2023 Hiwatt Custom 100 DR103

2023 Hiwatt Custom 100 DR103 - Factory Mistake

Рет қаралды 5,530

5 ай бұрын

Could have happened to the best of us.
But I'd honestly like to see some degree of QC pick this up before it gets shipped.
Come on guys, you're supposedly high-end.
Whatever that means these days, anyway.
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Webpage: www.bradsguitargarage.com.au
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Equipment:
Soldering:
Pace MBT station w/SX100 & PS-90 handpieces
Hakko 474 w/815 handpiece
Hakko 936 w/907 handpiece
Hakko FX-888D w/FX-8801 handpiece
Quick 861DW hot air station
BOFA fume extraction unit
Loctite Multicore solder (C511 / 362)
Test Equipment:
Fluke 11, 175, 177 & 179 handheld DMM's
Tektronix 2236 analog oscilloscope
Rigol DS-1054z digital oscilloscope
BK Precision 4017A sweep / function generator
BWD 160a function generator
HP 6236B triple output DC power supply
Kyoritsu 3132A insulation / continuity tester
Video equipment:
Overhead cam: Panasonic HC-V785 w/Audio Technica AT9946CM mic
Handheld cam: Panasonic DC-G85 w/Olympus M.Zuiko Pro 12-40mm f/2.8
On location cam: Panasonic DC-GH5s w/Panasonic-Leica 9mm f/1.7 & 12-60mm f/2.8
Capture card(s): Magewell HDMI USB, ATEN UC3020-AT, ATEN UC3021
Headset Mic: Audio Technica BP892xcW-TH
Lapel Mic: Rode Go
Editing: Adobe Premiere Elements
Hand Tools:
Wiha, Felo, Stanley screwdrivers
CK & Engineer cutters / pliers
RS Pro wire strippers
Sidchrome & Gear Wrench spanners, sockets & shifters
Veritas planes & chisels
Materials / Consumables:
JJ's / TAD electron valves
Elixir / Ernie Ball / D'Addario / Rotosound strings
Electrolube & DeoxIT cleaners, lubricants & chemicals.

Пікірлер: 57

@Cpt_Adama 5 ай бұрын

Looks like Hiwatt has a new factory authorized repair center down under 😉😁

@void_snw 5 ай бұрын

Gotta say, compared to like handwired Fenders, the insides of this make me happy. Nice and orderly.

@BradsGuitarGarage 5 ай бұрын

Visual neatness is not always the best for performance. It can be more of a marketing strategy than anything else.

@musterionsurly 5 ай бұрын

fascinating slip up. sound test confirms it's all good now, nice full sound.

@seanblythe9109 5 ай бұрын

It’s a good day to be a champion!

@bretfuzz925 5 ай бұрын

Great find! You have a special talent. Good luck getting Xicons. They are now Royal Ohm.

@stratfanstl 5 ай бұрын

Even with this parts error, I have to say... The interior of the amp looks immaculate. Would appear to reflect pretty high quality control and focus on clean wiring, routing, etc. I haven't seen any new amp with a chassis that clean.

@michaelmarchei8539 5 ай бұрын

Amp sounds stellar on bridge pickup

@itsonlyme9938 5 ай бұрын

If I was building that amp I would have a spare board correctly populated and put it next to the board I am going to construct and checking the values.

@Buzzel-NL 5 ай бұрын

Simple mistake to make, if you are a DIYer. Only 1 colour band is different. But you should expect QA to find this before shipping the amp. If have got an early 2000 Hiwatt and have begon to trace it out and it deviates from all Hiwatt schematics I found. And it does not have any balance resistors on the capacitors... so it holds its charge for ages. But despite all that it does sound damn fine.

@Andy_Yates 5 ай бұрын

Nice catch, maybe the factor will reimburse your customer for the repair? One can hope at least since there is video evidence haha

@J.C... 5 ай бұрын

Really nice looking turret board wiring. Pretty sure I'd rather have that over Point-to-Point wiring. All the P2P wiring I've seen was MESSY. Look at a 53 Gibson GA40. It's a rat's nest of wires and components soldered to tube sockets and jacks. I couldn't believe how messy it was. It had no turret board. No eyelet board. No any board. Just tube sockets and jacks and all the caps and resistors and diodes solder to those things. I always see people refer to turret and eyelet boards as point-to-point wiring when they should actually be saying handwired. P2P = handwired but handwired doesn't automatically mean it's P2P, which is where many get confused I think.

