Crate BT220

Playing bass for 17 years. Play in a tribute band to Wishbone Ash at the moment and have done for the past three years. Wide variety of musical taste.

i bought the crate bass amp about 2 years ago for nearly £400. The shop was Sound Control in Glasgow.

The unit has a good sound and size. I like the on board tuning facility which comes in very handy and is quite accurate.
The built in destortion is handy, however i have no real need to use it at the moment.

After 2 years i have had the amp in twice to get fixed for problems with the headphone socket cutting everything else out. This has been frustrating wher on the first instance it packed in half way through a song during a gig. The second occasion was just as i was tuning up prior to the gig starting. Fortunately i was able to plug direct in to the PA, but this is not ideal. I have asked the engineer to remove the headphone socket and by-pass it all together as i do not use it anyway. Fingers crossed it will not happen again.

Good construction quality. Does not look plasticy like many. This unit looks the part.

Let down with the problems recently which is why i came on this site. Hopefully that is fixed now. If it is then i would say this is a good amp to buy at a reasonable price. If the problem comes back in a few weeks i will let you know and tell you to stay clear or at least be aware.....

This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com

I bought this at Guitar Center because I needed a bigger amp for gigging. I paid $499 for this beast.

The Crate BT-220 has a nice 15" speaker with 220 watts. This is one of the loudest amps I have ever heard and it is well worth the money. I like the clean/distortion pedal that comes with it and it is very handy. I especially love the automatic tuner on top of the amp because it accurately tunes your bass and you can use it to tune down a half step, whole step, or whatever you want to tune to.

The only thing I don't like about this amp is that it is 87 lbs. and is a pain in the ass to get up stairs by yourself.

This amp is built like a tank and has great sound quality. The lows are very loud and are not crackly or anything and the highs are very nice.

The bottom line is that this amp is my best purchase so far and if loud enough to do any gig that you might come across.

This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com