MusicRadar

• Review

Hiwatt's part in British rock history is beyond doubt though, thanks to such legends as David Gilmour and Pete Townshend.

At the dawn of 2008, it's good to see the company's catalogue topped out with beautiful custom-made amps based on the same designs as those mighty heads used back in the day by Floyd and The Who. While it may be tempting to rest on those undeniably classic laurels and rich heritage, however, Hiwatt needs to move forward.

"We received lots of feedback from players who loved Hiwatt but wanted an amplifier with channel switching and access to gain," Hiwatt's Mark Lodge tells us. "The natural step was to give them what they wanted!"

This new 50-watt combo is part of the company's Hi-Gain Series that's designed with modern rock styles firmly at the forefront of channel two, full of cascading gain and crunching tones. Yet Hiwatt's characteristically strident, high-headroom clean sound is retained as the basis of channel one.

"When channel two is on there are three stages of amplification before the EQ," explains Mark. "That creates a lot of gain and distortion, so we implement a second volume control for channel two. This second volume helps you to get good distortion without the need to crank up the amplifier, and using channel two with the high gain function, some modifications are made to get even more distortion."

The amp's purposeful front panel bristles with chicken-head knobs that comprise a master three-way EQ plus a presence control, channel two's level and an all-important master volume. The pair of white knobs far right are for channel one's volume and channel two's gain.

The amp also offers an Accutronics spring reverb unit, controlled via the front panel. There are a number of push/pull functions: a bright switch for channel one and the high-gain hike for channel two. Completing the package, on the rear panel you also get a series effects loop and, usefully, all of these features are footswitchable - in addition to normal channel switching as you'd expect - via the four-way board that's happily included with the amp.

Sounds

Audio demo: the Hi-Gain 50's sounds in context:

Hiwatt High Gain.mp3