Any Sunn lovers into Hiwatts?

[mattoreg]

I love my Sunn amps, but now I'm starting to crave a DR103.  Anyone have one?  I play guitar if that means anything. Any members share the love with hiwatt?  I've never played one, have only read about them.

[EdBass]

I've gigged both a CP103 and a DR103 with  bass but don't own either one. I currently have both Custom 225 and Custom 400 Reeves amps, which are based on the Hiwatt DR201 and DR405 circuits respectively, and I gigged Hiwatt DR201's fairly regularly for a while; all with bass though.

IMO the Dave Reeves circuit amps are a bit bigger, bolder and cleaner than the Dynaco/Sunn circuit amps. I think you would find similar differences with guitar.

[mattoreg]

Hey Ed,
Very cool, man you been rockin some serious power!  Yeah I play guitar, so I'm thinking a 50 watter or 100 should be more than plenty.

Any guitar guys out there?

Matt

[Sunny Boy]

I bought a new Hiwatt 100 head back in 1973.  I hated it for guitar, but for bass it was the best thing I'd ever heard.  Why not for guitar?  Too loud and clean.  It wouldn't break up at all with the Strat I was playing through it. Very sterile, lifeless, and way too "in your face".  I traded it to a guy, straight up, for a 100w Marshall and was much happier.

[EdBass]

Yep, a 100 watt Hiwatt with a guitar is obscenely loud and clean as a whistle. I don’t think it’s sterile and lifeless but almost painfully “in your face”. It was a different time; the name of the game in the olden days was to design amps to be as accurate as possible, and Mr. Reeves certainly accomplished that mission.
Remember, the “improvement” between tweed and blackface Fenders was less distortion.

That pursuit of loud and clean is also a Sunn trait, just one more of the many similarities between Sunn and Hiwatt IMO. However there are definite plusses to the loud and clean. Both amps take pedals extremely well, so it’s pretty easy to get dirty with an add-on. There are always ways of “dirtying” an amp up, but there is no pedal that will clean up a nasty amp, so again IMO the “big clean” amps have an inherent advantage overall.
This super clean Hiwatt characteristic was address by Reeves when he designed Pete Townshend’s signature amp, the CP103, which uses additional and linked gain stages and a slightly “hotter” output to fatten it up a little, but it’s still a clean machine.

It seemed to work pretty well at Leeds though…

[Sunny Boy]

That pursuit of loud and clean is also a Sunn trait, just one more of the many similarities between Sunn and Hiwatt IMO

The clean Sunn amps must have come a little later in the game.  My old 200s and Spectrum II amps, 60 watts RMS rated at 120 watts ** in the sales brochures, were pure fuzz with my P-Bass when set anywhere past about half.  Woefully under-powered, the squared output used to blow the JBL's on a regular basis.  I eventually put a Kustom 200 head on the 200S speaker cab, and I suddenly was able to get a clean bass tone.  Later, when the next line of "big" amps came out, Sunn corrected the advertized wattage claim to the true 60 watts.

Then there was Leslie West's famous 'Mississippi Queen' tone out of that Coliseum PA head.



** Edit;  I just looked at some old promo I have - it was rated at "250 watts Program Power".  There's no way that amp was 250 watts.

[sunn-tanned]

Well it's almost a HIWATT...I just picked up a 70-72 Sound City 50 Plus with a '78 4x12 120w cab and love it but has the "Crunch" unlike Sunn's.

[mattoreg]

Right on.  I've got sunn coliseum pa head.  I'm thinking maybe it gets into hiwatt territory.  Anyone have any experience with this amp as well as a hiwatt?