I'm ready to sell - DR103/SE4123 stack from 1974

[bmellott]

I think I would sell my amp now. I bought this in Frankfurt Germany in 1974. It has been my main gigging amp until about 2 years ago. I'm in Montana (USA), and have decided on $5000 for a price. Anyone interested?

Hiwatt stack.jpeg (317.75 KiB) Viewed 5534 times

[Dr.HI-TONE]

Hi,
do you have any internal pics of the amp wiring and speakers?
thanks,

[bmellott]

I do not have those pictures right now... but I knew this question would come up and I'm quite prepared to open it up and get them. Over the course of the next couple days I will do it. I expect I can just post them here (let me know if that's not correct).

On a related note: I remember reading a post (or posts) on here about speakers, and there was a reference to "cone codes". What does that mean and where do I find them? (I ought to know that before taking speaker pictures).

for what it's worth, DR103 is s/n 6121, SE4123 s/n 4971 and 4976.

[mhuss]

Check the 'Hylight era Cabs' list, there's pictures there showing some cone codes.

Posting more pix here is fine.

[Zells]

Oooh....sweet stack!

More details and photographs of internal amp guts & speakers will help potential buyers assess their level interest, of course.

[bmellott]

a few amplifier internal pictures here... I hope I didn't overdo it.

speaker cabinets to follow.

[bmellott]

first speaker cabinet - s/n 4976. Now, I have looked these over pretty well and I do not see a cone code on any of these 4 speakers ANYWHERE.

[bmellott]

Next speaker cabinet - s/n 4971. AHA! This time I found a cone code that I could photograph, and now that I see what it takes to locate them I found all of them (in this cabinet anyways). I will need to reopen the other cabinet and look again - and I do expect to find them.
In this cabinet:
NE speaker cone code = WHF 1005 (this particular speaker was reconed in about 1980)
NW, SE, and SW speaker cone codes = 010 003 (see photo of the one I could get a camera into)

[bmellott]

Now I suppose it's time for a little bit of a story. I bought this amplifier while I was in the service in Europe over the course of a few months (receipts say 1.8.74, 16.8.74,and 31.1.75). The military shipped it home for me in about June of 1975, and I took it to Michigan and played in clubs with it until my return home in 1978.

I had a modification done to this amp to run the brilliant input in series into the normal input (the extra red wire can be seen in the amp pictures). I had been exposed to the high gain master volume amps at the time and felt this would make the amp more flexible. As far as I'm concerned it worked out very well and I used it that way up until I "retired" it about 3 years ago. The receipt for that work is dated 4/5/79.

Sometime in about 1980 or so one of the speakers started rattling (voice coil rub I expect) and I had it reconed by the same individual who did the modification (I have no receipt for that though. I was not very electrically savvy at the time and I'm still wondering what possessed me to add the wire into the cabinet when I put it back together (see picture of cab 4971 NW speaker).

I've used this amp pretty regularly ever since I bought it - though it has rarely ever been run very hard. I even considered putting a multi turn pot in the master volume location because on the present pot the difference between "you can just start to hear it" and "it's louder than anything else here" is only about 15 degrees of turn - if that.

I took a break for a couple years and when I came back out... around 2014 or so I believe - I had an output tube failure and decided it might be wise to do some maintenance on this unit. I replaced all the electrolytic caps and all the output tubes (and some of the preamp tubes - though they had some limited replacements sometime along the way). I think the caps came from Dr Hi-Tone and there are some posts in this forum from back then when I was asking about it.

Looking back, I probably didn't need to recap it. I have also since pulled 5 of the output tubes in a half hearted attempt to tame some of the volume out of it. The Bulgin power connector broke up somewhere along the way and I hard wired it in it's current configuration (i did it this way because it kept me from drilling holes in it). I also replaced the power switch at the same time as the caps. It had been failed for a number of years (at least it failed "ON" so I could just unplug it to shut it off).

[bmellott]

One last item worthy of mention...

As regards the "series modification" on the normal and brilliant input channels: The way this was done was to have the lower 'brilliant' input jack remain the input for that channel, and to have the upper 'brilliant' input jack be the output of that same channel. The 'normal' channel was left undisturbed.

In order to run the 2 channels in series I use a little patch cable (about 3" long) to run from the upper 'brilliant' jack to the lower 'normal' jack. I also would at times plug straight into the normal input and skip the series config altogether (I even had an A-B Y switch for that for a brief period).

I have considered putting it back the way it started, but it's actually been a very useful modification that (to my mind anyways) expands the useful range of the amp. I think because the Hiwatt amp stages tend to be so tight and clean - the series configuration is very controlled. I have seen some other amps with series run channels that were pretty much completely unusable at any practical volume. This setup does not behave that way. I have gotten a lot of positive comments regarding the tone of this amp.

I know that unmodded Hiwatts are the most desirable items, but I would suggest trying this arrangement out before arbitrarily undoing it. It's quite interesting.

[OldSchoolDave]

THAT is one lovely stack! Congratulations.

The power cable twisties make the hair on my neck stand up, but that is an easy fix.

WF cones aren't generally as well regarded as the originals but, in retrospect, you were probably fortunate to have the recone done when you did. Are all other speakers perfectly clear?

Dave

[bmellott]

Hello, and yes - as near as my ear can tell all the speakers are clear. I also opened up that first cabinet and verified that the cone codes on all the speakers in that one are '010 003'. I'm enlisting the help of a couple friends to double check my ears (just because my ear says they're clear...). We are also going to exercise it a little.