I don't see why everyone knocks Crates. My first amp was a Crate GFX 212, and I love it, so much that I got a smaller Crate, 65 watts, so that I could practice with an amp and leave another amp at my friend's house to jam. I think that, for metal as well as clean tones, it sounds great. I've used it fro playing in my school's jazz band with compliments on the tone (guitar- epiphone dot) and also for playing a lot harder songs, like metallica and megadeth as well as riffs I've come up with (using a jackson rhoads). In terms of coming up with metal riffs, I've managed to come up with some that my friends think are pretty hard without tuning down at all. Personally, its all about the riff, not how low the guitar is tuned.