Product: Music Man HD-100
Price Paid: US $175.00 used
Submitted
12/09/1997
at
02:03pm
by
Mike Lynch
Features
:
9
2 Channels, footswitchable, 100 watts, 1 12" speaker, global reverb, solid state preamp, 6L6 (2) power output tube section, extension speaker jack. Very cool individual deep and bright switches. They both work great. Two button footswitch w/leds (inovative for an older amp). Footswitch was hardwired to chassis, should have been 1/4" plug. As this amp was probably late 70's, it had great features compared to it's Fender counterparts.
Sound Quality
:
5
After having said all of the above, here is the area that I had problems. The clean channel was great. Good tone control and lot's of volume LOUD. The distorsion channel was another story. Even after having the amp retubed and completely gone through by a good tech, I was never happy. I played blues on this amp (you guessed it, I unloaded it to a Music Man Amp collector) and never could get a nice gritty bite out of it. As soon as I upped the pre on the dist. channel, the tone would get very flabby. It sounded like a bass problem that I couldn't EQ out. At that time, I was relying solely on my amp and guitar for tone. I now use a variety of stomp boxes to color my sound, and probably could have used this amp's clean channel only w/effects. I was disappionted in that Iv'e heard people rave about the cool sounds from old MM amps that eluded me.
Reliability
:
8
It's an old amp. As years go by, the physical properties of the internal organs (kinda like an old car) change and anything could happen. I didn't experience any out of the ordinary problems after I had it retubed.
Customer Support
:
No Opinion
N/A, Company long gone.
Overall Rating
:
6
I wouldn't buy another one again that sounded like this one. I would like to check out other MM models for tone comparisions. Although the clean tone was good, it's a lot of amp to lug around for only one dimension. I do have to give Leo lot's of credit for the effort. I'm 48 years old and remember when MM amps first came out (early to mid 70's) and the features were truly revolutionary. MM was the first amp I saw that had footswitchable channels. Also I have to say that I am not a vintage amp freak. I don't trust the reliability and I believe that almost any vintage tone can be had by a modern new amp if you trust your ears and are willing to continue your quest for tone.
