Big, heavy, loud, and obsolete? Yes, please. Also, I love the way it sounds

Somewhere back in the 1970s, my brother took his summer job money and bought a brand new Hiwatt 100 watt stack. Purchased from a now-defunct Toronto music store, it was, in fact, the very first one they uncrated from England. This particular store had a British tech who'd do a mod to the brilliant channel before they even got the Hiwatts on the sales floor! This mod made the brilliant channel the most high gain channel of any amp I've encountered to this very day. The thing was an absolute MONSTER! Your observation about the Fane speakers is so true....and nobody else seems to have made note of that. SO DIFFERENT from the sound of Celestians. A band mate of mine used to play a big ol' Ampeg head through a Hiwatt cab - it had a noticeably "Hiwatt" sound to it.

Minor correction- Matt Pike with Sleep still tours with a massive wall of amps. During his Rig Rundown, the idling noise alone was massive.

Some of the cleanest wiring ever produced. Nice amp!

What I love about your demo videos is while you’re playing, you play riffs that’ll let the notes breathe and you don’t play to show off your skill but to highlight the gear.

Good thing in heavy combos and cabinets is that they are really stable. I have a diy 4x12 cab made from birch plywood and I used it as a bottom cabinet. Now it's not even plugged in, but it's a good looking riser. If somebody wants to steal it, they have a hard time.

Speaking of where the rest of the amps are in the world, I'd imagine Dave Gilmour has them safely stored away! lol. Man was fond of these back in the day according to every gear interview I've ever read.

The wiring is is a true work of art... 👏 👏 👏

Even with casters lugging that amp on gravel must have quite tough, just for that you earn a thumbs up. A very informative video. Thank you.

Loving the puke stain down the front from someone trying to carry it up the stairs to the rehearsal above the pub.

This brand is the ultimate clean amp. They take effects really well.

Geez man, you must have some pretty tolerant neighbors.

i just learned more about amps in 12 min than i have in my whole life! master volume, thank you! gain and boost, thanks again!!

FYI, just because a guitar amplifier control says "Gain" it doesn't necessarily mean that it is actually controlling the gain of the amplifier circuit. More often than not it's only controlling the output level/volume of an amplifier stage. When an amplifier has an actual gain control it is typically a negative feedback control that changes the actual gain of the amplifier circuit. One of the ways that you can tell if the control is actually controlling the circuit gain is that gain controls are almost always noisy when you rotate the control. Whereas a clean volume/level control is nearly silent while it is being rotated. An actual gain control also affects the bandwidth of the circuit, so the tone can change as the control is rotated. Although with as much distortion as many guitar players use it may be difficult to notice the tonal change. The only actual feedback control that Hiwatt used was the "presense" control which affected the midrange tone. It actually affected the midrange gain.

Nothing beats an amp when it's seriously pushing air!

Really a fantastic video. Also, I couldn't help but be amused watching you play 70's classic rock riffs thru an ancient amp with a space-age Ormsby.

Hitting it with boost really reminded me of my Fryette D120. I know Steve was inspired by Hiwatts when he started VHT(yes I know that’s a oversimplified history) but you can really hear the lineage between the amps here. Especially with the Fane speakers. Fanes > Celestions for heavy music.

Wow, that looks like it might weigh almost as much as an 70's Ampeg SVT. Hiwatts sound great, and that last tone demo you did, the third channel plus boost sounded so fat. It's a shame all that old stuff is so damn heavy.

the polarity switch is for switching the virtual ground in the AC mains supply when 2 wire cords were common. if it had been updated to a 3 wire it is not necessary. Nothing to do with audio signal polarity.

That crunch sounds really good ! What a cool sounding amp

I love videos like this where kids are just discovering things we knew about back in the 60s. They talk like they know everything but get so much stuff wrong along the way.

10:54 I got a Sunn Coliseum Bass off a guy that the first owner converted into a 1x15 + 2 horn combo (with casters, mercifully). Sounds amazing, takes distortion like a champ, will basically never leave the corner of my room because of its weight.

