Product: Voodoo Amps Crate BV120H Mod
Price Paid: US too much
Submitted
08/20/2004
at
01:29pm
by
garrett
Email: gizzi_mitchell<at>hotmail dot com
Features
:
No Opinion
same as any stock blue voodoo, no extra knobs or anything were added.
Sound Quality
:
4
i used an ibanez RG 732l, ESP viper 401 (with emg's) and a carvin dc127 to test out the amp. the noise on the distortion channel is now gone and the bass has increased a lot. the gain is still for the most part the same sounding and i dont think the distortion channel has improved very much. the clean channel is a little bit better sounding and a little more headroom was added. this channel sounds nice overdriven too. i expected the mod would really help make this amp come alive, as i payed about $675 for little improvement. now if i would have payed around $200 for it, then it would be worth it.
Reliability
:
10
the amp is as reliable as it always was.
Customer Support
:
6
the customer service is decent, sometimes you have to leave messages or email a few times to get an answer. trace and his team are pretty nice on the phone. i dont like how they didnt return certain emails and delayed various things they said they would do.
Overall Rating
:
3
i'm dissapointed witht the amp still, and now i just spent more money on this piece of shit. i'll have to low ball it to get rid of it. i'm pretty pissed.
Product: Voodoo Amps Crate BV120H Mod
Price Paid: US $769.00
Submitted
03/01/2004
at
12:36pm
by
dshortt
Email: dshortt<at>onr dot com
Features
:
7
No features were added by Voodoo amps, still the two channel class A amp made by Crate. Four 6L6's, clean and gain channel, individual reverb on each channel. It's not a bad amp stock.
Sound Quality
:
10
Sent it off to Voodoo Amps right after I recieved it and had listened to it for maybe 15 minutes. Got it back last week and played it in church yesterday morning. WOW!!! What a difference. Clean channel is as good as almost any Fender I have tried except maybe a really fine Tweed Pro. Tons of useable base like a blackface Super. An good overdrive pedal (Iuse an Addrock Ol' Yeller) on the clean channel is that smooth, satiny tone you expect from the $3,000.00 boutique amps. Just gorgeous. The overdrive channel now has more gain than I can use. I had a great sound going with the master on 5 and the gain on 5, but had to turn way down because the singers couldn't hear themselves think. Went down to about 2.5 on gain and master, and thought I would be disappointed; I wasn't. I was getting the most beautiful classic rock distortion I have had since I fried a VHT poweramp that was overbiased. And then for solos, I was kicking on the Addrock for a bit more volume and drive; I could have taken a bathroom break while leaving a note ring out. Sustain has never been this fun. Tapping, legato, hammered volume swells all work like they should through this amp. Only complaints, I could use a bit more note definition on chords, and the gain channel doesn't clean up quite as well when I back off the guitar volume as I would like. But those are both minor, and I sortof sent Trace a sow's ear. He ask me up front what my goals were for this amp, and I said I wanted the best sounding head in Austin. He of course let me know I would have to send him something besides a Crate to accomplish that goal. But he has managed to get me the best sounding amp I have ever owned. And that inludes Marshalls (Silver Anniversary, 30th Anniversary, JCM 800), Fenders, a Bogner Shiva, an Alesandro, Vox Valvetronix, an Egnater M4 preamp (look for that baby on E-bay), a Rocktron Prophecy preamp, Boogie gear, and other stuff I probably didn't have long enough to remember.
Reliability
:
No Opinion
Too soon to tell.
Customer Support
:
No Opinion
Trace has been incredible so far. He answers the phone practically everytime I call!!! For those of us who have run businesses, that alone speaks volumes.
Overall Rating
:
10
I would most definitely track down another Blue Voodoo and send it off to Trace if something happened to this one. Or I might just let him build me the best sounding head in Austin. I think he could do it.