vintageHIWATTconvention.com

First post and I'm looking for advice.
Not exactly local but this has peaked my interest. I'm willing to go get it and have asked for more pictures. From the initial pictures does this amp look legit, anything to be wary of? Your help and advice will be much appreciated.

http://www.kijiji.ca/v-amp-pedal/ottawa ... nFlag=true

These are one of the least desirable Hylight era amps.
These have higher gain and lower headroom making them more akin to marshalls of the same vintage.
That is probably a fair price considering that early 1970's DR504 heads are $2500 +.
Just be sure that a DR505 is what you want, because it isn't for most people looking for a vintage HIWATT.

Were they modified to work this way and can it be undone?

some of it can be modded out, but even then it will still be higher gain than an early 1970s DR504

Beyond that, from the photo on Kijiji, this amp appears to have some kind of additional non-factory high-gain mod based on the extra flying components around V2, and the extra coax cables that go from V2 to V1, and also back to the input jacks. Hard to tell exactly as the photo is not very high res, but it looks like a 2 or even 3-stage cascading gain mod to add significantly more preamp drive, probably an attempt to make it more like a Marshall JCM800. You could probably easily undo that, but it's not worth anywhere near $1700 CDN in my opinion in it's current state.

TRJB