'was some rust. I would not bet it will stand any abuse.

Toy amp, dead sounding and without clean headroom. If you are not critical about size and weight and you don't want to spend money, buy an used all transistor amp instead. IMO the powerblock is a waste of money.

Can be used as a single channel guitar amp or bypass the pre-amp section with line in and use it as a power amp for amp modelers and multi-effects. There is an effects loop, rca and 1/4" line level inputs, as well as support for 4 Ohm stereo or 8 Ohm mono speakers. For what it is, I give it an 11.

No it doesn't have digital effects, amp modeling or a built in tuner but there are several vendors that make these and don't andd power amp tho their producs. This is a dual purpose solid state guitar pre-amp, combined with a very light weight class D power amp.

This gets confusing since you can use this thing for more than one use.

As a single channel guitar amp head, the sound is OK. With the gain around 10:00 o-clock, the clean is clear with just the hint of buzz (it is a class D amp after all,... 10% THD). With a clean output the signal is a little weak, but as you increase the gain you get a decent pre-amp crunch sound with lots of volume. Does the tone equal a boutique amp,.... absolutely not, but it is more than good enough for most situations.

As a power amp for an amp modeling rig, this thing is GREAT!!! I use it with a Boss GT-6 and an M-Audio Black Box (my favourite modeler at the moment) through the stereo line-in on the back. The amp adds no additional colouring to the signal from the modeler so you get the sound that you programmed in the first place, and not some hybrid of the modeler and your guitar amp.

You need to match this to a fairly flat response cabinet. The Crate GT112SL seems to be a good match and is very inexpensive. A Traynor YCX12BLUE is also a good match but will set you back some more coin.

Here it is a little questionable. I purchased mine second hand and there doean't appear to be any problems. I've heard of people using these things for a long time without any problems BUT there is a known issue that seems to effect some units. Once the blue light on the front starts to fade in and out, you've got problems and unfortunately these are discontinued so good luck getting service. It's a shame because I'me sure that with some minor design changes this could be made to be rock solid. Oh well, for $99 buck,...

Haven't used it.

In this price range, there is nothing out there that will touch it. I knocked a point off for the potential reliability problems. I've use mine with a variety of guitars (Ibanes SA, Godin Freeway and a Lado Elite) direct into the pre-amp as well as through a couple of different amp modelers/effects units and it has performermed well in all cases.

These have been discontinued but worth looking at if you use amp modeling and can find one on the used market in good condition.

Features have been mentioned.

The idea for this amp is a very good one. Build a small, solid state, Class D amplifier that can put out 150 watts in mono. 75 per side in stereo. Give it some decent basic EQ, and an ok distortion sound.

Sound quality isn't really that bad. It doesn't have enough headroom for cleaner sounds (mainly because you need the preamp volume up about half way to get any volume).

With the preamp up high, the amp gets an ok distortion sound. Certainly nowhere near the sound of a decent tube amp, but fine for a cheaper amp that is very small.

OK, here's the main reason why I'm writing this review.

THE RELIABILITY OF THIS AMP IS TERRIBLE. You couldn't find cheaper components if you wanted to. Well, cheap components are one thing, but THIS AMP HAS A DESIGN FLAW. The amp can become unstable when it heats up. What you will notice is that the blue power 'on' light will start flashing, the volume will rise and fall (from total silence to just low volume).

What is happening is that the transistor labeled IC101 is unstable. This is a known problem (Crate's owner, St Louis Music knows this and had to send out a tech service bulletin on how to fix it).

The fix is to solder a 1 meg resistor across the two front legs of IC101. This usually fixes it, but not always. Don't try this yourself. Take it to a repair facility. I'm just letting you know that a fix is usually possible.

This is the main reason that the Power Blocks were discounted so cheaply, then discontinued. It's not made well, and has a desing flaw.

Went beyond the warranty period. Fixed my own and it lasted for a little while. Now the volume knob only works about two thirds of its travel. Yep, what a piece of junk.

I'm giving the overall rating a 3.

The idea behind this was great, and it certainly seems that enough of these are still working that their not all bad.
Still, the amp was built so cheaply, there's no way these are going to still be working many years from now.

To really sum it up, the idea behind this appears to be:
Lets come up with a great design, then build it in China as cheap as possible, then find out there are problems with it, blow them out for huge discounts, then discontinue making them.

