V 50 pwr supply
WackyT,
Sounds like you have a good grasp of what is happening inside these amps, much moreso than me; hence, my amp is at a highly qualified tech who actually, but unsuccessfully, tried to build a new switching pwr transformer. Crate has authorized him to try to put in a conventional power supply and promises him plenty of business if he can figure it out; leading me to believe that it isn't a cake walk.
I will definitely settle for a Crate VTX200S but they say the properly working V50 will be way better. What are your ideas on this comparison?
I see that you have a Samick Avion. I had one of those with a twisted neck and returned it for a Schecter Omen 6 that has been a great walnut stained black trimmed super strat type guitar, two humbuckers, now the ones I took out of my Epiphone LP Standard Plus Top when I put in nickel plated Seymour Duncan pickups: JB in the bridge and a '59 in the neck - great pickups. The stock Epi pups sound good in the Omen 6, which was my first really good guitar, by my amateurish standards, at least at the time and I still like that guitar and will not part with it.
Anyway, I have continued to want a Samick and was turned on by the inexpensive acoustic 12 string, but recently bought a brand new Samick Gregg Bennett acoustic J2 Jumbo, non electrified; however, tonight I put my Dean Markley sound hole piano black humbucking magnetic acoustic pickup in the jumbo and plugged it into my Dean Markley outboard acoustic preamp and then into my new little Marshall MB15CDR on the clean channel instead of my acoustic Crate Gunnison amp. Wow! Did the jumbo sound great!
Then I put my Danelectro Corned Beef, outlandish, reverb pedal between the guitar and the acoustic preamp and Wow!!!! again.
Then I plugged my guitar into my Danelectro Wasabi Overdrive pedal and ran a cable to the Corned Beef and into the preamp and thus to the Marshall and Wowwwwwwww! What a great sound.
I had fun with that for about an hour. No feedback.
The Jumbo sounds great just straight up no electricity as well, naturally. Glad I bought it for 168 US dollars. A great jumbo at a great price.
My Seagull dreadnought 20th aniv. S6, with a solid spruce top and flammed maple sides and back on top of cherry, sounds best of all my acoustics. The tone is loud and great, very sweet sounding and full but it cost about five times as much as my other two acoustics including the Jumbo Samick. So the Samick is my acoustic that I like to keep out of the case and easily at hand because I want to play a lot more acoustic lately, even though I have some new great electrics; including my brand new Peavey Hartley Peavey signature made in Korea - "HP Signature EXP" with a super beautiful Tiger Eye maple top on a solid mahogany body with mahogany set neck and gold trim including two custom wound Peavey hot humbuckers. This HP Signature EXP does not fool you with its good looks, it has what it takes to make it a great feeling, sounding and playing super strat style guitar. This guitar is really great. The pickups are not going anywhere and sound very hot and tonefull not like a strat or an LP but fabulous. I got that expensive guitar for 199 US at a place near me that is selling out all their Peavey stuff at half or less the internet price.
They have a Peavey Zodiac P J bass with Seymour Duncan quarter pounders on it that I played and it is astounding. It's 199 and goes for over 600 on MF. It is the scorpion version signed by some heavy metal bassist. It is black with a chrome pickguard that I suspect to be real chrome based on the "quarter tap" test, but maybe not. The neck is a jazz bass slim style and the board is rosewood or ebony. One hot bass that sounds really great. Hopefully I'll be able to pull it off. I gave my '85ish Fender MIJ Jazz bass to my son along with the old Peavey TNT 115 and bought him a 800 dollar new SWR Workingpro 15, an awesome amp. I have a small 30 watt new release Marshall MB30 practice amp that is awesome with clean and dirty channels, a manual compression with adjustment knob and three voices with adj knob plus contour in the mid and other great things and a tweeter, 168 out the door. I also have a Fender Rumble 100 with the flashing red lights coming from the base ports and I like them, switchable off too. I'm 59 and I like the way those red lights flash to the way you play, cool effect. I use the Marshall almost exclusively though. It sounds great and handles a 5 string with no problem, no something every bass amp will do. I need to see how my Fender Rumble 100 will handle my Schecter neck thru Stilletto V Elite. This is a great bass as well but I play my inexpensive affinities, P and J basses mostly. The P bass I have been hot rodding and put a black pickguard on the black naturally relic'd body w rosewood board and it looks "dark"; I bought and put in some guitarfetish.com hot P bass pickups in it and wish I would have went for the SD quarter pounders instead for not too much more money. I may do this yet. The J bass affinity is metallic red and is brand new for like 179 and plays great, no buzz with any of them and the J bass is awesome but the P bass is something I have always wanted and maybe I'll get that Peavey P J special one of these days. In the meantime I'm having lots of fun.
I'm going to play my Squire Classic Vibe antique sunburst strat thru the Wassabi overdrive into the little Marshall MG15CDR right now. Nice under appreciated, I would suspect, bedroom amp. I have other great bedroom amps too like the Fender Super Champ XD, nothing to scoff at with the Ragin' Cajun speaker mod. The CV has the bridge tone mod right from the store before it came home and pure nickel strings.
I'd buy a Samick again, no problem. The non electrified Jumbo acoustic is a great inexpensive guitar and electrified the way I did it without the acoustic amp is a real surprise and no feedback with awesome tone in all configurations. Glad I got that Samick Jumbo J2.
Good luck with your Samick and working on the Crate amp. I bet a high quality conventional power supply will work. I just wouldn't know how to go about it. I hope my expert tech knows how to retain the super great tone that the amp came with, otherwise I'm pressing for the VTX200S stereo solid state three channel two twelve.
What do you think about that ss amp?
Duffy
I can only find crate mod posts regarding V5 and very little else.I found a snipet or so of V-18 and V50 stuff. But the majority seems to be on the V5.Would anyone besides me be interested in a thread on the V-18 and33? I left a message a week or so ago regarding the Soldano and Bogner mods.There has been no commentary in regard to these amps and mods. I have a question about tube replacement. It seems alot of people are messing with the preamp tubes. Some are saying use a lower gain V1(as low as an AU?) Some are saying to use a lower gain Phase inverter tube at V3(which makes more sense) Some are suggesting all 3 preamp tubes be set to lower gain tubes? I don't know if any of these are usefull suggestions. Why would I use a 12AU7 in the V1 position? Isn't the V1 position where you get your overall tone from? Why would I use a tube with such a low amount of gain in this position? Wouldn't this be the spot that I would want to put my sweetest sounding preamp tube? Wouldn't it make sense to put a lower gain tube in the PI position to help cut down on the gain being fed to the input of the output section? Speaking of tubes for the V-33, how about (V1-your best sounding 12AX7),(V2-JAN/PHILIPS 5751),(V3-JAN/PHILIPS 12AT7balanced for Phase inverter) Doesn't this seem like the logical tube location and gain values ? Any thoughts on the subject? Anyone with mod ideas and info would be greatly apreciated 