@BradsGuitarGarage 5 ай бұрын

Oh, absolutely. Once this little problem was sorted, it's back to being a world-class amp. Just a bit sad that nobody picked it up at the factory, as even the most basic testing I do as part of a basic service showed it up immediately.

@PhuketMyMac 5 ай бұрын

Amp sounds great!

@artistadistrada5238 5 ай бұрын

Good work! I see there's something different frome the classic dr 103 layout. I can see a 1m resistor in the preamp where usually find the 560k

@artistadistrada5238 5 ай бұрын

And that 68 k near the final tubes. I also see the 470 ohm resistor is in a different position. Is it right? Also i can't say what those two black resistors near the 68k are.

@victorbeebe8372 5 ай бұрын

Aloha and Mahalo Brad! I guess taking a good look pays off.😂

@weschilton 5 ай бұрын

Nice catch! I bet you are the only tech within 1,000 miles that would've caught that.

@BradsGuitarGarage 5 ай бұрын

I'd like to think that anyone with a DMM would catch that.

@YeatzeeGuitar 5 ай бұрын

That's fun! 😆

@doofwop 5 ай бұрын

2023? Whoever built it at the factory must be a graduate of Gen Z Electronics Academy. For what these amplifiers cost, there is no excuse for this. There are better amps out there for the insultingly high price. This repair should have been comped by Hiwatt for the inconvenience suffered.

@Lu_Woods 5 ай бұрын

Sounds sah-weet now. ; )

@thatampguy 5 ай бұрын

It's a great week for factory mistakes

@hollowheadsrestorations 5 ай бұрын

New camera? Looks really sharp on this video..

@PsionicAudio 5 ай бұрын

If a layout has a 2.2K and a 22K next to each other that should be Item 1 on any QA checksheet. It’s such an obvious simple error that it’s wholly predictable.

@RobbieF 5 ай бұрын

Other than the QC "Oops", what is your general take on the amp's build quality and components? Thanks, Brad!

@markspurgin8225 5 ай бұрын

👍 👍 😎

@daveneumann6361 5 ай бұрын

Brad Mulry Gang ?

@Tonyolivere 5 ай бұрын

Just subbed to this channel. I appreciate this even though it’s a pretty big disappointment for HiWatt fans. This type of negligence is seen everywhere these days except in Wizard and Red Seven. I do believe these guys are on another level of give a shit .. 😅 Cool channel, thanks again , you cured my Hiwatt GAS 🎉

@BradsGuitarGarage 5 ай бұрын

Hiwatt can be fantastic, but may require a bit of a checkover on later ones, and a bit of a major service on the older ones if it hasn't been carried out recently.

@rogerpennel1798 5 ай бұрын

@@BradsGuitarGarage - You mention adding flyback diodes frequently. Which pins do they go between on 6V6s and El84s? I see them mentioned often but no diagrams.

@nickbenjamin6527 5 ай бұрын

In the first part of the demo with volumes all central is the slight crunch overdrive in the preamp or poweramp (or both)?

@BradsGuitarGarage 5 ай бұрын

A bit of both. It's only got 2 out of the 4 EL34's installed at the customer's request. Still ridiculously painfully loud when it starts to break up!

@D-Lach 5 ай бұрын

My question is not directly related to the Hiwatt video, but it is related to the "factory mistake" part of your title and to your Mesa Boogie videos. I know that current Mesas are a nightmare, but are the early ones any good? I have a chance to get an '80s .22 Caliber for a great price. Thanks.

@BradsGuitarGarage 5 ай бұрын

Every single Mesa has design and construction issues. Some can be remedied relatively easily. Others with difficulty, Some are not economically viable. The .22's biggest issue is heat and unconventional design. They can sound fantastic, but require a lot of work by a tech who is intimately familiar with that model and it's shortcomings. The issues are not something I have time to go over online, but look to my and Lyle's videos on the amp to get an idea.

