Music Man HD-150 Reverb

Amp head with two channels, reverb and phaser, both foot switchable, master volume, mid control on channel 2, ground phase inverter switch, half power setting, 4 or 8 ohm speaker outs, and a power outlet in the left rear corner...nice touch! 150 watts, 75 in half mode. PLENTY of power. Rarely play it on more than 3, maybe 4 on mid size stages.

Play it through a 4x12 cab with three original music man speakers, and one Celestion.

It's supposed to be Leo's perfected vision of the Twin Reverb, and I don't really miss the tube pre-amp...the solid state is plenty warm and just growly enough for rhythm without being too harsh, if you don't go above 6 on the pre-amp dial. One thing about the tube pre-amps I don't miss is the damn rattle of the pre-amp tubes when I want a chord to ring nicely. I have an Ampeg Jet with a beautiful tone, but the preamp tubes are right next to the speaker, and if I get more than a week without rattle from new tubes, I'm lucky. None of that crap here. Just pure, warm and clean.
I use a 78 Les Paul Custom with sweet original pickups in it, and an Ibanez AS120 with Carvin Holdsworth buckers, and both sound great. The Carvin pickups make for more clarity and show up bad fingering, and the high end the amp makes can make that stand out a bit too harshly if the dial is up too high. The Les Paul is nothing short of sonic butter, and is a bit more forgiving, with no harshness at all, but if the bass is too high it gets in the mud on the neck pos.

The EQ is nice and subtle, but it definitely makes a difference when adjusted, and the best words I can come up with are predictable, and satisfying.

It's around 30 years old now, and still sounds good. Haven't had it long enough to road test it, but it had traveled well so far.

NA

22 years in, and this thing is gonna do some serious time with me. I'd get annother if lost or stolen, and might get some of the other models in the series to go along with it !

i'm from dayton oh. and if there are any words to describe the sounds coming out of dayton they are low-fi. if you are unfamiliar with dayton, it is the birthplace of great bands such as guided by voices, the breeders and, my favorite, brainiac. john schmersal, guitarist for brainiac, used a music man head of unknown model number. i heard it and thought it was amazing. i happened upon two similar music mans at mike's music in cincinnati and was torn between which one i should buy. the more expensive of the two was an all tube model. the less expensive one was a hybrid. i talked to tim taylor (lead singer, guitar player and front man for the amazing brainiac who is now deceased) and he said to go with the hybrid because the 12ax7's had a tendency to get muddy when they got hot. a solid state pre-amp would, of couse, not do this.

i've had this head for 7 years and am still learning about its temperaments. I play an original 1962 gibson sg through it (side to side trapeze vibrato) and at times it is the highest quality sounding combination i can ever remember or imagine. its almost as though they were meant to highlight each other. the paf's mixed with the 6L6's......dude! my problem is that my head doesn't have any of the effects features that the other people on this site describe. no reverb, no vibe, no phaser.

duh. it's as solid as they come. my first head was a marshall mark II and it blue the 1 amp fuse every time i turned it up past 2. this bastard is a workhorse.

never had a problem...wouldn't know.

My amp (serial # B013031) was bought new in 1984. I bought it from the original owner (a drummer, who paid $1000 CAD+tax) when it was 6 months old. It has 4 - 10" speakers built in. They are still original. This amp is incredibly versatile for progressive rock, blues, jazz, funk, Reagae, Rock & Roll, whatever, and so so sweet sounding clean. It has two channels, one with volume, treble, and bass, the other with volume, treble, mid, bass, bright switch, deep switch, phaser, and reverb. Phaser and reverb have a nice factory footswitch. I used to use it with a Ibanez distortion pedal and matching compressor limiter. Now I use an Yamaha SPX-50 processor. Both are ultimate combos, but the SPX sweeping chorus combined with the amps phaser is so amazing, I think I am about to orgasm again.... The SPX 50D also provides excellent distortion and reverb, which really csounds great if you use the built in reverb too. It lacks nothing. So powerful, it is lethal.

I have used it with a number of Fender Stratocasters, a Gibson SG, and a BC Rich Bitch. They all sound great. It suits any style, except perhaps hard metal. It is not noisy at all. I keep the pre-amp down (around 4, maybe, unless really cranking). The pre-amp is clean up to 6 on the dial, then distorts gradually as you turn it up more. Not really useful as a primary source of distortion, though - OK by me.

It runs great, after 19 years. What can I tell you? It is my home and jam amp. A real workhorse.

The company no longer exists.

I love it, because it plays sparklingly clear bluesy guitar with powerful clean bass. If it was lost or stolen, I would cry.

This is a great, great amp from the (mid-to-late?) 70's. Built in phaser is pure butter, though the reverb doesn't quite have the lushness of old Twins. Two channels, two inputs on each channel. The tube/solid state hybrid is interesting, and I believe it puts less stress on the tubes while still browning everything up nice and fine. EQ section is nice, but I can't detect more than a 6db cut or so in the frequency ranges.

I'm using a California Fat Tele and an old '62 Gretsch DuoJet through this guy. I also run my keyboards through it, a Mark II Rhodes, D6 Clavinet, and a Roland Juno-6. They all sound great, the Tele being the perfect match for chime. This amp is real loud, it breaks up nicely at around 7 or 8, if you can handle the decibels. It's running through a Music Man 4x12 cab, and the air they move together are just awesome. Spot on Twin-with-balls, passable JC imitation, great for jazz, blues, rock, and funk.

