CeriaTone Hey What?! 504

Features are identical to a Hiwatt 50. I had Nick wire in an alternate volume pot inside the head, and had a footswitch added to toggle between it and the master volume. The intent was to give me the ability to boost to full volume for leads. Though I have found the Hiwatts are really meant to be played with the master wide open so this feature never gets used. It is a very load amp, so inefficient vintage speakers and/or attenuators are kind of a must to make it sound right. The tone of vintage amps mostly comes from overdriving the power section, not from cranking the preamp. The result is a much warmer saturation rather than a clipping distortion. It is not a jack of all trades amp - you get this for a big clean rock sound like that of The Who or Pink Floyd.

Sounds fantastic, very bright and clear. Saturates nicely when cranked up (but sounds very vanilla and clean at low volumes). Very quiet and highly sensitive. I don't even use clean/dirty toggles. Want clean, strum and pick lightly... chimey clean sound. Want rock, pick hard and the tubes saturate and bark. I use a Weber Mini Mass 50 to tame the volume and it behaves well. At full attenuation (which makes the Weber hot enough to be mistaken for the outdoor grill maker) it starts to loose a little of its sparkle, but I rarely need that quantity of attenuation. And even with that much attenuation it still sounds great.

I blew a fuse the first time I used it on stage, but I was doing some weird things with my attenuator that I suspect caused the problem. Since then I have been using it for about 6 months with/without attenuation (A weber mini-mass 50). When it happened I wrote Nik and he was quick to reply wanting to be sure nothing was wrong with it. He does take his amp building very seriously.

Amp was a bit slow to deliver, though I suspect my odd mod request was the cause. Took about a month long than estimated to ship out. All along the way though Nik was quick to respond to any inquiries.

Been playing for about 25 years. Currently in 3 tribute bands. I have owned Mesas, Marshalls, and a Sovtek I really like for metal. This amp doesn't get used for the 80's metal tribute band, but for everything else it is my go to amp now.

As far as value, you may be able to find a vintage Hiwatt this is modeled after for about the same price. The advantages of the new Ceriatone is that you can get it modded right out of the gate, you are getting fresh caps and such, customer support if anything goes wrong, and my personal favorite part all Ceriatones come set up with Bias probs right on the back so you can bias the amp yourself easily.

The features are exactly like the Hiwatt DR 504. It is an exact clone of the original and possibly better than the new ones that are being produced. I had mine built by Ceriatone and the quality is impecible. I combed it and it is flawless. It has EL34's in the power section.

It is a straight forward amp without a lot of frills, but it is what it is: a clone of a vintage amp. Vintage amps don't have a lot of frills. Let's face it, you just don't use a lot of crap that is on most modern designs anyway. I wanted a simple amp with tons of CLEAN HEADROOM and this thing delivers.

No fx loop and no channel switching, but that's not what I needed. I use it as a single channel amp and get my distortion from pedals. You won't find another amp (besides the 103) that takes pedals better.

I play hard rock in the vein of STP or Weezer and this amp handles it. It gives me the clean sound I wanted and ACCEPTS my PEDALS PERFECTLY for the dirty sound I wanted. You can use this amp for any style provided you run pedals with it.

More power than I really need. 50Watts is a lot of power and most of the places I play mic the amp anyway.

Unreal! I use seymour duncan Alnico II Pro picups on a custom built guitar. The clean sound is sooo sweet and unbelievably fat. Terms like round, glassy, in your face, thick, all come to mind. When I add my barber distortion, whoh... I wish I was playing it now, but my wife might kill me...

If you do distort it, it will blow your mind. I actually try not to because that sound doesn't fit the sound I play, but I might try to incorporate it on a few parts on my next record.

I think this and my barber pedal sound way better than a marshall. Sorry marshall... love you guys. Also, I love the ability to change sounds. You buy any amp and use it's distortion, you are basically limited to a certain sound. I like the flexibility of using pedals because I am always experimenting with different distortions.

I'd feel very comfortable gigging without a backup, but I always have a backup. Never want to get caught with your pants down! :) Seriously, you never know when a tube could go out, but that isn't the amp's fault. The amp is totally reliable. If I only had this one amp, I'd feel fine not having a backup. The quality is so good, it won't let you down.

Fantastic! In this day, I truly value customer service. Nik and his staff get back to you pronto. Nik makes you feel like you are his only customer. If you have read other reviews of Ceriatone, you will see other comments about how good their customer service is. They're not joking. These guys are really cool too.

I'm not kidding, I will buy all of my future amps from Ceriatone based on the quality and the incredible customer service.

The best amp I have ever owned. I wanted a Hiwatt clone, but went with Ceriatone because I heard their quality and customer service were better. They are! You can't beat the value and you can't beat the tone. You're reading this review because you know tone and I don't need to tell you that a hiwatt clone is the best way to go. I just strongly recommend getting it from Ceriatone.

I built this amp over a 3 day period (3 1/2 days). It was great fun (for a guitar geek like me). I bought this kit because I cant afford the AUD$4000 for the branded thing and because Keith Urban is using them now. The amp is a 4 input 2 channel amp, normal and bright. No fx loop (though I am probably going to install one) no channel switching.
Its 50 watts but it stays clean to very loud volumes.
This amp accept pedals EXTREMELY well

Ive only played it with my strat so far. I play country/rock (I also play in a coverband) this amp is versatile but it will depend on what pedals I put into it. Its an awesome sounding amp that will change depending on what is put infront of it. Not a substantial amount of "sag" like you would get out of a Plexi. VERY responsive. So immediate under the fingers
I put Mercury magnetics transformers (and choke) in mine. Ive heard the standard ones are fine but I just wanted the better transformers. It is predominantly a clean amp. I run it with the Master on full and use the preamps vols to set the volume and the gain. Even setting the preamp on full and lowering the master doesn't produce a metal style distortion (thank god) but it will get you into classic rock (or modern county in my case) territory.
I run A couple of OCD's, a tube screamer, Rat and A TC electronics G System
This is exactly the sound I have had in my head for a very long time

Havnt had it long enough to say but I built it and all the parst are well mounted and look very durable. The box I got from Ceriatone is well worth the $$$

Nik and Aslim are Awesome. They answer all questions and follow up and matters that you ask. I cannot speak highly enough of these guys.

Ive been playing 20 years. Professionally for the last 10. Ive had adn still have fenders, Marshalls, Voxs and an Egnater (anyone wanna buy it???) and this is right up there. Im way past the point of thinking that any amp is any better than any other. I think that everything has its place. You arnt going to get a marshall sound out of a fender or a vox or this hiwatt for that matter just a a Marshall wont sound like any of these. Each amp has its place and application
This is an awesome sounding amp and in the application I intend to use it it is awesome. Chimmey, loud and Rockin'

This is a copy of the famed Hiwatt DR504. As such it's "features" are simple: Normal Volume, Bright Volume, Treble, Middle, Bass, Presence, and Master Volume. Giving a rating in this category is hard. It has all the features I'd be looking for but it certainly isn't feature loaded. No reverb, no effects loop, no nonsense! Because it stuck to the original, as promised on the Ceriatone web site, I'll give it a 10.

I'm a huge David Gilmour fan. As such, I believe in a prestinely clean amp and use various pedals to create the tone pallet I'm looking for. My current fx chain is: Fender Strat > Dunlop Cry Baby (moded)> Diamond Compressor> Diamond Fireburst (FUZZ)> Modded Ibanez TS9> Tube Works Real Tube Overdrive> Ernie Ball Volume> EH Hum Debugger> TC Electronic Nova Delay> Biyang Tremolo> Rocktron Deep Blue Chorus> Hey What? 504> Custom made 212 cab loaded with Retro 30 speakers.

As a building block for my gilmourish tones this thing is amazing. It's very clean but very lively with lush overtones, like a Fender Twin on steroids. For my use I'm using it specifically for the cleans. However, if you are a Pete Townshend fan simply turn up the Master Volume and it's instant "Live at Leeds" tone.

One thing you'll notice about this amp is the responsiveness. Play softly and it sings along but dig in and it yells with a compressed, shimmery tone. The bottom end is very present on this amp but not boomy at all. Every note is perfectly placed on the spectrum. The highs are very clear and present but never piercing. My wife, who is not a musician, described it best when she said "it's like you took a blanket off of one of your old amps, it's so clear".

Hand wired, turret board construction IDENTICAL to the original it was based upon. Solid core wire is used throughout with right angle, parallel connections, again like the amp it is imitating. Because of this I don't anticipate any problems in the future. The only questionable parts would be the tranformers. They are no name knockoffs of the originals and therefore MIGHT give some grief in the future. However, at this price, I'll use them and if they ever give me trouble I'll simply replace them in the future. It's not that i'm anticipating problems....it's just the only weak link I could find in the chain here. Still, I have no real basis for reliability other than to compare it to the original Hiwatts which are famed for lasting forever. Still I would gig it without a backup, no question. I'll leave it with no opinion for now.....I've only had it 3 days!

Nik and company at Ceriatone are wonderfull to deal with. Everything you have heard is true. No question has ever gone unanswered, even when I got critical about the wiring, components, etc. before I had purchased the amp they always came through with answers and recommendations. As far as I know there is no warranty expressly offered on the amps but then the company is in Malaysia so collecting on warranty might pose some problems. As a turret board wired amp though, any amp tech should be able to help you out.

I've been playing for 18 years and have owned an ungodly amount of gear over that time. Fender amps, Peavey's, Traynor's (still a personal favourite of mine), Crate's and now my first Ceriatone. I know what I'm looking for in an amp. Admittedly I haven't compared it directly against an actual DR504. I have played several in the past and to my memory this one does not disappoint. It accepts pedals beautifully and does everything exactly as I need it to.

If it were ever stolen I'd definitely buy another.....after I had hunted down the poor sole who had taken it. For any amount of money, this is a beautiful amp...it just happens to be about $3000 cheaper than a current production original 504. And they threw in a free T-Shirt. 8^)

This amp is a clone of famous Hiwatt DR-504 model (50 Watt) 4 inputs version. Manufactured by Ceriatone in December 2008.
This is a single channel amp, with 2 (high/low) normal inputs + 2 (high/low) bright inputs, normal volume, bright volume, bass, treble, middle, presence and master volume controls on the front pannel. Back pannel features speaker impedance selector (4,8 and 16 Ohm) and speaker output.
No effect loops, no reverb.

I play an Eric Johnson model Fender Stratocaster guitar with few pedals (custom overdrive, Keeley compressor, MI Audio Crunch Box, VOX wha and EH Little Big Muff + Rocktron Xpressions for delays, reverbs and chorus mainly).
Well, the tone of this amp is superb, very rich and eq-ed, plenty of overtones here. All my pedals sound right now.
This is my best purchase, with no doubt. I played Mesa Boogie, Fender, Marshall and others (all tube amps) but this amp from Ceriatone has what the others lack: attack, clearness and tone!
I play blues-rock style music and this amp together with my few pedals is all I need to get a superb tone.

Too much early to talk about reliability, anyway this amp is built with valued components and absolutely well hand wired.
Very clear design.

Guys at Ceriatone are very friendly and quick to reply to requests and questions. In case of need they have maintenance and repair service in many countries.

I have been playing for a month now and every time I am very satisfied with the tone I get from this amp.