vintageHIWATTconvention.com

Hello forum. This is my first post over here. I just grabbed an original hylight era vintage dr405. Went out on a wimb as I do not have much experience playing hiwatts at all aside from a friend owning a later era 100watt model. I currently play through an 70's ampeg v4 which I love and hope the hiwatt will give me articulate ballsy tone that I am looking for and gobs of power. Hoping it can deliver on bass as well, as I do love my v4's tone. Owned a gen 1 model the before this, which was not capable of much for bass, rather bland and lacking of personality. I hope this amp will prove different! Also, the dr405 is basically the same amp as the dr103 and 201, just makes more power correct? Same preamp etc?

Question. The amp will arrive to me with it's preamp tubes, but no output tubes. I have brand new JJ kt88's. I can run the head with just 4 output tubes for a little while correct?... instead of it's full 6 needed for it's full power potential. Thanks guys.

Yes, the preamps (for a given time period) are all the same, only the power sections are different.

You can probably get away with 4 KT-88s in the short term, but the power will be cut a bit since there will be no way to match the impedance using the ohm selector (you will basically have 1.3x higher output impedance, as opposed to something convenient like 2x).

--mark