Crown CE1000 any good?

[Rob B]

Hey all, looking at a crown ce1000 for $75 and wondering if it will meet my expectations. I'm looking for a decent sounding amp for my home set up, i need to power 4 70s era 15" cabs and a single 15" bandpass bass cab with good authority. I used to have an old kenwood ka-701 dc integrated that powered everything with plenty of balls so if it can match that i would be happy.

I'm very worried though at how they rate this amp in max watts at 1khz, its realy no reference for me. right now i have a "100wpc" radio shack pa amp that puts 28wrms into 4ohms at 50hz continuous and it has almost no authority below 40hz so this max rating all the pa amps have makes me skeptical.

now this crown amp is rated at 275wpc into 8ohm and 450 into 4... the distortion specs especially the IMD dont thrill me so this thing would realy have to be a powerhouse to justify it. obviously crown is much better then my rat shack junker but this rat shak amp has made me skeptical of pa stuff in general I guess. If anyone has any experience with this amp that can tell me how much power it actually makes I would appreciate it.

[simon7000]

Go for it. It is am old design, just built more recently. The only area to check is to be sure the volume pots are not dirty.

The parts alone are worth more than $75.00.

The RS specs are "Typical" the Crown are guaranteed!

[jackand08]

It would drive your speakers with ease compared to the Kenwood amp and would be fine as part of a hi-fi setup.

Just don't think about taking it out and using it as part of any real PA system though, as these really were the low end Crown amps when they were produced and they really aren't rated for being pushed hard continuously. The heatsink and power transformer are too small for it to be driven hard constantly.

Also, bear in mind that if it does go pop, then it will be a pain to repair thanks to Crown's poor service manuals and plenty of surface mount parts to replace. There was a repair thread on here a while ago for one of these amps and the damage from a simple output short had reached all the way back to the input stages.

[Rob B]

Ok cool, I only run my amp hard (like almost full volume on the kenwood) for maybe 4 hours at a time once or twice a week and the rest of the time I just pretty much let my stuff play low volume pretty much whenever I'm at home.

It also comes with some nu mark cd player and some other 1 rack space misery item with no description so its a pretty good deal if it all works.

[jackand08]

As simon7000 said, it does sound like a very good deal and the amp will be well within its capabilities for home listening. You probably won't get anywhere near full volume on the Crown amp due to its higher power output too.

[Rob B]

oh I think I will use all she has on occasion, The cops around here know me and all my neighbors are cool lol!

[back]

i used to own a ce2000.
not audiophile sound but the bass rocks and really powerfull.
it will move your speakers to their limit.

[DavesNotHere]

th CE amps are not bad, but they tend to be touchy temperature wise when ran on 4 ohm loads and subjected to techno music(the ultimate stress test).


normal listening indoors will be fine. But I wouldn't recommend this amp for outdoor monitoring or FOH use.

[Mike Caldwell]

The CE 1000 and 2000 were old designs applied to more modern manufacturing techniques maybe not with the greatest long term results! The CE 4000 however was a new design from the ground up, they look basically the same on the outside but not on the inside.

[indianajo]

And may I further assassinate R**** S****. I always wondered why their speakers & headphones sounded so bad but had specs as good as anybody's. One too truthful supplier of a R***** S***** headphone let the secret out in the little folder that came with it. The specified response was 20-20000 +- 3db. The production tolerance was +-20 db. HAHAHAHAHA. If all the units come out precisely -19.5 db at 30 hz, R****S***** could care less. The only R***** S***** product I can recommend was okay was the 5 clip lead set. And that was 10 years ago, maybe since then they have found out how to make them out of one 36 ga wire.
Note US Tan*y corp R***** S***** appears to be no relation to the RS electronics supplier in the UK.