School me on Hiwatt/Reeves/Hi-Tone

[BlixaFan]

i'm really interested in this thread. i know Gilmour played Hiwatt, as did Townsend, and Stian Westerhus runs them these days. i've never had the opportunity to hear one in real life, and i'm a big fan of the Fender amp sound, so i'm curious to compare. My understanding is that Hiwatt will be closer to a Marshall sound than a clean Fender tone.

anyway, most of this thread sounds like rocket science to me anyway as I don't know any of the technical amp stuff, i just know the sound that I like. but i'm intrigued now haha

[Bert Camenbert]

i'm really interested in this thread. i know Gilmour played Hiwatt, as did Townsend, and Stian Westerhus runs them these days. i've never had the opportunity to hear one in real life, and i'm a big fan of the Fender amp sound, so i'm curious to compare. My understanding is that Hiwatt will be closer to a Marshall sound than a clean Fender tone.

Hiwatts do their own thing.

The stereotypical Fender sounds mid-scooped. The stereotypical Marshall sounds mid-rangey. Hiwatts have a fairly wide and rather flat tonal spectrum. The stereotypical Marshall has a spongy, creamy overdrive, whereas Hiwatts produce a stiffer sounding roaring distortion. And Hiwatts will tend to have a higher headroom and a tighter bass than the equivalent Fender or Marshall.

I'm grossly generalizing here: keep in mind that Fenders and Marshalls do not all sound the same. Also, in my opinion, the speakers are a very important factor to the overall Hiwatt tone: for a Hiwatt to sound like a Hiwatt, it will need a speaker that sounds like a Fane.

[fretbuzzard]

Has anyone here been able to try out a Hi-Tone Lowatt? On paper it looks like the ideal solution for people who want the Hiwatt sound without eardrum-shattering volume. Does it deliver?

[somanytoys]

I just wanted to throw this in, as a cheaper alternative to someone that wants to give the general sound a test drive without buying an amp blindly and can’t try one out.

I think that the Catalinbread RAH gives a pretty good idea of the Hiwatt sound, albeit with a Marshall cab (because that’s what Page used at RAH), and as long as the amp it’s being using through doesn’t color the sound too much.

I don’t have a Hiwatt, but I have Plexi and Deluxe clones and Vox AC’s, and this pedal gives a different sound than any of them.

[MT]

If you’re looking for Hiwatt type tone without having to buy an amp, there is the Menatone Menawatt also. Possibly the nicest OD I’ve owned and will definitely get you a Hiwatt sound from a Fender type amp.

[BlueSparkle]

if i can remember rightly, sound city stuff was loosely based on the hiwatt stuff.

honestly. i like the hiwatt stuff i've played. my old bandmate used to use a modern hiwatt 50w into a vox 4x12 and pair that with an AC30. sounded pretty good all in all.

Dave Reeves, the guy behind Hiwatt, started building amps under contract for Sound City and then, a few years later, started Hiwatt, so logically it's Hiwatt that must be loosely based on Sound City.

I believe it was just the early 100 watt Sound Cities that had any parallels with Hiwatt, wasn't it? I know the 50s and the 120s were something entirely different.

I think there is a bit of Yes and no.

The Sound City years for Dave Reeves are not entirely clear, and since he passed many years ago there is noone who can categorically confirm if he was an employee of Arbiter, or under contract.

What most believe is that Mr Reeves who had already started his hiwatt brand, was contract designing for Arbiter, which soon became Dallas Arbiter and then DMI some years later (74-ish).

The early pre-hylight Hiwatts are very different from his post DA/SC designs (the SC 100 Mk1 is allegedly the only "reeves" design, but there is a lot of conjecture as to whether or not it was solely his, or whether it was a collaborative design with Arbiter. What is/was clear is that in the early 70's Reeves and Harry Joyce were well on their way to Hylight/Hiwatt Amplification pty ltd.

The separation from DA/SC was over the production QC and component cost cutting and shortcuts taken. Reeves being apparently quite pedantic / insistent on quality components and attantion to detail in assembly.

If you look into early Hiwatt (hylight) DR103 for example, you will notice the similarities between the DA/SC100 and the DR103 - in fact they are almost identical, right down to the routing of the wiring.... but if you look at anything that Harry Joyce assembled, you will note that the level of care, detail and precision of his work is a clear differentiator of how hylight/Hiwatt deviated from the DA/SC amps. the DA/SC amps were simply a little more 'built to a price' than they were 'built to a standard'.

