Hiwatt Custom 100

1973 Straight up single channel - 100watt - milspec point to point hand wired - 4 input model. simple and nice!

Basicly it does what it is designed for, no nonsence!

Play in a indie rock band, and a covers band. this replaced my tsl 100watt head.

I wanted one of these from the day i started guitar playing, i tried to get what i wanted from fender and mainly marshall, those had some really good tones but just didnt cut it.

this amp is unbelievable, Put it like this, it reflects your guitar and you with unparraleld accuracy, it takes no crap, but gives no crap, to put it short, its range of sounds are always clear and cut though the mix and track your playing no matter how much gain and volume. no matter how muddy, no matter how fast. tones range massivly, but most people are in this for the clean WHICH IS BETTER THAN FENDER!!! and the huge crushing sounds that you can get without even touching the volume on your guitar. The amp is pure quality from the start to the finish. I waited till i was good enough to get this amp ! but that was too long. Dont wait, just buy.

oh by the way i use an 61 sg and a strat plus, so not very hot pups

wont break - if does easy to fix if you know what youre doing, do not mod this amp, you will go straight to hell.

Hiwatt only lives through those scum on earth music ground, no customer service, no help, rip off prices and insulting staff.

however i dont need to see them since this thing is so goddamn easy to service and i would never ever need it any way, its even more reliable than a marshall, and i used to throw them around! this thing wont get thrown, god no. this is my baby and it is another to the "never sell" list!

The End, get a hylight made or some early biacrown era Hiwatt and you have the single greatest amp ever no questions asked!

Normal Vol,Brill Vol,Bass,Treble,Middle,Presence,Master Control. Four jumpable inputs...100W of pure 70's valve tone,clean as clean can be until you hit quarter-past on the preamp volume,when it crunches up nicely...jump both Norm and Brill channels together and you have unadulterated Townshend!
Alternatively slam a Strat through a delay into it when running clean and you're as close to The Edge as it is possible to get without falling off!

This amp is powerful as hell,I use it with the original basketweave straight Fane cab (both head and cab in mint condition,original 1975 model too,used by a church guitarist for nearly 30 years...and now mine!)and I run a Gibson Les Paul and Fender Tele Thinline '74 and occasionally a Fender Jaguar through a Boogie V-Twin overdrive and a Boss GT6 for effects. It kicks ass,basically. It's kinda dead-sounding when you fire it up for the very first time,but that's cos it has no reverb-dial up a wedge of Reverb from the GT6 and it's sweeeeeeet...awesome for both shimmery clean and slamming,chocolatey solos...when using the LP and the V-Twin it reminds me a little in tone of a LP though EVH's 5150 or a Carvin legacy...but more vintage-y and tasteful.For clean the Tele and Jaguar are very,very lush and sparkly,but warm and never glassy-metallic like Fender clean...all in all a very,very loud (if you want it to be) very,very clean or naughtily dirty amp.

Blew a fuse the 3rd time I rehearsed with it,but we were playing all day and the fuse had probably been in there for 30 years so I can forgive it!

I think Hiwatt shut down in 1907 or something!

If it was nicked I'd cry.Then hunt down the culprit and slap them from here to Baghdad. It's best friends with my Les Paul now and it'd be strange to rehearse without my big black tank. I'd like it to have onboard spring-reverb but if wishes were horses and all that.
I tried all the new Boogie amps,the Single Rects and the Nomads but this has so much more character and fun about it. Plus it's verrrry trendy on the Indie-rock scene here in the UK to own a Hiwatt...it looks and sounds grrrrrrrrrrreat!!

It has your basic 70's features, 4 inputs at low/high brilliance and normal gain, no effects loop or reverb but that's easily fixed through any high quality effects pedal, I run it through a 70's Big Muff distortion, a Marshall Chorus, a Boss reverb/echo and a Boss compression/sustainer and through that there is no sound this amp isn't capable of.

This is the single greatest guitar amp ever built, it's military like point to point wiring is unquestionably the only way an amp should be built, handmade one by one, from the moment you plug it in you'll know why artists like Pete Townshend from the Who, the Edge from U2, Stone Gossard from Pearl Jam and countless others swear by it. The best sound for this amp is as follows: all knobs from left to right at 95% south-east (that's almost all the way, and include normal gain, brilliance gain, middle, treble, bass, and presence,) with the main volume at about 25% directly west, but be careful with this main volume when you have all other knobs turned at max, because as you approach 30-35% this already screaming amp will become almost uncontrollably loud. With these settings straight through you can put on the The Who's Live at Leeds and play to almost the exact sound, throw in U2's Achtung Baby, add a 200ms delay and it's unbelievably right on, and with any Pearl Jam song after 1998 with a little sustain and a little distortion and once again, perfect. But I like it clean, it's tone feels like it will rip off the dead skin from your flesh, awesome, totally awesome

never had a problem, the way it's built probably never will.

