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I got my first Hiwatt DR-103
Custom 100 in 1985 in a straight swap for a flight cased Trace Elliot stack that
belonged to New Model Army. The Trace was worth shed loads of money but suffered
from terminal shitness, which as an endorsee of the product I found difficult to
deal with. Getting through three whole stacks in a six date tour was something
of an embarrassment for Trace Elliot, as their crossovers, speaker horns and
power amps kept a certain degree of incompatibility going over a prolonged
period of time.
At the end of the British leg of
the No Rest for the Wicked tour, the Trace was laid to rest in the storeroom of
JHE in North West London. I swapped the whole £1500 worth for an old Fender
Bassman 100 2 x 15 cabinet and a 1971 Kingston-era Hylight Electronics Hiwatt
DR-103 Custom 100 Amplifier, no flight cases, no extras, and worth about £150 all
told.
It sounded fucking great. Thus was a new era in bass noise initiated. I
scoured trade ads and rehearsal rooms endlessly for more DR-103s, ending up
with three of them that were in good enough nick to use. They were all
serviced by an old chap in Islington who specialised in 50s and 60s valve gear such as Hammond organs and valve radios. They were fixed up a treat, and
had a bit of history. One was the former property of the Who, one belonged to
the Undertones, and one was of rather uncertain and light-fingered origin.
I used two on stage, and one
as a spare. A variety of cabinets were used, the Fender, a
couple of Marshall 4 x 12s and on the odd occasion, Hiwatt 4 x 12s. The best and
most unlikely Hiwatt set up I ever used was in Japan. It's photographed
here,
because I thought it so unlikely they'd be able to find one original, let alone
two, with four original cabinets to boot, that I was just chuffed to bits and
made lots of loud noise through it all. After much messing around with different
set ups I accidentally discovered the perfect combination of two DR-103s sat on
top of two Ampeg SVT-810-Es. Bliss. They made me an endorsee, even better.
New Model Army had a brief flirtation with
the new range of Hiwatt amps being produced in the late 80s. Nice bits of kit,
made under license from the original company. They offered me a deal and set up
a load of stuff for me to try out, but I wasn't enamoured by the product as
they just sounded too 'new', so like an idiot I blew the whole thing out of the
water. In retrospect, I wish I hadn't, but it's too late now. Anyway, Ampeg would have
been pissed off, and I needed their patronage later in my career. The new
Hiwatts were going to be really
expensive to buy, although mine would have been free...
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