This was cemented in about 1973 (if memory is half-accurate, I'm not great with dates, but it's around then) when Reeves left due to these shortcuts and poor quality/components/assembly methods. However, the designs for both remained basically the same... and the clear reference indicators for this are in the earliest of the SC120's and the DR201 with the 6xEL34 output stage, Identical input, choke and the 'optional' reverb circuits, which are almost identical.
When you look at amps after the DA/SC period (i.e. when it changed to Dallas Music Inc - aka DMI) the 6 input amps as they are widely known are VERY different to the hylight amplification circuits.
Hylight went to KT88's and dropped EL34's for example, and most all of this is pretty well documented from this era until Reeve's passing in 81, when the company basically went belly up and was purchased by the employees - aka Biacrown.

Like all good things - it came to an end, albeit slowly. Biacrown became the company that Reeves left.... in the pre DMI era of Dallas Arbiter. It was a result of financial mismanagement more than anything according to the various sources, and the amps were slowly being stuffed full of 'cheaper alternative components'. such as dropping the partridge transformers among the many parts.

So the remaining key difference between Arbiter and Hylight are the tone stacks. Initially DA/SC and Hiwatt's were identical - i.e. the tone stack was the same, output the same, reverb driver the same, the lot. In fact in the early days of hiwatt, Pete townshend's DR103's were actually Sound City amps with hiwatt badges.
Sometime before Reeves left, he had designed an active EQ tone stack, which he seemingly did not pursue at Hylight, but DA/SC did, and they used it on their non-pa amps, the 120 and 200. the 150 and the PA amps and the slaves did not have the active tone stack.

The interesting thing about this is the only really clearly defined difference between a Mk2,3 and 4 DA/SC 100/120 and a Hiwatt DR103/201 is the tone stack.
There are very few variables in the hiwatt designs post DA/SC, and it would seem the same for Da/SC-DMI period where the designs 'stagnated' but evolved with minor value alterations.

Whether its because Reeves was miffed at the poor QC/cost cutting at DA/SC or if it was simply something in the tone stacks design that he couldn't get working to his satisfaction (noise is a possible issue) is a bit moot.
The active EQ as it evolved in the post reeves DA/SC amps is very unique and very very clean.

This is one of the 'drawbacks' of the era, when players were looking for loud as well as some grit - like the Marshall JMP/SLP designs, but both the SC and Hiwatt didn't deliver at the same 'level' of dirt, and artists were looking for that.

It's one of the reasons the Sound City amps earned the nickname "Sounds Shitty". - because it wouldn't distort like a marshall.

Ultimately both DMI and Hylight would slowly fade and Marshall took marketshare and made bucketloads of plexi's and stacks. History is left to be written by the victors.... as they say.

Both DA/SC and Hylight were also using the same manufacturer to make their speaker Cabinets, although the choice of speakers was somewhat different. SC used mostly eminence, vega, fane and celestion as the rarest. Hylight used almost exclusively fane, but also celestion.
The only real differences over the period are front loaded versus rear in the 4x12 and the grillecloth used during different periods... some very early hiwatt's shared Da/SC grillecloth styles, until ultimately settling on the blue/gray basketweave, while Da/SC changed every other week.

The bottom line is that if you are wanting to buy into the hiwatt/reeves legacy, then you need to find an early 70's vintage custom 100 or a custom 50 head made before 1981. or a custom 200 (DR201) if you love searing pain of massive proportion.

for the Dallas Arbiter era Sound City amps, you are looking for any of the 4 input amps made before 1973.
Most desireable are the mark 1's. The mark 2 and 3 SC 100 amps are also desireable, but you need to look at the chassis for the Dallas Arbiter amps, to be certain you have a 'good one', otherwise you may be in for a bit of an exercise - or your amp tech will be....
The SC mark 4 amps are more difficult to objectively evaluate without removing the chassis from the head. I would not personally purchase one without having the chassis out of the head to investigate how many "trained professionals" have been inside it with their hacksaws and flamethrowers.

The best part about the Sound City 100 and early 120's is they are about half the price of a hylight/Hiwatt DR103 and they are essentially the same thing - except for that active eq stack on the later units.

Expect to pay over 4K for an early DR103. about 2K for an SC 100 mark1/2 although the mark 1 is becoming very hard to find and they are regularly fetching almost DR103 prices when they are in good condition.

Between the Sound city 50 and the Hiwatt custom 50, the active eq of the SC is to my ears at least, a more manageable and "wider ranging" eq/tone stack.

It's splitting hairs though. Both of these amps are legendary, and while Hiwatt is famous for loud and endorsed by serious bands of the era, (who, floyd, zeppelin, u2, keith... just to name a few) the reasons are not what you might think.

Loud, clean yep.... obvious. but the Hiwatt is known moreover for it's absolutely legendary reliability and stability when toured. Hardly ever needing the rear cover to be removed for even reseating the valves, the Hiwatt has superior reliability over it's rivals - especially marshall and fender.

it's the "plug n play" amp in the truest sense.

Because these amps are SO clean, and high powered, their sensitivity makes them revealing and somewhat difficult to play. If you can sound good plugged into a Da/SC or Hiwatt, then you'll sound like a rock god when you're plugged into a marshall. Hiwatts are so pick attack sensitive that they can really put you off - there is nowhere to hide with these amps. Like I said, revealing.
It's one of the reasons they were more niche than mainstream in the polularity contest.

Once you have played one though...... nothing really compares.

If I had to choose between my 100w plexi, my 100w quad reverb, my JC-120 or my SC 120R - I'd choose the Fender. Simply because it's the sound of familiarity, and the master volume..... which the Marshall, roland and the SC120R don't have. That master volume makes a difference...

Doesn't mean I don't love the Sound City amp, or any of the others for that matter - it's just that you don't need 6xEL34's at full noise all the time. It does have the nicest tone stack of all.

It's like a blackface fender "clean" but with a much nicer tone stack and even more power.

If you can handle the sensitivity of a blackface twin, then the Hiwatt is the next level up.
Probably on a par with a Super Twin for "need to know how to adjust knobs" to properly use it.

Like all things history, you can read a lot of "story" about the happenings at the time, but none of it really means squat until you play the amps.

It also becomes even more critically apparent that as soon as you get them opened up and side by side on a bench, that the differences are few and far between, and that is the most telling story about Hiwatt and Sound City in their original guise in the late 60's and early 70's.

[somanytoys]

Very nice, thanks.

That kind of historical stuff is always interesting to me.

It always makes me wonder if when people are buying the older amps, what they’re mostly buying into - if they’re buying into a piece history, or into some of the hype (I’m sure each has their share).

I also wonder with all of the leftover examples of great stuff out there, if any of the current companies are putting out stuff that’s just as good - older companies like the Vox handwired and maybe Fender reissues, and other ones like Rivera, Soldano, Swart, Milkman, etc. I also wonder if, just like some guitars, some were hit & miss and the magic ones are where the hype comes from, and which companies actually had such great QC that all of them produced were great.

The corporate buyouts over the years seem to have devalued brands quickly by using cheaper components, less skilled labor, etc. , so I understand that aspect.

[BlueSparkle]

....
It always makes me wonder if when people are buying the older amps, what they’re mostly buying into - if they’re buying into a piece history, or into some of the hype (I’m sure each has their share).

To an extent I guess both apply. For me personally, I am an E.Eng, so the circuit designs and their particular nuances/behaviours are more to my own interest. Practical learning is absolutely the best way to understand amplifier behaviour. Learning is what drives me, and fixing stuff along the way is a nice process.

I also wonder with all of the leftover examples of great stuff out there, if any of the current companies are putting out stuff that’s just as good - older companies like the Vox handwired and maybe Fender reissues, and other ones like Rivera, Soldano, Swart, Milkman, etc. I also wonder if, just like some guitars, some were hit & miss and the magic ones are where the hype comes from, and which companies actually had such great QC that all of them produced were great.

Do not for a minute think that because a company is still in existence, that it is producing "the goods". In the same way I can also iterate that the big 3 (F,M,V) produce handwired traditional amplifiers for a PREMIUM price - and yes, they are absolutely every bit as good and better than the originals.
The Fender reissues are a great example of modern PCB construction producing an excellent result at high repeatability and cost-efficiency.
A Twin Reverb Reissue is absolutely nothing to scoff at... unless you are the "vintage amp snob". But that's also not to say that there aren't production issues or failures - that is a quality control issue though.