Being in the desert I get to see bands with Hiwatt on stage and the sound is sweetly different 🤘🏻🌵🍺

HIWATT are still some of the most road rugged and serviceable amps.

No. You miss something. The high/bright input was for guitar. The low for bass and keyboards. It was a instrument amplifier.

4x12 combos are rare beasts indeed. Fender made one called the quad reverb. Certainly not something an individual would lug around.

I’d love to see a video on a vintage high powered solid state amp!!

Glad you gave some love to Hiwatt. Wish they were better know and more available.

Dude I own the Reeves Custom Jimmy 100 it's the equivalent to the Hiwatt and I absolutely love it.... I was a high gain amp guy but now I use pedals.

Good job with the video. Not an amp we see every day for sure

Thanks for this man. I recently moved abroad and your video uploads just feel like home.

You can hear why so many players of this era pulled out their PAFs and T Tops and put in a Super Distortion or a JB if they were wanting some dirty tones. Great video thanks!

..The place is really jumping to the Hiwatt amps 'Til a 20-inch cymbal fell and cut the lamps In the blackout they dance right into the aisle And as the doors fly open even the promoter smiles….. The Who / Long Live Rock

i like to see how this channel is upscaling in quality content. Keep it up!

Genuinely impressed by your content. I’m enjoying the way you handle things and can imagine you’d be a great guy to have a pint with and discuss music and guitars. Thanks for this.

Dude your channel is criminally underrated. Great content and the way you structure your videos is great IMO, super educational but a digestible amount of time.

OMG dude! THAT is an awesome amp. One that I would love to have in my studio 100%. I would love to hear a bass through it as well. I can just imagine what that would sound like. Thanks for showing it off. That wiring is amazing. If you ever want to pass it on, let me know!

FYI, master volume turns down the signal BEFORE the power section, so you're still only getting preamp breakup. The only way to crank the power amp and lower the overall volume is with an attenuator. Most people hate vintage amps with master volume controls, because the amp isn't going to sound it's best unless the MV is turned all the way up. Also, you can skip the A/B switch if you want, and just jumper the two channels together with a patch cable.

This was a great video. It really sounded like Townshend. It was a bummer when Pete switched to Mesa Boogie amps with those awful EV speakers.

They just don't make things that last the test of time, I remember Hiwatt, I play a Carvin Pro Bass 300 4x10's and a 15, I have to retire soon, it's on its last leg, since carvin no longer makes amps and parts are hard to come by, it has turned into a rather large paperweight. I've never played it past 4, because it's so dang loud. I'm new to your channel, and I've loved every video I've seen so far. Keep up the awesome work.

Another great video, KDH. This amp is very cool and unique, and the way you had it set up sounds killer. I'm very impressed by the internal wiring as well.

You need to time travel back in time when big was better. I gigged a lot in the early and mid 80's. Everyone used or wanted big amps. My old band had two guitarists, one had an early full Carvin stack and the other had a full Marshall stack. Not to mention one guitarist had a rack of effects too. I played bass with a Sunn beta combo and lined out to a peavey power amp with 2x15 cabinet. We played bars, weddings and other types of small venues. House PA's didn't exist at all places and were usually underpowered, so everyone needed big amps. This amp would easily fit in back then. Amazing that we had the energy to play after setting up all that stuff.

thanks for the awesome trip down memory lane. in the late 70s had to move some of these heavy amps and my back is out to this day! lol. Very loud though as you were saying. Have a great weekend and love your content.

Saves time on home improvement projects. Very handy for peeling paint off the walls.

KDH I really respect you. I saw you first on a Star guitar programme and then on your Chappers vid. You are personable, respectful and have musical talent. Added to this your hard work investigating stuff and it adds up to.......success.

i have a dr201 1971 ? 4xkt88 hylight, harry joyce. member of the family since almost new apart from rumours the stranglers had used it briefly. you will never find a cleaner sounding, more powefull amp in this lifetime. i only have one sound city 4x12 (cousins !) i respect my neighbours too much to get it out often, but when i take the cover off, the lovely smell of the beast hits me, then gently comes the lovely warm hum and i'm in heaven.

