Crate was an incredibly underrated amp back when I was actively playing.
A friend circa 1984 had a 2-12 combo from when they were still actually built like a wood crate with real wood.
That opened my eyes fairly early.
The lead player in my 1987 band bought a 120 watt half stack which was insane with distortion and volume.
I had grown fond of the Marshall tone and to keep up, I bought a Lead 75 1-12 combo, and it did keep up.
I my collection of "under $50" amps I can take with, or let others use", I have a 15w Crate.
It does indeed have that tone. I'm half tempted to build a replacement case out of 1x6 stock.
Cripe I have amps hiding behind amps mow. My early 1970s Traynor tube halfstack is hiding behind my JVM halfstack now. It's hiding under the Gus G Jackson Star laying on top if it
Must be all my medication pushing stuff out of the way
My amps are a heavily modded Fender Blues Jr III with a dovetail jointed, solid pine cabinet & mods from Rootbeer Audio that are based on the suite of mods from Bill M, with a black panel deluxe tone stack & bias trim pots and a 90's vintage, Celestion G-12H speaker. I still need to replace the grille fabric in Oxblood and at some point, I want to replace the OPT and wire it ptp. I like this amp so much that I sold my Deluxe Reverb Reissue.
my other amp is my endgame, a hand-wired Strange Audio Electronics Luxe Plus, based on the venerated 5E3 circuit with Josh Strange's personal touch in there. It has a athode-biased 6V6GT output section & is 5Y3 rectified, with a 12AY7 preamp and 12AX7 phase inverter and a Weber Legacy 12" speaker. The cabinets are CNC'd in my workshop in North Philly by a colleague, but the amps themselves are made in Phoenixville, PA, a Philly suburb just north of the Main Line.