This is no customer support, so find a repair guy that loves and knows how to repair an amp of this quality, it shouldn't be too difficult their's alot of them.

I would by five of them if I had the money, I could have the Edge's setup on "Beautiful Day" ohhh baby five full Hiwatt stacks lined up next to each other, even better than Pete Townshend's 3 full stacks in the mid 70's. If anyone has a gray cloth straight Hiwatt cab I would be very interested. Right now I'm playing through a black cloth slant Hiwatt cab from the late 70's. My email address is r13789@hotmail.com

This custom 100 is from 1972. I bought it off a 'tube-head' who had the tubes replaced once, otherwise the amp is solid. There are only 2 inputs: Normal and Brilliant. The EQ is totally versatile. You usually need to back off a lot on the bass, as this head is very 'dark'-sounding. I like simple, pure, hand-wired tone, and this amp has it all, plus 100 watts of ear-piercing mayhem. Any of you who play newer Marshalls, Boogies etc., which are mass-produced with PC boards in them, are out of your skulls. Only point-to-point wiring can give you this kind of tone response.

Plug in my 90s Les Paul studio, add a boss heavy metal, and I am chugging my way into power heaven. The clean sound of the amp is tight, full and covers every possible frequency. What you play is what you hear. Whoever calls this amp tone-dead is a derivative wanker. If you want a Marshall, buy a Marshall, this is no Marshall.

This amp is older than I am, has seen more trouble, and will probably never break down.

Never dealt with Hiwatt before. I understand they are re-creating these classic beauties now, supposedly all to early spec. I think they retail at over $2000.

This is my dream amp and I can only imagine supplementing its fire with one of those rare Custom 200 Watts from the early seventies. This thing is a tone demon with more power than a truckload of synthetic amps.

Two high, two low inputs, basic tone controls, master volume, no reverb.

At the time I was using it with a Les Paul and stratocaster. This is a very clean amp. In many ways it reminds me of a hifi amp because it offers so little coloration. The previous owner had modified the amp to cascade the two channels and provide more distortion (which was a bit rough sounding) so I returned it to the original specification. It's also VERY LOUD. I turned it up just to see at what level it would break up nicely - far too loud. I used a multi effects pedal to add reverb and some distortion to the sound, but I thought this defeated the object of having a good valve amp.

Stunningly well made amplifier. If you get the opportunity, take off the back and look at the point to point wiring in this amp. They have a reputation of great reliability.

Don't know

In the end I part exchanged it for an old 1970s Park 50W Lead valve combo which gave me the sound I was after.

Conclusion: If you want to get a Marshall sound, get a Marshall. (and if you want a Les Paul sound, get a Les Paul. There's no point buggering around with a guitar/amp combination and trying to fix the sound with effects - it just sounds terrible)

This amp was made in the early 70's i believe

It's and all around amp, you can use it for bass and guitar, play nearly any style you want.

One Channel with 4 inputs Bright (high and low) Normal (high and low)
no effect loops or reverb just at plain amp, with bas, treble, mid, presence, master volume plus bright volume and normal volume.

I wish it had effect loops.

I use the amp fully.

I use it for live gigs, and I hardly need to turn up more than 50%, coz it's an all tube amp.

all tube amp head

I use a Gretsch Reissue Anniversary with humbuckers, Gibson Les Paul with humbuckers, Fender Telecaster with single coils, Fender Stratocaster with single coils, Fender Squier Jagmaster with one Fender humbucker and one Gibson 1957 Humbucker, Epiphone Acc. with active mics., Warwick Corvette Proline active pickups, Epiphone Les Paul Special with one Epiphone humbucker and one Gibson 1957 Humbucker.

It's not noisy at all.

If you turn all the knobs south-south-east, you'll get fat sounded semi distortion, but it's an amp that allmost refuses to distort the sound, it only want's to sound good, so you'll need a distortion pedal og effects unit.

It's very dependable, I would use it for any type of gig.

