Progress report on my Crate V5 project

[LeadedEL84]

Shortly after I posted my V5 mod questions http://www.thefret.net/showthread.ph...light=crate+V5 I scored a celestion tube 10 speaker on ebay for $18. It was advertised as used but like new condition. That is what I received too. It looked brand new but had enough play time to be broken in. Just perfect-cheap and ready to rock. I have been busy with other things but I finally got around to doing the speaker swap about a week ago.

When I fired the amp up and plugged in my Gibson LP studio I was very happy. The sound difference was like night and day. It got rid of that grindy top end buzz that I was hearing with the crate speaker. The amp distortion is still not GREAT but the overall tone(clean or distorted) is about 90% better! I did notice a very slight drop in volume over the stock speaker. That is not really a bad thing in this situation since I am looking for the best low volume tone for apartment practice anyway. The better tone out-wieghs the volume loss by far.

I was a little nervous about trying the tube 10 speaker since most of the advice I got leaned toward the G10 vintage tone- wise. I couldn't find a good sound sample of the tube 10 anywhere. In the end the price tag made my decision. I don't know what popular celestion model to compare the sound to. It definately has the signiture celestion character. Overall pretty well balanced,nice overtones and harmonics. The sound is a lot more detailed and complex than the crate speaker. Has a little of that greenback midrange growl with present but tight bass. The early break up is perfect for use in a low wattage tube amp like the V5. I would say it has less highs than the stock speaker but I don't know if I would call it darker. Definatly warmer and better balanced. Far more refined. Not lacking. I would descibe the highs as being in the range somewhere between a G12H and a vintage 30. In fact I would say the overall sound through the mids and highs are a little like the G12H although not nearly as big or round on the bottom. I lucked out and got the right speaker for my taste in tone.

I haven't done any tube swapping yet. I want to make one change at a time so I can see what each change does to my sound individually. I do plan to try some different tubes later.

Another important change I made to my signal chain is the addition of a distortion pedal. You have to crank the volume of the amp to get it to overdrive so a pedal was necessary to get the low volume overdrive tone I need so I don't make my neigbors mad. I had a Boss bluesdriver and gave it a try. Got some really good sounds with it but not good enough EQ control with it. Since the V5 already lacks in the EQ control dept. I wanted a pedal with better eq to compensate for the lack of it on the amp. Right after I won the speaker on ebay I also scored a Marshall Guv'nor II distortion pedal. It is well used and a little beat up but works perfect and sounds great. I got it cheap and it has great EQ control. I don't know where this little pedal has been all my life. It is a Marshall stack crammed into a small silver case with gold knobs and a footswtch!

To sum it all up this practice rig is sounding great now. Between the celestion speaker and Marshall pedal I have totally transformed my sound. It's the best tone I've ever gotten out of a small practice amp. By far. I could stop now and be happy with it. I do plan to do a tube swap though. Mainly to increase the clean headroom so I can get more volume when I want it while getting most or nearly all the distortion from the pedal rather than the amp. I want to experiment with lower gain 12AT7 and 12AU7s for that reason. Higher quality brand of tubes might also further refine the sound. So far with the amp,speaker and pedal I have $136 invested in this rig. They were all bought on ebay and includes purchase price and shipping to my door. Even after I buy tubes for it I shouldn't be too far over the $150 mark. You can't beat that for a great sounding and easily portable practice rig with real tubes.

Thanks to all who gave me advice on the subject