Crate Vintage Club 50 — with 5881’s?

[CrazyFrankSD]

All of these amps i’ve ever seen have vents on the top and are running EL84’s for power tubes.. this one has two 5881’s and has two 12AX7’s.

Amp is single channel with high/low input, single “tone” knob, tremolo, and reverb.

Two 12” 16ohm speakers that say “Made in USA Paper Former Vintage Series” with 47-813-01 part number

It’s pretty heavy.. looks like it’s built out of 3/4” OSB.. it sounds fairly decent for running Sovteks.

Google search seems to just being up all the EL84 flavors of this amp. Don’t see a model number on it anywhere.

I got it to rob the speakers out of it and maybe the power transformer.. but I’m not beyond moving the chassis into a head.. or leaving it alone in case i’ve stumbled upon some great holy grail of mid range amps.

Thoughts?

 

[Jakedog]

It’s a later iteration. 2000’s. A different animal than the earlier versions.

Is it still made in USA by St Louis Music? Or is it after the sale of the brand to Loud Technologies? The SLM Crate amps are nothing to sneeze at. The later ones when the brand was sold to Loud and moved overseas never did anything for me.

 

[CrazyFrankSD]

It’s a later iteration. 2000’s. A different animal than the earlier versions.

Is it still made in USA by St Louis Music? Or is it after the sale of the brand to Loud Technologies? The SLM Crate amps are nothing to sneeze at. The later ones when the brand was sold to Loud and moved overseas never did anything for me.

It says “Made in USA” on the control panel under the power switch and the logo on the front says “St. Louis, Missouri USA” so I’m gonna guess its before it was sold.

 

[Jakedog]

It says “Made in USA” on the control panel under the power switch and the logo on the front says “St. Louis, Missouri USA” so I’m gonna guess its before it was sold.

Definitely before it was sold. Probably a good amp.

The very first version of the vintage club amps (blonde tolex, no standby) suffered issues from the use of PCB’s that were too thin. They ran hot anyhow, and with the thin boards they’d heat up and traces would actually float and come loose. Which lead to the amps having a rep for extreme reliability issues.

The second Gen (blonde tolex, standby switch) and the third Gen black tolex amps fixed the issue. But the damage was done at that point. Most folks wouldn’t go near them. Despite endorsements from folks like Billy Gibbons and Mark Knopfler.

Sadly they never caught on like they should have. I’m not familiar with yours, but since it’s an SLM amp I’m guessing it’s pretty great. I mean it’s probably twenty years old and still running, so there’s that.

 

[CrazyFrankSD]

It needs the pots cleaned for sure and I’m not sold on whatever they build this cab out of (it’s like it’s but out of concrete) but it doesn’t sound bad. I’ve been googling off and on for the last couple hours and have yet to find another one, or even reference to one.

Strangely missing is any sort of manufacturer plate on the back. Every commercially produced amp I’ve ever seen has input voltage, UL certification, model number, that sort of thing listed. The back of this amp is completely barren.