The Crate V100H, maybe the best bang for your buck deal going right now. I found out what the "boominess" was. The hardwood floors in my music room. Me and Mike(friend from work that plays guitar) changed out the tubes, wonderfull tonal change not so sizzly, and a very noticeable gain increase. We ran his Ibanez and Epi LP through it too. The Epi sounded really sweet with the gain rolled back and some mids eq'd in. Any ways, I thought me and Mike were just going to jam at my house, turns out we packed up my amp and guitar and went to his friends house and jammed with a drummer and bass player too. While this amp sounds nothing like a Mesa, it did compliment it nicely in a band setting, and fared pretty well alongside it. Some people there asked how much I spent and when I told them you could have swept the dirt on the floor into their mouths!
The basement we were jamming in had carpeted concrete floors, and during our tune/warm up we noticed the "boomy" nature of the cab was missing, and had to eq some bass back in. Guess I'm going to need some cab isolators. When I scooped the mids, I was in heaven. Nice Metal tone(with an SD1 helping to push it, but just barely). Without the od it still has a very good metal tone. Mike is a really good guitarist, much better than me, when he hooked up his LP and set the eq's up and started wailing out some of the sweetest blues licks this side of New Orleans man, I knew I made a good buy with this amp. He even likes it. Everyone there was like THAT'S a Crate amp? Crate's just don't get there due man. Don't get me wrong, it's not perfect by far, and tonally at times, it leaves a little to be desired, but for less than 600 bucks for a 100 watt tube half stack, man, you can't go wrong. Still considering a speaker or cab swap though. When we hooked the head up to Mike's Marshall 1960A cab, it sounded 100% different. Features I like, effects loop, tube powered, price point. Features I wish it had, footswitch included(luckily my XT's footswitch is compatible) and a master volume. Overall I'm very pleased with this amp. It'll do till I get a Marshall JCM800 2203 Kerry King sig. The current amp at the top of my wishlist.
