Harmony H200

Made by (I believe) Valco in the 40's/50's. Not sure of the exact date. I have the model covered in brown, aligator type tolex with a big, red-glitter, "Harmony" across the grill. Yeah, she's sexy. Three inputs, one of which says "microphone". Three knobs, two for volume and one for tone. One of the interesting things about this amp is that the tone knob is the also the on/off switch. I've never seen that before. You can plug into one channel and then connect the other two channels with a patch cord and then use the second volume knob to add gain. Tube line up is 2 X 6V6GT, 1 X 6SN7, 1 X 6SL7, and 1 X 5Y3 rectifier. The speaker is an 8" Rola field coil speaker. It doesn't have a lot of features - but I rarely buy an amp for it's features - the only feature I'm interested in is the "tone" feature. This amp has tone for days. Okay, a trem would be nice...so we will score it a low 7 in the features catagory because what it lacks in features, it makes up in tone and by just plain being sexy.

This isn't the first time I've disagreed with previous reviewers - in fact - I was inspired to write my review based on the previous (and only) review of this amp which I believe sold it kinda short. I'm not sure what type of overdrive people expect from a 60 year old, 5 to 10 watt amp with an 8" speaker - but it certainly does have lots of crunch for it's size. Does it sound like Metalica? No - nor would I want it to. Does it sound like ACDC? Yeah! I have about 25 amps and I like to make sure they each get played at least once a month for an hour or more. Whenever I pull out the H200 I always daisy chain the two channels together, crank it up to 10, and play "Highway To Hell". It supplies that beautiful, vintage, bluesy, punchy tone for days! And put a bit of overdrive in front of it? Forget it! Tone heaven folks.

This is certainly not a gig volume amp unless you are playing very small coffeehouses, but it's certainly an excellent recording amp. It is a darker sounding amp. My main guitar is a Silvertone H78 with very hot DeArmond Silverfoil pickups. I'm sure my guitar vs. the previous reveiwers Les Paul would sound much brighter and punchier through this amp - but I can't imagine that it would be a clean, jazz amp. I have a feeling this is somebody with a bad speaker or perhaps some bad tubes or caps. At lower volumes with my P13 loaded Silvertone jazzbox it certainly gets a beautiful, fat jazz tone. I've never played a tele through this amp, but I imagine it would sound incredible.

It's not a noisy amp. Even when pushed to 10 with both channels connected it only has a slight hum.

It's about 60 years old and it's still rocking. I've only had it for about 2 years and I've used it quite a bit. It's never let me down. From what I can tell it has the original tubes and speaker in it as well. Not to sound like my parents but - they sure don't make them like they used to. I wish they would.

I'm sure back in their day when they still existed they were fantastic!

But seriously folks... As I mentioned in my last review - if you are going to be a vintage amp owner find somebody who can teach you basic amp repair - how to change a speaker and tubes, how to do a cap job...it's fun and it will save you big bucks in the long run.

I've been playing for about 25 years. I have about 25 amps. Univox, Vox, Silvertone, Fender, Supro, Lafayette, Harmony. All of my amps are pre 70's. Why? Cuz the new one's don't sound as good...they are overpriced...and they blow up!

If my H200 was lost or stolen I would immediately be shopping for another one. This baby is on my "never ever sell" list.

If I had to compare it to another amp I would say it has a very Fender-y sound. Loads of tone and personality. Track one down and find out for yourself

Mine is a '56. White tolex type cloth with an 8 inch wide red racing stripe down the center. The grill cloth has "Harmony" in felt lettering...it's fancy. It uses 2-6V6's, a 6SN7, and 6SL7, and a 5Y3 rectifier, into an 8 inch field coil speaker.
3 inputs...2 for the normal channel, and 1 for the microphone channel. The only controls are a volume for each channel, and 1 overall tone knob. I wouldn't consider it versatile at all...but it has a cool tone. For me, the fewer knobs, the happier I am. Overall volume is enough to piss off the neighbors if you live in an apartment...but not enough to be heard over a drummer. It's in the neighborhood of 10-20 watts. Since it uses a field coil speaker, I haven't figured out a way to easily wire it with a speaker out...so I haven't been able to try it with a bigger cabinet to see if it has more volume. It's great for a practice or recording amp.

This amp would mainly work for jazz or blues. It has an extremely warm tone.. I can't state that enough...very warm. It makes the bass channel on my silverface bassman sound bright...I mean, it's warm. Even if you dime the tone knob, it still sounds a bit like you'd want it to go another 3-4 notches to get rid of a slightly boxy tone.
I am pretty much a gibson guy. 2 gibsons with humbuckers and one with minibuckers. The amp doesn't break up all that much in comparison to other small tube amps that I've heard. It's very tame. It makes the neck humbuckers sound woofy or overly bassy in comparison to the bridge PU... It may sound cliche', but the best tone comparison that I can think of is the intro to Midnight Rambler from the stone's let it bleed. With humbuckers, with everything on this amp dimed, it nails that tone...slightly woofy, slightly boxy, compressed, and mildly overdriven. I tried this amp with a friend's jazzmaster (lesser output pickups) and overdrive was pretty much non-existant. It's make a good jazz amp since it's so warm...the words sparkle or shimmer definitely don't fit into this amp's description.
It's cool, the tone is fun...it's fully of idiosyncrasy...it's an old freakin tube amp..what more could you expect.

It seems pretty solid. it was damaged in shipping...so me and dad had to do some fancy manouvering with some woodglue to fix the cabinet.
I feel fairly sure that it's well made...it's lasted this long. Most parts are replacable if it dies...
The only problem is a high frequency oscillation that comes up when using the 2nd channel...which causes either a squeal or it just crapps out altogether. New tubes didn't fix this problem. I moved a couple caps around and it helped a bit, but no sure fix yet. but, this problem is predictable and repeatable, and the first channel still works great. So it's still very usable.

nah...

Overall, this is a cool little amp that ads to the arsenal. Like I mentioned, I mainly play gibsons... it truly has a sweet warmth that I've never heard in another amp. I like really fat tone anyway...so when I switch back to my other amps, this amp makes them all sound brittle. My other amps include an '68 bassman, a '70 Orange, a '65 silvertone Six-Ten (big brother of the twin 12), and a '65 epiphone pacemaker.
Fell free to contact me if you'd like any other info on it.