Turned on switch to crate V33-212 and it shorted out

If tubes are lit, and none of them overheat the plates after 2 or 3 minutes, power it down to remove the chassis. Flip chassis over and support it so you are not resting the amp on the tubes. Check for B+ voltage first. If you are anywhere between 180 volts and 450 votls, B+ should be present at all plates, This applies for all of the common octal Beam power amplifier tubes used in guitar amps. be they 6L6, 6550, 6V6. 6N7 (3, 6), 6SN7, 6SL7 (2,5) should have less than 300 volts at the plates, which are pins denoted in parenthesis. The 12AX7, 12AU7, 12AT7 and 12AZ7 pin 1 and pin 6 should be less than 250 volts when in parallel and less than 100 volts in series.

If all have B+, look at lead layout, check the jacks and make sure your plugs are the right length for your jacks.

It now boils down to a matter of checking the coupling resistors and capacitors and in some cases the bypass caps. Many of the old amps have caps that can dry out or pull apart. The best way to find the problem stage is locate near a conventional flourescent light. Make sure your speaker is plugged in. What you want to do is use an insulated screwdriver only- start from the grids of the finals and touch the screw driver to each grid. If you get noise, move to another stage. As soon as you lose that noise, you have found that defective stage. you can jumper the caps with known good ones reasonably close in vlaue. Use care not to short to anything. Power it down, and check the resistors for open condition. Especially the cementitious types as they double as fuses in some units. Any that seem way out of range, remove one lead and check again. if bad- replace it.

Power it up again and starting from that repaired section, begin testing again. until you reach the input. if that makes noise, the amp is ready to go. Although if you have hum bias or grid bias adjustment, now is the time to adjust it. Hum bias is set for lowest noise floor, and bias is set for signal input grid of the tube, which for the 6L6 series including 5881- pin 5 and 7027 is/are pins 5 and 6, they are internally connected.

Your amplifier is a solid-state rectified tube amplifier. This means that a tube is NOT used for the power supply. Why is this significant? Because most of the time you have the problem you are describing, it is because of the tube rectifier.
Since this amp does not have a tube rectifier, the problem is likely one or more of the tubes. I have seen in 95% of the amps I repaired that the tubes were the cause, and since the amp is so new, I would suspect tubes first.
Now the hard part: which tube? Without a tube tester, you will have to use the 'firewall' technique. You will need to get a bunch of replacement fuses, as you might go through a few untill you find the problem. Radio Shack is a great place for fuses (make sure they are SLOW BLOW type).
The problem is almost guarenteed to be the power tubes: they are a big failure mode in tube amps (the preamp tubes are not as likely the problem).

This is what I do at a customer site without a tube tester:
(1) Have either a KNOWN TO BE GOOD REPLACEMENT SET OF TUBES or a NEW SET OF TUBES.
(2) Have plenty of fuses.
(3) Start with power tubes: they cause most of these problems. Replace burned out fuse.
(4) Replace all 2 (or 4 in your case) with the good tubes.
(5) Turn on amp and play on it (30 minutes at various volumes and settings). Turn it on and off many times using the on/off procedure your amp requires (like using the standby switch on some models).

* if the amp plays and works, likely you had a bad power tube. If you are blowing fuses, the problem is either the power amp circuitry or the preamp tubes.

* Leave the good power tubes in before going on to the next step. Also: the minor difference in bias wont matter for what we are doing now: the bias being WAY out is almost never the cause.

(6) Check preamp tubes (easy to do, as this does not require us to poke around on the insides).
(7) Replace burned out fuse (atleast number two by this point).
(8) Replace all preamp tubes.
(9) Turn on and repeat step 5.

* Blowing fuses at this point means atleast two types of repairs needed: retention tube sockets or someone to look inside the amp. Either way, this is a serviceman repair (things I do). Since the amp is so new, take the warentee buyout and throw it back to where you got it. Crate is real good about dealing with these issues (if you are the only owner and it is within warantee).

If you need to contact warantee support, you can tell them you have had the amp re-tubed and the problem still persists (meaning they can brush you off with 'just get it retubed and then call us if there is problems'. This is like 'take two asprins and call me in the morning: 95% of all tube amp problems can be fixed by this (retube, not asprins).

If you have to do the warantee route, KEEP YOUR NEW TUBES. The preamp tubes are fine, but the power tubes may be damaged. Wait for what Crate tells you before you use them. This is if you are cheap. I would pitch all of the tubes and consider the 70 bucks as my cheap attempt to bet I am in the 95% solution number (tubes are the cause). Otherwise, the repair will cost shipping at a minumum. Dont you love it: tube amps are expensive and require someone with deep pockets to enjoy the tone. But what can we do: tubes DO sound better and when everything is working, they perform reasonably well.

Good luck on this!
-mike