vintageHIWATTconvention.com

Welcome to the Vintage HIWATT Forum Fabrizio!

Hi everyone. My name is Sieds and i'm basically a newbie in the entire guitar world.

About one year ago i have started to learn to play the guitar, taking lessons. Its not easy when you never ever had a guitar in your hands before and when you have reached the age of 43, but it's worth all the efforts .

My musical interests are prog and sympho, and i´m very impressed by the Gilmour-sound. That's how i got to the Hiwatt amps. I´ve been educated originally in electronics, but changed to ICT pretty soon after. I figured building amps would make a nice combination of my old profession and the new hobby. And thats how i got to getting myself a VHR Custom 100 kit!

Sieds

Hello.

I’m an owner of a ’74 DR103 4-inputter. I’ve owned it for about 7 years. Last year, it was stolen from our practice space along with several other wonderful things. I went through all the stages of loss, but eventually settled into the ANGER stage for quite a while. Luckily enough, someone tried to sell it on ebay a few months after it was stolen and after some deliberation with various NC county police officers, it is now back under my watchful eye.

Since it made its way back, I thought I would go “all in”, join this group, and start pestering the group with random questions now and again.

Thanks!
H.

Welcome to the Vintage HIWATT forum!

What a story! Glad you got your amp back!

Hi!

I'm a Boston-based guitarist and a huge fan of Gilmour and Lifeson. As of Sunday, I am now a proud (actually downright giddy) owner of a 1977 DR103. I've always been a combo guy prior to this, so I've got no cab to use with it yet. Now the hunt for the perfect cab begins. So if anyone's hiding a Super Starfinder 200 somewhere, feel free to msg me. I'm looking forward to joining the community and pestering you all with my newbie Hiwatt questions.

Welcome Empathy.

Hi everybody,

My name is Tom Huff. I live in N.E. Ohio and just got my second lead100r. For $$ reasons I sold my first one back in '94. I know. I know. I couldn't find a Hylight era Custom 50 which is what I really want. The search continues.

The head came with a broken power switch. I'm going to run around today looking for a replacement switch then try and draw the police to the house.

Wish me luck.

Baxandall wrote:I'm going to run around today looking for a replacement switch then try and draw the police to the house.

Wish me luck.

Hi Tom,

Welcome to the Vintage Hiwatt Forum! I believe the Marshall-type rocker switches work as replacements for those - but check to be sure.

Best of luck, from S.W. Ohio !

Dave

I'll vouch for Baxandall, he's good people. Baxxy, you should go to the Hiwatt convention sometime--not too far from you (Columbus, IN).

Hiwatt Bob wrote:I'll vouch for Baxandall, he's good people. Baxxy, you should go to the Hiwatt convention sometime--not too far from you (Columbus, IN).

Hey there! I'll go if you go.

Hello everybody,

Let me introduce myself.
I'm Gilles, a 57 year old frenchie. But still rock'n'roll!

We founded our first pop-group in '71, for years. After a loooooooong time ( 30 years ?? ) of wait we rebuilt that group.
Without 'Gégé-the-drummer', who joined Bonzo and Jimi and the others.

So Henri aka 'Kiki' my bassman brother joined us, and yet we are 2 guitars, 1 bass, 1 drum and 1 percussion, this give us a santana taste to all songs.

I read VHR forums since a long time, hesitate and finally 'made the jump' ( is that expression correct ? word-to-word translation ! ).
Past year I bought a used Reeves custom 50, very rare here on this side of atlantic ocean.
Need to be back on original specs, a strange mod had be done by former owner ( not 'canadian mode' ).
My technician made this reverse quickly, now it's near a good old Custom 50.
And I connect it to used Hiwatt HG412.
This cab is well made, 18mm plywood, solid. No fane inside : 2 G12T100 and I swaped the 2 others with Tonkers. Not as fane-ish as 40 years ago, but nice.

Backups are my old Mi60, a marshall-like french amp of the seventies. A Ceria Plexi also with home-made vertical cabinet with Tayden, best choice here in Europe for price.
And I pluged all my strats - unfortunately i selled my 1972 swamp strat in the eighties.
So AM TS or JPN strat with Fralins, some boost pedals and 'en avant' : on gigs Hiwatt sensations are the best for me.

So guys i thank you very much for all my evenings and nights, when I spent hours on reading your forums, congratulations !

Have a nice time,

Gilles

Welcome aboard!

Nice collection you have there, only thing missing is a Hylight!

--mark

Hi,
My name is Matthias.
I'm from France and consider myself a beginner guitarist.
Although I like a lot of artists' music, I admire David Gilmour a lot. Pink Floyd/Gilmour music touches me really deep.
So now I guess you all know how I became interested in Hiwatts. I became so interested that I bought a wonderful 76's Hylight DR103 Hiwatt, although I sometime feel my sloppy playing doesn't deserve such a nice amp.
I replaced the capacitors and I'm now in search for nice tubes to put inside it (I'll create a thread on that for advice if you don't mind). It came with Sovteks I don't appreciate much.
I'm really glad to be in the Hiwatt family now.
Have a good day everyone,
Matthias

Welcome Matt,
Congrats on acquiring a real HIWATT!

Hi guys,

My name's Matt and I hail from Melbourne, Australia.
Tomorrow night I finally achieve my musical goal and take possession of a 1978 Hiwatt DR103 with a 1977 Fane loaded 4x12.
I was tossing up between a Marshall JTM45/100 40th Anniversary Full Stack and the DR103 however three things swayed me to keep with my dream.

1. I watched Pulse
2. I listened to Live At Leeds
3. I was told some wise words...

"If you want a nice sounding Fender, buy a Fender"
"If you want a nice sounding Marshall, buy a Hiwatt".



I only have pictures that the current owner sent me however I plan on taking some detailed ones when I get it.






EDIT:
Actually, I do have one quick question.

When re-tubing a Hiwatt with Power Valves do you need to have it re-biased or do you just put in a matched quad that can handle a DR103 and let it do its thing?