Marshall have been on PCB's for decades and some of their most iconic models (and some of their absolute ball-tearing best) are PCB based.
Great examples are the JCM's and the DSL's, the Vintage modern and the reissue plexi's. - all use PCB. Some early examples had issues with the pcb's themselves being capacitive (leaky) but those are easy to sort out. It's a rare occurrence to see a turret board Marshall head these days.

Vox - still making handwired AC15's and AC30's and these are the superlatives of their history. but the everyday AC amps are PCB. Nothing wrong with them. I have an NT15H, which is essentially an AC15 circuit with a slightly different shape on the tonestack and a bypass switch as well as a triode/pentode switch. PCB based, and apart from some manufacturing quality issues (easily rectified - cathode and grid stopper resistors were inadequate wattage) is bloody awesome. I use it as my practice amp into an early 80's 1960a 4x12 loaded with G12T-75's. Sounds mega. But again - it is a volume production unit, and not a handwired premium model. Cost is a factor.

Hiwatt also had PCB designs and none of them are shoddy either. Where I would absolutely draw the line however is with Mesa. They are notoriously unreliable and a massive PITA to work on. They are great sounding amps, but they come with the penalty of 'something goes wrong, you will learn about real frustration' - as will the guy working on it. Opening a mesa is like finding a rats nest in the aircleaner of your 426 Chrysler hemi.

Every company has production issues - and no particular amp is without it's own "issues" be that a quality control or a particular characteristic. This is one reason the fenders marshalls and voxes are so popular - because they are generally speaking, pretty benign designs, and basic enough to be repaired by almost anyone who is halfway capable with a soldering iron and a schematic.

The 'boutique' amp industry / subset is simply made up of people trying to attain a higher level of tonal control and quality control - through component selection, moreso than new designs - because the designs are simply variations on existing circuits that stand up to the theory of physics.

"voicing" is a term which is organically applied, like sugar on your cereal. how much and what type is a personal preference. from a tone stack perspective, it simply comes down to value matching / combinations, component selection (type, tolerance) and the relationship in-circuit.

Alexander Dumble is the 'famous dude' in all of this, because he takes circuits and voices them specifically for artists, AND their instruments. yes, he takes it that far - all the way to the coils in the guitar. That's what makes his amps sing and why artists still queue up at his house.

There's no secret sauce or rocket science in it - just applied physics, and a lot of measuring - with both gear and ears. I could sit at work and use the curve tracer to profile every component in a circuit, to try and make things 'perfect' but the reality is that great sounding amps don't always have perfectly matched components.... some are deliberately mismatched in a symbiotic relationship. Again, the science is in the analysis and selection as much as it is in the ear.

The corporate buyouts over the years seem to have devalued brands quickly by using cheaper components, less skilled labor, etc. , so I understand that aspect.

Happens everywhere. You could do a DIY amp project and see how expensive it actually is to hand-manufacture every part... which would deliver a very pragmatic result and understanding of why PCB, SMD and automation exist in manufacturing. Less error / more consistency but at the expense of what.... labour costs, volume sales? It's a double edged sword.
There are certain popular products which require large scale production techniques to meet demand. There are just as many "unobtainable" and equally/ more desirable products with huge price tags and meticulous design, component selection and hand-assembled 'characteristics' (let's call it that instead of variable quality or defects, just to keep the vibe upbeat)

In the end the middle ground where buyer cash and sales price point meet is where the deal gets done. Very few of us say "I'll take that one" or "build it, money is no object".

We can all hope for the perfect amp, regardless, it will be different for everyone.

[hulakatt]

You guys are killing me. Now I'm obsessing over a Hiwatt and keep looking at the kit Mojotone is now offering.

[wooderson]

It always makes me wonder if when people are buying the older amps, what they’re mostly buying into - if they’re buying into a piece history, or into some of the hype (I’m sure each has their share).

For me, the most interesting vintage amps are ones that don't have a modern counterpart - Ampeg V2/V4, blackface/early silverface Bassman, Watkins/WEM, Music Man, Orange ORs - and it helps that they tend to be relatively affordable (except for the Oranges). The Vox AC50 fell into that until recently - you could get one cheaper than a new AC30.