It's broken down once, because of old tubes

Never delt with the company

I've been playing for 11 years.
I have one Marshall Anniversary Amp Head, 1 Marshall 1960Bx and 1 Marshall 1960 stereo cabinett, way to many effect pedals, and modules.

I've got a 70's model that is in emmaculate condition.
It's got two inputs for normal tone and two for high, four total, which allow for patching between channels thereby using both channels at once.
It's got bass mid treble and presence for tone and volume for normal and high channels as well as master volume.
NO REVERB!!! At first I figured would this fact would remove me from my reverb crutch, but it turned out that this amp's characteristics could use the padding reverb adds.

This is the weirdest sound amp i've ever used! It really does not flatter a Les Paul by any means. It has unfathomable tone! I have no idea how to get a consistent tone out of it, every dial is VERY sensative and you can breath on the bass knob at it will instantly sound like garbage. As for it's clean reputation, sure, it's clean up to a certain point then it just gets gritty and uncontrollable. Even when your at the point where it's screaming it doesn't compare to the volume of my Ampeg V-4, which is capable of being reasonably faithfull to the notes you're actually playing.
Then, the worst part, the sustain. ZERO. I don't know how this is possible in such a high powered amp, but it just sucks the sound so that you get a whollop of an initial punch and then a vaccum.
This fact, however, is crutial to one of it's past users - Pete Townsend - and one of the reasons I picked it up.
If you want to use something like a strat or SG and you like to really bang the strings, I'd say it may be a good choice.
By the way, the distortion it gets is pretty harsh and scathing, which can be good in some circumstances.
Sure, it's loud but...

Very reliable for the most part. If you ever get a chance to look inside of it you'll be instantly amazed by the insanly neat and tidy way these amps were built, almost anal-retentivly so. I've had to replace tubes once in 5 years which is normal (it's my back-up amp).
At one point I lost the power cable which proved to be a nightmare! I had to special order the jack from a parts maker in the U.K. for $40, and then make the rest of the cable myself!
Other than spilling beer through the top grate on a hot tube, no problems.

I've heard that Hiwatt is still vaguely making amps.?

This is a specialty amp. I've heard it on record played by several people and it sound glorious but overall it's too unforgiving and unfriendly to work on anything but hard and powerfull guitar.
Anyone want to buy mine?

70's 100W head, master volume, basic tone controls. Clean is an understatement. This is its strength. If you want metal master volume heaven dont bother.

I use single coil and humbucer guitar with this amp. Sweet, sweet, sweet. Pure tone, lovely. Not noisy at all. It is a great clean sound. It is easy to dirty up a clean amp, but nigh on impossible to make a dirty amp clean. So this is a great amp to build a sound on. No distortion to speak, and this is what I like.

I have revalved once in 8 years, never broken down.

Amp too old.

Had it for 10 yrs , never disappoint, awesome value for money, am looking for another (maybe the guy above will sell his) Love it.

1972 vintage (bought new at Terminal Music, NYC), basic controls, no reverb, no effects loops, no distortion, a master volume that was totally useless unless you had two guys playing through the same amp 'cause the amp will NOT break up - very loud, with two basic sounds.. "Headache" and "Super-Headache"- Looked super cool, so it gets a 2 in this catagory.

Again, this amp would NOT break up at all... with any guitar. So you got none of the harmonic coloration of that sound that tube amps are cherished for. NO overdrive or sustain at all, zilch. I have often likened the sound of this amp to the effect of someone whacking you upside the head with an iron skillet. Not my idea of fun. In all fairness, I must say the amp sounded killer for bass and would probably also make a great keyboard amp. The rating I've given relates to guitar.

I prayed the thing would break down so I could get rid of it.... no such luck. I could always depend on it bumming me out whenever I played through it with it's sterile non-tone.

No experience with Hiwatt's service department. What could they do for such an amp, short of a major redesign?

I went to New York to buy a Marshall Super Lead 100, and I let the salesman talk me into the Hiwatt. I was psyched all the way home with it. That's when the honeymoon ended. I have to say that that amp was by far the worst sounding guitar amp I've ever owned in 30+ years of playing. I woke up in the morning cursing that amp, and went to bed at night cursing it as well until i found a guy to swap me even for a Marshall like I originally wanted. I have to say that my style is a cross between Hendrix and Clapton blues - I like tone, and I like sustain. But I also say that it would be the same story for other styles as well. All the amp did was HURT. If you like hurting your ears and the ears of your listeners, this is the perfect amp for you.