Product: Harmony H303C
Price Paid: 135 USED
Submitted
02/08/2008
at
10:33am
by
Dan German
Features
:
3
Made in 1964 (according to speaker and transformer date codes)
3 tubes, on/off volume, 3 inputs, 1 Jensen Special Design 6 inch speaker.
Most important, it has an isolation transformer. So it won't kill you as easily as most old amps. I will be putting a grounded power cord on it ASAP, though.
An amp cannot have fewer features than this, but I bumped it to 3 for the transformer.
Sound Quality
:
8
I have now tried all of my electric guitars through this amp with only slightly varied results. All of them end up sounding like blues in a smoky roadhouse. Which is not a bad thing. I keep looking around to see if a fight is breaking out. My playing style is varied, but I think if I want to play blues (and I often do) I will grab this amp. I can get a perfectly good blues sound out of my Princeton II, but the Harmony gets me there with no knob-twiddling. Just turn it on and turn the volume past 5. It's never loud enough, and the distortion gets a bit much past 8, but the sound is there.
To be more specific about guitars:
'80s Harmony Flying V w/vintage Dirty Fingers--sounds great, can push this amp too hard
'03 Danelectro Mod7--great tonal variety, good substitute for strat blues sound
1965 Danelectro Convertible--great combination! Sounds like 1965 all over again!
'04 Gretsch Lap Steel--now I know why I bought this amp! I suspect the amp will mostly be dedicated to this instrument, assuming I learn to play slide properly. Perfect sound.
I should add that this amp really picks up on pick dynamics well. Very responsive, and surprisingly quiet for a cheap radio amp.
Reliability
:
6
I won't say it's unreliable, 'cuz it's still around after 44 years. In fact, it looks no more that 4 or 5 years old. Cleaner than my '82 Fender, I'm ashamed to say. I suspect that this sat in some non-smoker's closet for much of its life. The bady of the amp is made from the cheapest imaginable chipboard. The chassis, however, looks simple, sturdy, and well put together.
Customer Support
:
No Opinion
Not applicable.
Overall Rating
:
8
If you only own one amp, this is not it. But if you want an inexpensive vintage amp and you play blues, this will do the trick. It is an amp for entertaining yourself without upsetting the neighbours too badly, not an amp for gigging. Although you could mic this into the soundboard. I don't know much about that sort of thing. For me, it does what I wanted it for better than I expected.