What a beast of an amp! Dan Hawkins is the man. Made me reeeaally want a 1987x

The closest I can get to that Hiwatt sound is with my rackmount amp, Peavey Classic Stereo Tube Amp 50/50 into a sealed 2x10 and a sealed 1x15. Honestly, with the right preamp style pedal that old Peavy rack head imitates classic stuff quite well but no "Master Volume" knob to save my ears! It's the cabinet styles that are a harder match. The two Falcon 10's and the Eminence 15 seem to give me some versatility in tone shaping close to some old amps. My rig is a trip, the amp was likely made for keyboard line level stuff because the only volume knob for each channel is BEFORE the preamp stage, so I crank those to max and push it with an old but awesome Yamaha MV802 stereo line mixer. All this leads to patching three different stereo signals from my pedal board via DB25 to TRS cable, reverb, delay, and a side chained "synth" channel from a EHX Superego+ and mix them all before going to the amp. It sounds exotic when I can crank up the mixer past half. Master Volume, - what a concept, wish I had it on the Peavey. Long Live the Hiwatt- killer amp,

A few technical inaccuracies in here. The greatest one is that a master volume does not give access to power amp crunch, not even if it is a post phase inverter master volume or PPIMV (which only allows the phase inverter tube to potentially overdrive, which is admittedly a part of the power amp, but not a power tube). It is as much preamp distortion as in 'modern amps'. Also even though guitarists say so, turning a clean amp's overall volume up until break-up does not deliver pure power amp distortion, but most commonly a mix of the preamp AND the power amp being overdriven. This is exactly what makes the signature sound of non-MV Marshalls and all those oldschool Rock bands.

First time I’ve ever heard a KZfaqr play a Tora Tora riff 🤘🏼Good on ya 👍

Great video..would love to see more about hiwatt amps. Thank you. 2thumbs up.

Check out Reeves Amplification as he is making new Amos based on the original Hiwatts. He also is selling replacement "purple back" speakers. The sample videos on his site are out of this world good with the tone he is getting with these amps!

Dude, that was a very quirky, interesting video. Really enjoying the channel!

I have a 1973 Traynor YRM-1 that is also shockingly silent compared to modern amps A recap on your Hiwatt might get rid of that tiny little bit of buzz with the volume cranked. The polarity switch should probably be removed btw.

For clarification, what most people call the effect of "gain" in a guitar amp, is actually clipping.or distortion. Overdrive occurs when the power amp is hit hard enough to cause power amp clipping which is the type of tone we all know from Classic Rock and is what you get when you crank a tube amp. Preamp distortion occurs in a "high gain" amp, with moderate amounts of clipping between stages to add harmonic complexity and is then run into a super clean, over built power amp

I built a HiTone 50 watt kit years ago. Fujian Cedar Cab. 4 x Jensen 12” lightweight neodymium speakers. Its unreal. Yes, dead quiet. Plug a ToneKing Ironman II attenuator between the amp and cab and you enter a beautiful universe. I’ve found I prefer to drive the amp more and the pre-amp less. This breakup suits my needs.

The amps have no problem - the problem is having a stadium to crank them in like Pete Townshend.Remember, Keith Richards used Ampeg SVT 300 watt bass amps all the way up, the only way to get that underline that sound.Great show.

I had one of these in the late 80s. You didn't mention the problem of just moving it around in a vehicle. Yea, it is insanely heavy but it also won't fit in most passenger cars. I had to use a truck or a van. Then, imagine the problem of going to a gig and it starts to pour rain and your miserable amp is uncovered in the back of a truck. There is no place to move it because you are by yourself so you try to find an overpass or something.

Sounds great! Especially with the boost

Wow - I'd love to have one of these! I used a 200 watt valve amp (4 x KT88) in the 1970s and always used an external preamp (Echolette NG51)!

That’s just awesome. Thanks for sharing this.

