Hiwatt Lead 100R

This Hiwatt bass amp was made in England by Hiwatt in late 70s. Forget the solid state rubbish, this is the real deal - the best. Many use the Hiwatt 103 Custom 100 (a guitar amp) for bass, but this is better - much more bottom end on the Normal channel. An all valve bass amp that is very loud and ballsey - none better. This is the best bass amp avaliable - ever. I am using it to power a 4 x 12 cab, loaded with heavy duty speakers (Celestion G12H I think). Twin channels, Normal and Bright. It has Normal and Bright inputs. Controls are: Normal Volume, Bright Volume, Bass, Treble, Middle, Presence, Master Volume, Standby and Mains on/off. Use pedals for effects. Note: the Bright channel is identical in sound to the Hiwatt 103 Custom 100, so makes it an excellent guitar amp too.

Excellent. Very, very loud. All tube means excellent tone. Quiet. Use pedals for effects.

Very solid. Easy to repair by any tech.

New Hiwatt company, but any tech could work on this.

Been playing 20+ years. Play a jazz bass. Very heavy.

Amp was made in 1982. Quite like an early Marshall JCM 800 but with the Hiwatt tone. Has a split channel which is controlled by footswitch, not a very good reverb but okay if use a small amount. Certainly quite a bit of headroom as its 100W (5x12ax7 in preamp and 4xEL34 in power side. Amp has lots of bass response which is typical Hiwatt and combined with my Celestian loaded 4x12 gives every sound i want and is loud clean before break-up

I play rock in the style of Randy Rhoads meets Michael Scheneker and perfect for this type of sound. Not very noisy and replaced a Sound City 120 which was far noisier. Good variety on the lead channel for mild crunch to good rock sounds.
I would have rated this amplifier lower but I replaced the (crap) Hiwatt valves with electro harmonix and it now absolutely rocks with loads more distortion than before, still it is not heavily saturated just right for my style in fact.

Would use without a back up as amp has never broken down and only needs regular valve replacement as per any valve amplifier

n/a

My amp was made in 1982. It does exactly what I need it to, nice and clean and as rocky as you like when you kick in the overdrive channel. 5 valves in the pre amp section (ECC83's) and 4 (EL34's) in the power section. I find the reverb a bit harsh so only use a tiny amound, which is all I would ever use anyway. A great all round valve head crystal clear for great pop and as crunchy as you like for rock!

I tend to use Telecasters on the clean channel and a Les Paul Junior Special with stacked P100 humbuckers when rocking on the overdrive channel. The clean is really nice especially through a 4x12 cab, producing good bass tones too. Switch to the overdrive channel and you can really rock, nice and warm valve tones it does the lot from AC/DC to Zep.

I bought the amp second hand 2 years ago and apart from spraying the pots with contact cleaner and replacing the valves (general friendly maintenance)it's been fantastic. I have a spare DSL 50 head just in case but havn't needed to use it so far.

Never needed to contact Hiwatt about this amp but I have been intouch about their new products and they were very friendly and helpfull.

I have been playing 25 years, I have another Hiwatt Custom 50 (1973) which I keep as a loyal and trusted friend. It still works like a god but I don't and won't gig it anymore. I would defo buy another Hiwatt Lead 100R if this one was stolen. It does just what I need it too and more. An all round top valve amp.

this is from '81. lead and rhythm channel with reverb. i removed the spring reverb, because i never use it, and i hated listening to it make noise in the van on tour.

i use a travis bean standard (with two LOUD humbuckers), with a volume pedal, straight into the amp. it has a bit of a buzz (tubes and groundings have all been checked...it's just the amp-?-). the clean channel (which i use almost exclusively) has THAT hiwatt sound. sparkling overtones and a nice growl if you turn the rhythm volume past 2 o'clock. awesome. the lead channel is hiwatt's attempt at the marshall sound. okay- but a bit too compressed and flimsy sounding for my tastes.

it has had problems in the past with bad solders and the mains fuse blowing. i also had to replace the input jack, and the power switch. all of that over the course of eight years isn't too bad. i do use it regularly without a backup, because i think i have worked the bugs out of it.

the company that made this is long gone. fernandes owns the name, but they are clueless about this amp.

i really love this amp, despite it's flaws. it sounds great, and has served me well for almost ten years now. if it was lost...i would be sad and i would have to learn to love another amp.