It's been impeccable thus far. No problems whatsoever. Considering it may be more than 30 years old, I say that warrants a high rating.

Man, I feel as though Ernie Ball is pretending that Music Man never even made kick-ass amplifiers. I'd love to have access to some sort of serial # database so I could find out when this guy was made, but no such luck apparently. Anyone in Chicago looking for ridiculously thorough tech support for vintage gear: Deltronics on Halstead, south of Belmont. They could make 40-year-old shit smell like roses.

I snagged this from the dudes at GC who clearly had no idea what they were dealing with. I spent 15 minutes with it and a nice tele and bought it on the spot. It's versatile, loud as hell, got a great clean tone and a built in phaser. I can honestly say that in 20 years of making music, this is THE amp.

My amp is a Musicman HD150 Reverb. It has two clean channels with reverb and phaser effect on one channel. Reverb and phaser effects are footswitchable. Reverb is reminiscent of the fender era accutronics type, comes with extra ac outlet at the back and 4/8 ohm impedance selector for speaker cabinet. This is a Hybrid Amp. Four 6L6's for the power section and a transistor circuit for the preamp,ideal for lesser tube maintenance.

Gibson les pauls and fender stratocaster are my mean test guitars. I would rate this amp as perfect for Rhythm guitarist of any style. Using a Whirlwind channel selector,I prefer to do a lot of rhythmworks with this amp. It has more clarity and less brilliance. For my bluesy tone, I switch to a Fender Quad Reverb. I can still use any kind of distortion pedal going to the HD-150 because I'm using a close back speaker cabinet with 2X12 JBL G-125-8 speakers. With this I can have a combination of clean and crunch, with one switch, I'm in the bluesy Fender overdrive.

The choice of materials for this amp is arguably superior with the Fender parts( faceplate,amp case, backcover, tolex, logo ). I always prefer to have the original Fender point-to-point circuitry because all parts can be replaced and serviceable. There are a lot of IC's inside the HD-150 which are not anymore available. Thats why I use this as a home-based amp only because I want to preserve it. Once plugged to an AC outlet, it is readily playable unlike most Fenders that requires full tube warming before it can be played. With regards to clean sound condition, I dont have to worry about any intermittent squirks and noises I usually hear from old Fenders. Its like a plug and play vintage tube amp. Chassis is slightly smaller(horizontally) than Fender standard amp heads (Matchless-type). I dont have to bother buying and maintaining preamp tubes.

The reverb section was once repaired. Theres a big chance of unrepairable trouble because of the IC's which are no longer supported. Beside Musicman is no longer on this line of amp business, Who cares ? I dont have fear that this machine will break at any given time. If it does, I will immediately replace it with a more versatile head- Marshall JCM800 or Mesa Trem-o-Verb. For now, I'm fine with it.

The Musicman HD-150 will always be my main Rhythm Guitar Amp, it suits my purpose and I prefer a vintage-looking Half-stack like what I have. No complain whatsoever just use the amp to its full potential. If you can find one with a decent price (almost half the price of great Fenders), buy it if you use different overdrive/distortion stomp boxes, the amp can handle clean and distortion sounds with the right speaker combination. If your into straight-to-amp Blues tweaker just like my friend Melpo, tone-wise, Vintage Fenders or other all-tube big name amps are the way to go. Although its market price is not remarkably rising (no great demand), side-by-side with an old Fender Amp, the Musicman HD-150 Reverb can deliver a plethora of classic clean tone that makes guitar playing a larger-than-life experience.

2 channels (not switchable), 2 inputs per channel. Each channel has its own volume, treble, and bass controls, and the main channel has a mid control, reverb, a phaser effect(with controls for speed and intensity), and of course the master volume. The main channel also sports two handy switches for "deep" and "bright", which, of course, make the tone deeper and brighter, respectively.4 6L6's, 150 watts of power, if you make music, this amp's for you.

My main axe is a 79 BC Rich Mockingbird USA neck-thru with a seymour duncan JB at the bridge and a dimarzio super distortion at the neck. Before i got the music man, my main amp was a marshall VS-100 1x12 combo (i use both amps through a marshall 1960a). On that particular amp, the distortion was brutal, but the clean was just plain bad, very thin and unspectacular. When I got the Music Man, it was a whole world of difference. It is without a doubt one of the best sounding, versatile, and powerful (my favorite!) amps I know of. The clean is just that, sparkling clean, and very full, especially with the reverb. Driven, the amp gets a nice down n dirty tone fit for wailin the blues, and after a few minutes of adjusting dials on my metal zone (king of stompboxes!), a great aggressive metal sound could be heard blasting throughout the neighborhood. Great treble, but still a lot of thump in the power chords...after all, it seems this baby was built to brutalize eardrums...

Haven't had it very long, the footswitch cord had a short in it (it was a minor fix), otherwise, sturdy as a mutant mule on steroids. Between this and my boss stuff, I'll never need repairs done on anything.

company? repair? warranty? service center? no.

If this were stolen, it would be the start of a nationwide manhunt ending in the capture of a very sad amp theif. Personally, I'd feel better if Music Man was still around, and these were still in production and available everywhere, but what can you do?Its worth the risk.