Great video. I had a couple friends in the late 80s, early 90s, who played in an L.A. thrash band and they both had Hiwatts. What happened was Hiwatt was trying to make a comeback so they reissued some of their old 100 Watt stacks. They didn't sell well so my friends were able to each buy a stack less than half off. As my drummer was also in the same band with these clowns I would often plug into one of their amps for band rehearsal, as they kept them in his home studio, rather than bring my heavy Boogie combo. I'd throw a fuzz box in front and it sounded workable. Not great, but workable. These days high gain amps with better features, not to mention lighter weight, are a dime a dozen.

Steven Fryette has talked about loving Hiwatts and their tone influenced the original VHTs(now Fryette). For this reason, I must bow to Hiwatt. If you've never played a Fryette, you're missing out. I'm settling for a Mesa at the moment because I can't find/afford the Fryette I want.

This might be nitpicky, but technically it's not gain, it's distortion. Gain is the ratio of output voltage in an amplifier compared to the input voltage, so you would have, say, 2:1 gain, or something like that. Then there's headroom - how much signal the amplifier can take before it starts breaking up. And then there's the distortion, which happens when the signal exceeds the headroom. Thing is, in many guitar amplifiers you use the gain knob on the first amplification stage to drive the second amplification stage harder and get more distortion. What you have there is a high headroom amp. There's something called a negative feedback loop, when the power amp reroute the inverse of its output signal (through a resistor, to decrease the amount) into its input, subtracting it from its input signal, essentially lowering the amount of power amp distortion you get. The presence knob is essentially a high pass filter attached to the negative feedback loop that allows you to ground higher-mid frequencies from negative feedback, thus subtracting less of them from the input signal and allowing a brighter sound. Negative feedback is the secret to high headroom power amps. You can also have positive feedback loops, especially in solid state amps and pedals. Here's a funny thing: the diode clipping distortion used in many budget amps and most OD/Distortion pedals actually grounds peaks of the signal, lowering the overall volume, gain of the pedal, adding more distortion (in hard-clipping diodes, when the signal peaks and valleys exceed the forward voltage of the diode, they get grounded, so you can turn a sine wave into something more similar to a square wave). With very few modifications you could get this amp to give you as much distortion as you need; but you would notice a loss of actual gain. Maybe I didn't communicate the difference between volume and gain properly: volume is the objective value of audio signal, measured in decibels; gain is the relation between the output signal and the input signal, expressed in a ratio like 2:1. Distortion is a lot harder to measure, because there are many different components to it. E.g. harmonic distortion would be measured by the root square of its harmonic components, but I doubt anyone here is prepared to take an oscilloscope to the amp and measure harmonic components for various input signals and amp settings. Enough to know that tubes have a very "imperfect" distortion, essentially compressing the peaks and valleys the higher the signal gets, with different tubes at different plate voltages showing different characteristics. Which, while electronically imperfect, many people, including me, consider more pleasing. Solid state components basically cut off the top of the signal. Which often sounds harsh, especially in lower-end amps. I don't think a well-made solid state amp is inferior to a tube amp; both have their uses, but as the lower end segment is dominated by cheap solid state stuff, it is generally perceived that solid state amps are worse than tube amps. Anyone who has played a Roland JC-120, another very clean and very loud amp, would disagree, because JC-120 is a marvel of clean, transparent sound and monstrous headroom. TL;DR gain is the amplification of the input signal, not the amount of distortion you get. Distortion is when the input signal exceeds the headroom.

this is the best sounding amp ive EVER heard, good lord…

Should be a second E on the end of "obsolete" ;-) Oh, and there's no such thing as an obsolete Hiwatt, they sound absolutely fabulous. That Pedal Show briefly had two Hiwatt heads in their studio and, even without the Fanes they should have had, they sounded utterly epic...

Love the sound you got out of this, but I do wish we could have heard it with the master volume up. Speaker clipping shouldn't be overlooked when discussing the sounds from old amps like this!

wow i literally was just wondering yesterday why there is 2 volume knobs and looked up what the actual difference is, good timing.