2 channels, with bass, treble, middle and gain.

horrible

i took it to the tech when my dad brought it back from england, and couldn't get the amp to stop cutting out after it had been on for 10 minutes

none

This amp was built by some foreign company and is not a real hiwatt, stay the hell away from it

I purchased the amp in '92, although I believe it had been sitting around for awhile. English made version. 100 watt two channel head with reverb. Clean channel has volume, bass, and treble controls, while the overdrive channel adds a middle tone control and an overdrive level control. Other controls are presence, reverb and master volume. Outputs on the rear for two cabinets, line out, effects loop, footswitch ( channel, reverb), and there's also a switch for 8/16 ohms. The amp uses four EL34 tubes for power and five or six ( I can't remember ) 12ax7 tubes for everything else. Reverb unit is of the spring type.

I test drove nearly every amp on the market at the time I bought it, and the only ones that came close were the Peavey 5150 and the Marshall JCM900. I play indie rock with forays into shoegazing territory, and this amp won me over with it's very solid low end and dynamics. I also admit to being cursed with having to have something different ( which I term " the coolness factor " ), so a Marshall or a Fender just wouldn't cut it. It's not as loud as other 100 watt amps I've come across, but it has a wonderful flat curve in it's volume control, so you don't have the problem of it being too quiet at " 2 " and too loud at " 3 ". I mostly play a Rickenbaker 330 through it, and can get nearly any sound I'm after. I stick to the clean channel, prefering to use a rat pedal for distortion, because the overdrive channel is too compressed.

Now the bad part. Because Hiwatt started to use circuit boards around this time, these amps suffer from having soldering joints break loose. The solution is to find a good amp man to beef up the connections, especially where the tubes connect to the board. I experienced a bad volume drop, and after taking it several places, I finally found someone who knew about the problem ( FYI, Bakos Amp works in Atlanta ). He also discovered some capacitor in the wiring that seemed to serve no function other than to inhibit the amp's top end, so bypassing that really opened up the headroom on the amp. That said, I've had no other problems with it and do use it frequently without backup.

Evidently Fernandes ( the current owner ) knows next to nothing about this amp, so the key is to find a good amp man that knows more about amps than just your run of the mill Fenders and Marshalls.

This is my main amp I've been using professionally for over eight years, and is key to my own personal sound. I did use a Fender Blues Deluxe for about a year, but it doesn't compare at all. This amp is sort of treated like a poor relative of the other " classic " Hiwatts because of it's use of circuit boards, but it's array of features ( reverb, channel switching, effects loop, etc. ) makes it one of the most versatile amps they've made, at least for under $2,000 dollars. It's got the Hiwatt sound, and once the soldering joint problem is fixed, it's very reliable. If this one was stolen or lost, I'd probably have to get a different model, just because these are hard to find, but I'd prefer this one. Hiwatts of any kind are just the best, just ask Pete Townshend or David Gilmour. They'll tell you!

This is a simple 100w head that has two channels. This one was made in 1987. When it was still made in England. The amp has a terrifc tone, and numerous controls, as well as a reverb and effects loop.

I play numerous guitars and this thing sounds great with all of them. The first channel can be very clean like the old and new ones when the rhythem vol is down then it can get bluesy and then a nice full crunch. The lead channel is smooth and long. It also serves as a heavy crunch. It sounds very much like a pure english 80's amp, very much like AC DC (angus) but with more lows and sustain than a Marshall. All in all a terrific sound that has been very hard to find.

Being I bought this used and it was already ten years old who knows. It is really heavy (60 lbs+). When I got it there was a cold soldier joint in the effects loop that caused a volume drop after the amp was on for an hour or two, but I brought it back and the place fixed it free. The reverb has also been a little unreliable at times, but it really is one of the best sounding reverbs I have ever heard when it works right. All in all I'd say if you take care of it, it will last a long time.

The current Hiwatt company owned by Fernandez knows next to nothing about this model and asked me for any information I had. However, that is because the company changed hands many times from 88-92. Those models are also supposed to be rather bad. So good luck, if you have a decent technician you should be all right.

Cinsidering that when this amp was new it was $1900, this was a good deal. I really love the sound, and would buy one again for sure. The new ones, while very expense 2k, are also great, but they are just clean. All in all this is a very good sounding amp for hard rock, but it doesn't move to metal territory. It should make a lot of people who play clean to hard very happy.