It’s a Hiwatt DR-103

Loud, clean with front panel switch to link the treble & bass inputs. This amp was made in the USA in Westbury NY, at the shop where Unicord was having the UK imported Marshall amps serviced, biased and fitted with 6550 output tubes.

I replaced the 45 year old filter caps in this amp along with a few other electrolytics and found it to be head to head with my Hiwatt DR103 and DR201 amps. It’s heavy due to a pair of massive Hammond transformers. This and the matching 6x12 Rola loaded cab are an easy 2 person lift, hopefully your bass player owns an SVT and owes you a favor at load in. All said, along with the Rickenbacker Transonic it is one of the most visually stunning amps ever made, and not hard to understand how these quickly made it on to the backlines of Led Zeppelin, Stevie Wonder and Jeff Beck in 1972.

Univox UX-1501 Clear, Loud, HEAVY, & Blue!

I owned a Blue Univox UX-1501, bought it new when they first came out in the early 70's. I had seen an advertisement with Jeff Beck. Being a die hard Jeff Beck fan I had to have it. Unbelievable how many people it took to move it. No matter how loud you turned it up, there wasn't much break up. It took no less than three people to move the 6X12 cabinet that had Celestion speakers in it, We would have used 4 people to move the cab but there wasn't room for that. I recall paying $800 for the whole thing back then. The head was so heavy it was best to use 2 people, it had the handles on top. My gripe was there wasn't any reverb on it like cheaper later models but this was the top of the line amp. I had worked all summer to save up to buy the amp and I paid cash for it. A few months later I saw Jeff Beck with a transitional group: Bob Tench, Tim Bogert, Max Middleton, & Carmine Appice. He was using the same amp I had except he had 2 6X12 cabs. His sound totally sucked, all trebly and thin. Jeff went up to his amp after a song and twiddled with the knobs. It was loud and painfull. In middle of a song while Bob Tench sang, Jeff twiddled more with the knobs. After doing that another time he waved his hands at it in aggrivation and played on. Only on a few songs did it sound OK, mostly with slide guitar. When I got back home, I put my Univox up for sale and sold it at a big loss. I bought a new early 70's 50watt Marshall stack and was happy. Later I saw pics of Jeff Beck using a Marshall head on top of the Univox 6X12 cabs. To sum it up, it was: Clear, Loud, HEAVY, and Blue.