Hilgen Basso B2501 115 Combo

1965 model. Versatile after taking the stuffy sounding HEPPNER speaker out and replacing it with a cheap 100 watt Eminence.

As the other fellow, Jacob, mentioned...this amp is very decco styled with the nice chrome control pannel and the LSD, swirly, psyco grilcloth. Very plesant.

Tube line up...2-5791A, 1-5AR4(GZ34), and 3-12axa's.
Two channel, two inputs per channel with volume and tone for each channel. Came with 15" HEPPNER speaker.

This amp seems to be around 20-25 watts, noting that replacing the HEPPNER with EMINENCE made a big difference in overall volume. I also changed the tone capacitor to a better value on the first channel which now gives me more higher end for use as a guitar amp while still being able to play bass through the unchanged second channel.

It will have a very hummble and usefull life in my studio.

Lots of strats with EMG single pickups. SG clone with Schaller humbuckers...more listed later.

Like Jacob said, "This amp is kind of dark sounding..." that was true with mine until I did the speaker and capacitor change...now much brighter and more glassy sounding using the strats.

The amp has absolutely no noise at any volume level and you can bring on the distortion to a certain leval but I don't like doing that to this amp so I play it clean.

I could depend on this amp for playing out...BUT...I ALWAYS take TWO amps with me. MURPHY'S LAW...It's gonna happen to me tonight unless I take my sprare!

I have all of my tube amps regurally checked by a tech. Never had a blowout yet.

I have been playing for nearly 40 years.
I own bass guitars, custom strat-a-likes, Fender Strats, Washburns, Kramers, and some other brands...AMPS...Peavey Century, Vox, Quantum, Gretsch, Omega, Fenders, Twilighter, Magnatone, Kay, Silvertones, Sears, Crate...

This would be hard to replace. I have only seen THREE in my 47 years of living on this earth, I have owned THREE. Gotta love em! They are so cool looking. Strait-forward plain 'ole tube amp...simple design that works.

I did see mention of HILGEN on an AMPEG history site. Kind of a "cloner" circut, I guess. Works for me!

Weird, gorgeous, bare-bones tube amp from the depths of obscurity (probably the 60's). 1 15-inch speaker, two channels (bass and "instrument"), each with volume and tone knobs. No reverb, tremolo, or other frills. Not sure what the wattage is--maybe something like 15? 20? 30? In any case: it's almost loud enough for loud rock bands when used as a guitar amplifier but lacks the juice needed as a bass amplifier, at least with loud rock bands. Not particularly versatile or feature-laden, but it does what it needs to.

This is a dark-sounding amplifier, and I've grown to like it as such--at first I used a parametric EQ pedal with it all the time, but I've come to realize that I don't really need that sort of needly sound. I like murky-sounding almost-clean sounds (obscure reference point: Roy Montgomery, guitarist in murky New Zealand groups such as Dadamah, the Pin Group, etc) and this delivers that. It sounds like it is very old. I use a bright-sounding guitar--a Strat clone which no-one else seems to like and which I purchased at a garage sale three blocks from the garage sale where I bought this amp--and the two seem like they're made for each other.

It sounds pretty great at low volumes--it has a robust, full, warm sound that I like--and then when you push it up to full volume it gets closer and closer to meltdown. And it sounds surprisingly good at full-on distortion, especially for what it is: a bass amp using Ampeg-y tubes (a 7581, I think, and some other obscure ones back there somewhere).

It works really nicely as a bass amp as well, for lower-volume gigs and recording. Not much in the way of tone-shaping, but a nice warm sound.

Very unique-sounding amplifier--I've never played anything that sounds like it, really.

Surprisingly durable for how old it is (at least 30 years, probably more) and for where I found it (at a garage sale). I haven't gotten it serviced ever and it keeps playing. I've even taken it on tour and it walked away with a few tears in the tolex, no more.

Sometimes it makes some weird sounds, but that's kind of rare.

No-one has ever even heard _of_ Hilgen, much less heard from them.

Really great things about this amplifier:

1) The way that it looks--it has this swirly-design grille-cloth that looks amazing; they could sell this in one of the many retro-furnishings boutiques around town as a "vintage endtable" for way more than I paid for it. And the Hilgen logo itself is classy as well.

2) The fact that it is so obscure. I've never seen another one, and even a Google search seems to point mainly to my webpage. I've seen a couple on Ebay, but rarely this model, and even the other models are rare.

3) The fact that I found it at a garage sale a block from my house.

4) The fact that it does not sound like any other amp I've played, really. I've owned my fair share of amps in my day--mostly of the "loud and clean" variety (Roland JC-77, Music Man RD-100, Fender Stage Lead) and they are all nice, but there's something very special about this one, and even though it isn't loud enough sometimes and it isn't bright enough sometimes, and even though it sometimes makes weird noises, it is my favorite amp ever. There is something nice about getting to know the special quirks and qualities of something very special.