@D-Lach 5 ай бұрын

@@BradsGuitarGarage Thank you for the detailed reply. I was planning to try out the amp this weekend, but instead I will look for something else.

@fiddlix 5 ай бұрын

For some reason this doesn’t surprise me. It’s a real egg on Hiwatts face.

@tedmich 5 ай бұрын

its only a $3500 amp...🤯

@crapmalls 5 ай бұрын

Gilmour wept

@pirhala 5 ай бұрын

I bought a DR405 back in 2006 and boy let me tell you the problems I had with it…. My Hiwatt story is a very long one, so I won’t say it here. But I’ll let you know that they basically told me to go F myself. About a thousand dollars later and I had it fixed. I did blow about 4 sets of KT88’s while out on tour. They originally had put in 100ohm 3 watt screen grid resistors in the amp.

@GenetNasty 5 ай бұрын

I have a Harrison Bros era Hiwatt , my attempts to source any information from them has been futile, they seem to have a capricious attitude to those who can not go to their factory and demand satisfaction. Rock star status and you have Hiwatt all over you. Poor work Hiwatt , Sir l concur .

@pirhala 5 ай бұрын

@@GenetNasty you know the worst part of it?… imagine a youngster that gets into rock&roll at an early age and idolizes their hero’s and the equipment they use to make music. They grow up yearning to have the chance to be able to play out of an amp like that, and then when they finally spend their hard earned money (or sell their car) to get one of these amps, only to be let down when they find out how badly manufactured it was. I also tried multiple times to contact them… directly and through an amp tech. I even called them from the states and left a message… boy, was that a bad idea when I saw the phone bill. At the time, I had the chance to buy the DR405 Hiwatt with the fane loaded 410 and 15 cabinets or an orange AD 200 with the same speaker configuration… I should have gone with the orange I guess. Given both companies issues, I probably would still have had problems though. I did get the problems sorted with the hiwatt and it’s a hell of an amp, but it came with a lot of grief and a lot of money spent. Way to ruin a guy’s dreams, hiwatt. And fuck Mark at kaysound too. There, I said it.

@GenetNasty 5 ай бұрын

Looking around the internet over the years when Hiwatt is the focus of the conversation the chat is unfortunate . Hoping the new owners can show a little concern toward their paying brand loyal customers as Pop Stars amps come free . Sound City , Reeves and Hi Tone look like excellent alternatives manufactured by amp tragics , comparatively the same money built with integrity.

@IIIVIIVIII_amplifiers 5 ай бұрын

What year is this amp?

@BradsGuitarGarage 5 ай бұрын

2023. It's in the thumbnail, but I've just edited the title to reflect that.

@travismccartney 5 ай бұрын

It is shocking that they don't QC the amps better.

@jutukka 5 ай бұрын

The purpose of QC is find out even much smaller mistakes than that one. This kind of error causes so clearly audible abnormal behaviour to the audio signal that if it was not noticed at all, it means that there was no QC at all. If somebody checks if the amp bursts into flames or not after it is turned on, or makes some sound or not sound at all, is not QC. 😂

@daz4627 5 ай бұрын

Ted Mulry never sounded so good :-)

@Topnotchguitars1 5 ай бұрын

Who builts Hiwatt nowadays?

@ZiggysDad 2 күн бұрын

Hiwatt UK. New owners in 2019 but all they did was incorporate all Hiwatt companies from around the world under the UK Hiwatt umbrella. They are still made in the UK to military speck but apparently not this one. 😁

@sjgreaves 5 ай бұрын

Nice cleans bit the driven stuff isn't to my taste - then again I'd imagine it would improve when really cranked (probably). I didn't know Hiwatt was still a going concern, well not as a UK company but I did a bit of googling and it seems there is a company called Britampco who (claim to be) making Hiwatts, Park and Wem amps in UK, looks like the company was formed in 2022. Your comment on the QC is on the button and is quite telling I think. "Built to the original spec" allegedly - well, obviously not quite in this case... There was a US based company using the "Reeves" name and making some great HiWatt sounding amps under license, not re-issues, more "flavour of".. FWIW