As stated in an earlier review, it's humorous, if not downright idiotic how obtuse people can be in their lack of desire to understand what a product is specifically designed to do. I know. In my past, having been a Pro-Audio Department manager for a major music retailer for over 6 years, I worked with all manner of musicians. My favorite example is the guy who would purchase a piece of gear like a guitar processor or a synthesizer that intrinsically have slightly higher learning curves than a stomp box. The inevitable phone call would follow the sale with the customer asking how to get his new piece to do this, that or the other thing. While as sales professionals we would always be more than happy to provide support after the sale and would typically ask "Have you taken a look at the manual?". OK, now to the good part....the answer....."Uh....I don't like to read manuals".

The moral of the story (as if you couldn't tell), this Crate CPB150 Powerblock Head was first and foremost designed as an bandwidth neutral (read: flat frequency response) amplifier to use with one of the many different modelling processors currently on the market.

This thing does just what it supposed to. Provide lots of clean, neutral power with quite a bit of headroom. As far as versatility, it can be as versatile as whichever modelling preamp you are currently using!! Also as noted previously the correct hookup with a modeller is to use the Line In jacks on the back panel.

As stated above, depends upon what you are using. I've recently moved from a Line 6 PodXT Live to the Boss GT-8 and had been struggling to use these with my Traynor YCV-80 combo amp and get all the tones that the GT-8 can produce. While I love the Traynor for it's incredible tube tone and it's reliability, once I tried out the CPB150 with a reasonably flat response speaker cabinet, I was blown away by what a huge difference this made. My GT-8 came alive and even the Hi-Gain models finally sounded darn close to the real thing. It sounded so good, I went back to the music store and bought a second CPB150 and am now running 2 in stereo with 150 watts per side.

The technology of Class D amplifiers has been proven in many different musical arenas and is pretty much bullet-proof. Light-weight, simple AND it's got the happenin' blue LED. I love it!!

5 year warranty. I've only had these for a short time but don't expect to be dealing with Crate given the reputation these have for reliability. I did email their tech guys with a question about speaker cab ohm loads and got a fast, friendly response within 24 hours. Outstanding!!

Been playing professionally for over 30 years and have owned more amps than I can remember, but now I really feel like I need look no further. When modellers first started surfacing, it seemed like such a great idea. It's taken some time for some of the manufacturers to fine tune this technology and coupled with a amplifier like the Crate CPB150, all I can say is "WHOOPEE!!! For $99.00, that's a "DOUBLE WHOOPEE!!

I don't mean to be so stand-off-ish from the beginning but lets face it... there are very few features to this amp. But the features it DOES have are VERY nice. You get a basic 3 band eq, a volume and gain control and that's about it on the front.

Where our little friend stands out is what he's hiding in the back. You've got 4 ohm stereo outs at 75 watts and 8 ohm mono out at 150 watts. You've got an FX-loop if you use a stereo "Y" cable (a common setup in crate amps) or you can bypass everything and straight into the poweramp. This is how I run it. I use a PODxt live and I have found that this yields amazing results.

The best feature has to be the size. The rest of my band uses heavy amps and cabs. I have a nice 212 Avatar G212H. So I can easily throw the powerblock over my shoulder and not have to break my back hauling gear.

If you are looking for a 4 channel amp with tons of built in effects take a look at something else. Maybe the new Flexwave or the new Marshall JVM series are nice too. If you have a nice array of equipment (like the PODs, digitech guitar stations, zoom, etc) this amp is the way to go. It add almost no color to your tone and you can hear your models come through.

I took some time to play directly into the amp without my POD just to see how well it sounded on its own. While you do lack much of the versatility of larger amps with built in DSP you do get a nice sound with plenty of crunch. The amp uses crates cascading gain circuit to help emulate a tube amp sound. A very nice technology.

I turned the gain down and played with a lot of volume but no gain on the amp. Even a relatively high volumes it stayed nice and clean. The EQ is very responsive and it wasn't hard to get a nice sound out of this amp. If you are looking for a nice crunchy amp and don't care if you can't switch back to clean without adjusting knobs I'd say go for it.

I also took the time to run a reissue big muff i had laying around into it for some extra fuzz... it was very nice and the big muff came through nicely. So there are a lot of options to what you can do with this amp if you have the equipment for it. I'd like to run one of the new Boss/Fender Deluxe Reverb pedals.

I am an active musician and I have been gigging for years. Lets be honest with ourselves... nothing is foolproof. But I have had this amp for nearly a year and I have never had a problem with it. I don't have any type of backup and I don't ever worry. One of the best things about it being so small is that its easy to carry and doesn't get banged into walls by people helping haul your gear.

I've never had to deal with crate since I bought it.