Hiwatts were and indeed are mostly low maintenance. They used to get the odd dry solder joint just from the heat they created, but that was easily fixed. I was only let down by them once, which was in the USA in 1989, it was so hot that summer and you just couldn't get the spares over there. I ended up using an SWR that I bought brand new when they first started making amps. It soon fused into a solid lump of metal as it overheated on a regular basis, as it was expensive crap. Fortunately, the Hiwatts were soon restored to their former glory for my final NMA stint and carried over into the early days with The Damned. I lost one to NMA at this time, they moaned that I was taking away all the bass gear, and decided that they should keep one. I left them with my least favourite, but it was still a loss. I don't think they even bothered to use it.

Ratty had an age old DR-103 from the early Damned days, so there was still plenty of choice. The problem was that the guy who used to maintain my amps had gotten lost along the way, so JHE took over, and they didn't get it right. Things didn't sound as good and the valves were getting worn too quickly. I retired them for a while and started using an Ampeg SVT Pro 2 head, as a former endorsee, I got it for cost. This amp had a thermal cut out to stop it melting. It needed it 'cos it was like a two ton oven, but what a bastard, mid-song, to have everything shut down. In the end all the valves gave up, but this was after about five years. I needed a mere £300 to replace them, so I sold it to the highest bidding ebayer instead.

Eventually, financial pressures and a general lack of need prompted me to sell the second Hiwatt and one of the cabinets. JHE had lost a couple of bits from one amp, so I decided to keep the first one I owned, and replace anything iffy on it from the other one. Job done I offloaded it for less than full value, knowing it needed a bit of work. A sad day, but the original is still going strong. It needs a service, but I'm going to do it myself from now on, it's easier. I also bought a Hiwatt Spitfire and a Hiwatt Maxbass 30, a cracking pair of Hiwatt practice combos for guitar and bass respectively.

Two companies now battle for the rights to the name, one is British, and bought the license from the original owner. As far as I'm concerned, they should own the global name. The other company is American, and probably nuked some poor unsuspecting country for the rights to the amps and won't allow genuine British Hiwatts to be sold in the U.S. They've modernised the design and brought out a bunch of budget stuff called Bulldog. Bullshit more like. Anyway, you can look at both here: