Product: Harmony H1812
Price Paid: US $80 bones, plus shipping used
Submitted
03/13/2001
at
02:10pm
by
voivode
Email: none
Features
:
4
Made in the '70s, I think. Pretty sure it came from the Sears Catalog, little coktail-disco half-stack. Cardboard cabinet for the head and speaker cab. Oddly enough, not a combo. Solid-state, says 120 watts...gets pretty loud, I guess.
As for features, it has 3 inputs, two for "regular", and one for "bass". A volume, a bass, and a treble knob comlete the package. Oh, and the old-school big chrome toggle switch on the front with the red light beside it. How could I forget something sooooo tacky? One channel, no gain. Basically a padded blue vinyl covered PA amp. Plenty of power, tho. It doesn't shake stuff off the walls when it's dimed, but with my Boss pedal, it does cut thru the ol' noggin like a chainsaw on speed. It's not as loud as, say, an Orange...but it is bright and midrangey to cut thru drums, bass, etc. It will sound a lot better after I wire in the tube preamp and make it a hybrid and build a wooden cab for it with my 12" Celestion to replace the Japanese paper cone that's in there now. If you boost the bass on this thing, you get bottom like the Crack of Doom. If you boost the treble, you get sparklies and razors and all kinds of sharp sound. Let me give you an example...set the trble to 7, the bass to 5, the volume to 10, hook up a hollow-body thru a Danelectro BLT slap-echo at ten and two o'clock, and it's "Sleepwalk" or "Rabble Rouser, or even "Blue Suede Shoes". The Carl Perkins version, of course...I'm giving it a 4 because it does one thing, and that's make stuff LOUDER.
Sound Quality
:
8
I use a 64 Silvertone hollow-body thinline with early 90s Ibanez coil-tap humbuckers under chrome P-90 covers.
Doesn't hum or anything, makes my Silvertone feed back like crazy thru the pedal. It distorts a bit when totally dimed, but only in a rockabilly kind of way. The cardboard 1X12 cabinet is not real deep and warm, but like I said, it's going the way of the dodo this weekend. I play punk-esque in the vien of Social Distortion, Rev. Horton Heat, Rocket from the Crypt, and this little blue ugly thang gets up and gives me TONE!! It's almost too bright and edgy, so I'm gonna hard-wire in a tube preamp to warm it up a bit...
Reliability
:
5
It seems solid...cardboard, I never thought I'd see it for real. I'd probably gig with it for real, but the mods will come first. And the first mod will be wood cabs, so.....
Customer Support
:
No Opinion
Oh, it is to laugh....
Overall Rating
:
9
This is the only amp I have anymore. When I started, I had a Gorilla like everyone else, then I graduated to a Crate G200Cxl 100watt mini half-stack. Just sold it last year, sounded like crap. The Harmony sounds great with my Boss DS-1 distortion and Danelectro BLT slap-echo. Real nostalgic. I really think this amp has potential to be a great little hybrid. Will review it again with the preamp.