mexicanyella
Friend of Leo's
Had a cheap 1980's Crate CR 160 back in high school....sweet little SS amp with Celestion speaker, built in St. Louis.
Yeah! Those weren’t bad! I ended up with a friend’s CR-160 after he gave up playing, and it didn’t do high-gain crunch but it had a nice warm, round kind of “gentle crunch” that was nice. At the time I was into harder crunch sounds but found that it paired well with other amps in thickening up distorted sounds. I ended up passing it on to a younger cousin, but I wish now I still had it.
I am really happy with an early 90s Peavey TKO 115S bass combo, with a Scorpion 15 in it. Once you figure out the all-active graphic-plus-shelving EQ, it can sound really good with bass, guitar and lap steel. The Scorp reaches high enough in frequency response to do all three justice. It really wakes up and starts to holler when the gains are set around 7, and oddly (to me) the same basic settings work pretty well with all three instruments, so it’s surprisingly set-and-forget. At 75 watts, it’s loud at those settings but not painfully so, and it really gives the electric guitar and the lap steel a solid “whomp” that I like when you dig in and pop the strings.
And some combination of DDT speaker limiting at those volume levels gives a subtle sense of bouncy compression, which I love...it starts happening before the amp really begins to break up so you get snarl and sustain while still being clean enough for chords to sound clear and good.
The drawbacks are size, weight and it’s not really loud enough with bass to hang with a loud drummer.