Sounds Awesome!

Well explained… I ran across one at a music festival in NZ. It had headroom to burn but most impressive was the low end freq response and the overall tightness of the sound. I was greatly impressed….

04:39 Oh my God, you are actually playing Tora Tora - 'Guilty' from their 1989 debut album! These guys are friends of mine from right here in Memphis, TN. If you have never heard of Tora Tora, which is not unusual, and just kinda made that up I would be shocked.

I will NEVER get over those ridiculous jumbo combo amps lol. Like, what was the thinking? "I know what people really hate about amps, portability! If you arent throwing out your back before every gig, are you really a player?" Some Amp maker in the 70's (probably)

I love the way John Wetton used these amps back in 1974. They sound beastly!

Was that a little of Tora Tora I heard? That brings back some memories.

Lol. Great video! I have a '75 Quad reverb, 4x12 combo. When he said "it's heavy" I feel that pain. Lol

Great informative Presentation.

Great breakdown of tube amps. It sounds big... real big.

Great shirt 😎 I also did not realize you were Superman, if you can carry that amp. Also, great mini-documentary of this amp. 😁 Cheers!

A lot of old amps were made so a guitar player and bass player could share an amp, I had a magnatone amp that was marketed to accordion players , they were known for their built-in vibrato, it sounded amazing up there with a univibe, it was unlike anything i ever heard up to that point, i ended up retiring it because i could not find the unique tubes it used

i m a bass player, but the sweetest guitar sound i ve heard came 1st from a fender twin reverb, and 2nd from a vox ac130

Truly a vintage sounding amp. Really killer.

Kind of a nice change too listen from the high gain screech overload thanks for the demo

I've played Hiwatts for 25 years. Nothing can touch em.

wow man thx for the vid, my band mates dad had one of these's laying around the studio, we loved fucking with it.

Man that sounds PERFECT.

That is one killer amp. Awesome video man. Certainly overkill for me. Yet I admit the name Hiwatt holds a special place in my heart due to Gilmour. I know thats so silly. However it is he and my son that sonically convinced me, a then 27 year vet drummer, to instead of returning to kit right away, I'd pick up a guitar in the first place. Great video here KDH!!

Love the amp! Despite the massive size (and sound!), would really love to have one.

Love those quality built tube amps.

I definitely wouldn't tour with one of these lol, but I've seen amps like them in studios and music schools as like in house amps for productions. The big Christmas performance for the kids, etc. They're awesome for recording and if you only have to move it once in a while, it's not a bad purchase at all.

I love these old "built to last" 70's amps

This is an excellent amp, along with marshals, Laneys and fenders, of-that era are legends 😮 , great hand wired amps from an electrical maintenance point of view… keep on rockin

That was an incredibly good sounding amp.

Love your videos. If you want ideas for more topics, explain why you use the damping wrap at the nut or why people bridge the inputs on four input amps.

Exodus used Hiwatt amps boosted with Boss SD-1s on Bonded By Blood.

"And that is why you are never going to see one of the big heavy Hiwatt's ever again" (walks out to concert) "Hey, look, there's one right now"

Sounds amazing

Oh man that thing reminds me of my "marshall mb4410" 😅 Also a back breaker but much loved and much much younger.

that sound, without the boost, is amazing

Basically: how the Marshall super lead were able to go from AC/DC's Back In Black to Van Halen's 1984 to Metallica's Kill 'Em All Yes, they all used the same model amp, but in different ways, with different output pickups and different tricks to get that extra UMF (Angus Young used Gibson T-top pickus, jumped the channels and used greenback speakers, Eddie van Halen used a Di'marzio Super Distortion pickup, a bunch of effects and also the greenbacks, and James Hetfield used Seymour Duncan Invader pickups, a ProCo RAT II Distortion pedal and Creamback speakers)

My early gigs in '76 I played with a non-preamp volume amp...set very loud! Sometimes with the amp turned fully around to face the back wall. Ah, memories.