Crate Review: V-Series 3112

History:

Purchase: I bought this amp for about $450 from American Music here in Seattle. It was a demo model, thus, the better than usual price, as these go for roughly $500-$600 new. I had a chance on a few occasions to try this amp out and was really impressed by the tonal flexability, which included glassy to decent breaking up clean sounds, and moderate to chuncky crunch ( please note, it's powered by 3 12ax7's and 4 el84's, so the crunch isn't insane, but covers alt rock to old-school metal just fine ).

What I Like About This Crate V-Series 3112: Well, it covers just about every sound I need, as my band is playing kind of in the styles of the Foo Fighters, QOTSA, and add some Oasis. It looks great style wise ( cool V30 logo & all black w/ silver pin stripes ). It has a good celestion 80w speaker, & it's quite portable, which is great as I didn't want to lug around a 1/2 stack everywhere I needed to play. It also has a 8/16 speaker extension and sounds great through either a 2x12 or 4x12 for clubs, even though it's plenty loud enough by it's self at 30 watts. One feature that really sold me on this amp was the foot switchable boost ( footswitch was included ), this is almost like have another channel or two as it works for both clean and crunch and pushes the mids up by 10db's for solos or just different variations on the sound ya already have dialed in. I haven't recorded with it yet, but I'm looking forward to it, as I can get my sound without having to drive the engineer nuts by being too loud, even though that's sometimes fun, as my drummer is the one who records the band at his home studio! Oh, I almost forgot, it has a nice deep and un-boingy reverb that's a real inprovement over the old vintage club series that these V-Series amps replaced.

What I Do NOT Like About The Crate V-Series 3112: Ok, there are only a couple drawbacks to this amp that I have to list, even though it's the best one I've ever owned. First, there's a slight drop-out in sound when switching from crunch to clean that bugs me a little sometimes, though it's only about a 1/2 second, so not too bad, and I'm thinking I can get that fixed somehow, as I've had plenty of other amps that make that switch cleanly. Second, the knobs are all chrome and only have indentations for the indication of where they're dialed into, so on a dark stage that's a slight disadvantage, but no big whoop.

Crate V-Series 3112 Quality Rating: It's built pretty sturdy like, & made of relatively thick plywood not particle board, with attractive tolex covering and Fender like controls on top towards the back.

Review Summary: I love this amp, period. I recommend it to just about anyone for just about any style short of needing extreme distortion. It sounds good with single coils, P90's, and humbuckers, and has decent headroom on both channels, great highs, mids, and great lows for this small of an amp. I've seen that there's a new head version w/ a matching 2x12 cab (V30H & V212T ) that's just come out, so that'd be interesting to hear, and who knows, maybe get that an use an ABY pedal for the two amps! Also, I'm not sure if it's just an exclusive deal at Guitar Center, but an almost identical amp is being carried by them now, except it's got a V32 logo in gold on the front and is a light tan color, but sounds pretty much the same as mine, boost and all. Also, I think they may be stocking these with tone tubbys, so the celestion might be phased out.

Rating of this Crate product: 5

This Crate V-Series 3112 Guitar Amplifiers Review Submitted By: Dave Patterson

Review Date: 2005-03-28