Crate Switching Question

[bigoldron]

I have a Crate GLX65 amp that I've had for about 3 years now. It's been my workhorse and it's done a pretty good job until yesterday. Rather than drag my pedal board to church meeting we were playing for, I intended to use the old 3 button channel pedal to switch between the clean and distortion 1 (some distortion) channel.

I got there and hooked up everything to run a sound check and it would NOT change from clean to distortion 1. It has 3 buttons: button 1 is switch from clean to distortion 1 and back. Button 2 turns on distortion 2 (really dirty). Button 3 turns on/off the built-in effects.

If I hit button 1, nothing would happen. It would stay on the clean channel. If I hit button 2, distortion 2 would come on. The effects channel (button 3) worked also. Fortunately, the amp has buttons on the front to switch the channels, if the pedal is not plugged in. It worked that way, but distortion 1 didn't sound exactly right.

I thought maybe it was the switch pedal and/or the cable, so when I got home I tried out another cable and another switch pedal, with the same results. Pedal switching would NOT work to turn distortion 1 on/off.

So, I guess what I'm asking is this: Is my amp about to go out on me? I have heard in the past about the longevity issues that Crates sometimes have. It's been a good amp and has performed well, but being a solid state amp, I don't think it's repairable. I didn't pay a whole lot for it, so really I've gotten my money's worth out of her, but I hate to lose a pieced of equipment that I've grown accustomed to.

I guess if nothing else, I can use my pedals and run it all through the clean channel, but I'm now worried about it quitting on me at the worst possible time. Oh well...

[Spudman***]

With that setup it sounds like it will use a TRS cable and not a regular guitar cable. Have you tried that? My Crate also uses a TRS cable to channel switch.

[bigoldron]

With that setup it sounds like it will use a TRS cable and not a regular guitar cable. Have you tried that? My Crate also uses a TRS cable to channel switch.

Yep. It uses a double TRS cable. One leg switch between clean/distortion1/distortion2 and the other basically turn the effects on and off. I've got 2 such cables and neither one is working. The switching has been working fine up until Sunday. I haven't tried it in a few days before then, but when I did, it was fine.