Gear Review: Crate BX100 Bass Guitar Amplifier

Normally I'm not a fan of combo bass amps or even solid state bass amps, but about 10 years ago a friend was short on money and asked if I'd buy this Crate BX100 amp off of him. I knew it was a good amp since I had gigged with this bassist friend before and the Crate BX100 always performed well for him at every gig. He was only asking for a $100 which even back then that was way below the new and used retail price for this bass guitar amp.

So I bought the amp and took it home, cleaned it up a little and started playing. For its small size it proved to be a power house pushing its 15 inch speaker really well for only a 100 watt amp.

Its features are nothing to laugh at either with a pre and post gain control knobs it handed passive and pre-amped bass guitars well. It features a 7 band graphic equalizer and two shape/contour knobs to dial in any kind of sound. It also features an effects loop patch, 1/4th inch headphone output jack, and a very handy XLR direct line out for patching the amp in to the P.A. system at gigs or even when recording.

This is another one of those great Crate amps that has been discontinued in the last few years since Crate was bought out by Loud Technologies Inc, but you can still snag one on eBay, at your local Guitar Dealer, or pawn shop.

It turned out to be a real bargain for me since my other bass amp at the time was a 400 watt Ampeg SVT full stack amplifier so having a smaller combo amp around made it much easier on the back when needing to pack a smaller amp to band practice or small gigs.