"I used the amps that I’ve had and used forever: a 1965 Fender Deluxe Reverb, which is my main amp, and a blackface 1960s Fender Twin Reverb that I’ve used on almost every record I’ve done. A lot of guitar sounds on the album came from an old HH Musician transistor amplifier, which all the British new wave bands used in the late 1970s and sounds crazy good. I also used my old tweed Bassman from the ’50s."

In this photo a HH combo amplifier is visible. A careful comparison of the number of dials (11 in total) reveals that it must be a VS-Musician and cannot be an IC100 or IC100-S. To further corroborate this what appears to be the Valve sound pedal can be seen on top of the amp. This pedal was only used with the VS-Musician line of amps.

A review of the Buzzcocks 1978 OGWT further confirms that the number of dials is indeed 11 and shows more clearly a lack of far-right inputs on the amp which is consistent with the VS-Musician and not with the IC100, or IC100-S.

Please note: the generic image of the amp on Equipboard is of a later model. This later model has a different number of dials.

Harrison and Heald IC100

What do T. Rex, Dr. Feelgood, The Clash, The Buzzcocks, X-Ray Spex and The Undertones all have in common besides being some of Britain’s most vital seventies bands? They all had a strange, tubeless glowing Perspex paneled pile driver of an amp sitting atop their knackered speaker cabinets. The Harrison and Heald IC100 was the original solid-state amp that didn’t suck. It was capable of near endless headroom and could be used as a guitar, bass and keyboard amp, or even vocal PA depending on what channel was used. Perhaps the first time the HH IC100 spoke to a mass audience was on T. Rex’s The Slider. With a little kick in the teeth from a treble booster and the sustain switch engaged on the amp, Marc Bolan achieved a hefty crunching wallop that captivated a generation of soon-to-be-Punks and new wavers. Soon after, a new champion of the solid-state sound emerged in the form of a speed-freak-gangster-guitar-slinger named Wilko Johnson. He and his band of leering Canvey Island cohorts, Dr. Feelgood, wrote a prescription for a lethal dose of dirty R&B. Wilko’s deconstructed, dry stabbing sound was achieved with his unique itching-and-scratching up-and-down strokes and aided by the immediate attack and decay that only solid-state amps could deliver. His hitman-precision percussion cut like a knife into the heart of a generation and was equal parts coke-shot blues and primal reggae-rock ruckus. Check out Dr. Feelgood’s classic album Down by the Jetty for HH tones that will scratch their way through the skin right to the bone.

Though the successful IC100 range was strangely discontinued in 1977, more hits recorded with HH amps were soon to come. The first wave of British punk rockers needed an amp that was reliable, loud and cheap-as-chips that could double as a PA in a small sweaty pub. The IC100 legacy continued into the early ‘80s with Daniel Ash of Bauhaus creating a sound akin to a skull full of nails rolling down a metal slide via his green glowing undead heads. He still uses them to this day. Spacemen 3’s Jason Pierce is yet another HH champion of the visceral vanguard of droning tonal tonnage. You won’t see many if any HH IC100s in the USA, but if you come to England for a visit and poke around enough guitar shops, you can find them for reasonable prices.

In this televised clip from a 1979 episode of the Old Grey Whistle Test we can see Stuart performing live with the Skids. Behind him are two V-S amplifiers.

Steve posted this photo of an HH V-S Musician amp on his Twitter account.

By making a careful examination of the Buzzcocks 1978 OGWT performance, which included comparisons of the number of dials and inputs, I was able to eliminate other HH amp models including the IC100 and IC100-S.

It appears that this amp, or an identical one was used by Steve for the OGWT performance.

Note: The generic image used by Equipboard is of a different year and does not have the same number of dials.

On the right of this image, you can see an HH V-S Musician 212 combo

This is the guitar amp that Craig used in the early days before using Trace Elliot and Ampeg amps

" Well, in the ‘Sisters’, at the beginning I used to use an H & H guitar combo with a fuzz box! "

"50 watt H&H combo amp"