212Mavguy Posted November 7, 2014 Posted November 7, 2014 I had been watching this particular amp on ebay for over a year…a vintage four hole input single channel 30 watt Harry Joyce tube amp head. It started at over 10 grand, which was actually a decent price for what it was…if the brand name had the recognition of Trainwreck or Dumble. But because of lack of name recognition in the market place, the price kept dropping, and hit the plateau that it has stayed at for the last few months. I would not have bought it if it did not have the effects loop. It has an interrupt serial effects loop as well as a tap off the output transformer to go directly into a mixing board. The guy who built this amp was the original partner with Dave Reeves originating the Hiwatt amps later used by Peter Townshend, Jimmy Page (yes,early) and David Gilmour. Mr. Reeves needed someone to wire up the circuit he came up with while working at Sound City amplification. He picked Harry Joyce out of the phone book, who advertised himself as a certified military spec wirer. Compared to traditional amp construction at this time, late 60's, these early Hiwatt amps took much more time to construct due to certain very specific construction techniques unique to military style wiring. Benefits of mil spec construction include durability and in field/battle repairability. Later, pressure from Dave Reeves to produce more than the originally agreed on 40 units per month caused Mr. Joyce to part ways with Hiwatt. He continued to refine the Hiwatt design with innovations that improved the tonal and stage usability. After his Hiwatt episode, he became acquainted with George Scholz, they discovered common beliefs, they collaborated on their thinking, and in the late 90's the Harry Joyce amps came came into being, like Hiwatts but further refined beyond what Reeves was doing. Harry Joyce contracted cancer and passed around 2001/2002 ish, only enough time to have built between 100-160 Harry Joyce brand amps. George Scholz makes 50 and 100 watt Harry Joyce amps here in the USA the same way Harry Joyce did after Mr. Joyce passed. I noticed that the Harry Joyce trademark and name brand is currently up for sale, so likely Mr. Scholz is approaching retirement and time to pass the torch. The late Ken Fischer likely built more Trainwrecks, Howard Dumble is easily 350 or more Dumble amps and quite a few more in platform mods. Real Trainwrecks are upwards of 10 grand, and Dumbles extract 50-150+ grand from their second hand buyers these days. The lack of numbers and builder fame/exposure caused the price of the amp I bought to be in the ballpark of what a new Hiwatt costs. The transformers in this one were made by Drake, and Harry used blue colored marking, likely the same machinist's dye he used on every solder joint after magnified inspection…to hide the transformers' exact production model/file numbers. These were a custom order by Harry just for this amp model. Only 30 heads were ever made with the military green colored covering, 30, 50, and 100 watt models. This amp is the first one brought over to the US, hand signed by the builder. Only a handful of 30 watters ever came off Harry's bench. These unusual for guitar amp transformers have a huge bandwidth, exactly what a premium HIFI amp circuit craves. They deliver a huge bottom end along with a shimmering, even stinging top end if called upon to do so. Needless to say I'll be pleased to take it out of the box and put some vintage tubes in it. I'm intending to use it Dumble style, by itself or in stereo with a Blues Breaker or D-clone head, including a tube effects buffer, called a C-lator, made by Ceriatone as the secret tone weapon. My C-lator has a late 50's Siemens long plate 12ax7 in it. With the 'lator set in the host amp's serial fx loop, the 'labor's "out" knob becomes the overall master volume for the amp, the master on the amp will be adjusted for the middle of the sweet spot for sustain/feedback and harmonic/bloom production, somewhere between two thirds cranked to dimed. Because of the huge output transformer, this setting would be far too loud for useful stage volume, this amp's 30 watts will easily keep up with most 40-50 watt tube amps. Unlike Hiwatt's similar models, the Harry Joyce use the fourth triode not utilized in the Hiwatt in the two tube preamp cascade, bringing more gain available than with similar Hiwatt models, and with the fx loop and buffer, will get clean to dirty cranked amp tones at small room, even practice volumes. Gain is more than single channel Hiwatt, less than Marshalls. This type of single channel four hole input amp head gives the player the capability to go the rocking gunslinger route... just direct guitar/volume knob/ amp clean to scream…gain knobs 3/4 of the way up, in the Trainwreck or Hughes and Kettner Puretone style, with the added flexibility to put time based effects in the amp's serial loop, exactly what early Hiwatt single channel designs can't do. The 30 watt rating means lower b+voltages to the power tubes, which means that if I wanted I could run something other than el34's…like cream of the crop vintage stuff, Genalex KT66's, KT77's el37's, KT61's in the Eurotrash department, or can go sweet grandpa American like the coke bottle shaped 6l6's, 6v6, or 6f6's, early 5881's or even stick in a pair of adapters and run Bendix 6384's or Tung Sol 6ar6's. Not planning to go crazy in the power tube rolling department off the bat, going for original sound palette first. Looking forward to the lessons this amp is going to provide me for sure. It'll take a while to show up. I already snagged a pair of new in box vintage Mullard el34's as part of some cart before horse behavior. I'll use one of my Altec or JBL filled 2/12's and a Leslie g27 cab with every now and then as well. Think I might want to sell a couple of amps now…hehe Boutique amps for boutique guitars, Boutique guitars for boutique amps!
rockabilly69 Posted November 7, 2014 Posted November 7, 2014 Mav I was seriously contemplating buying that amp! It should be awesome!!!
rockabilly69 Posted November 7, 2014 Posted November 7, 2014 And, the color looks like a road warrior, ready to gig:)
212Mavguy Posted November 7, 2014 Author Posted November 7, 2014 Then we better get together for some wood shedding after it arrives. Was a horrible time to buy an amp, had an unexpected, painful knee injury middle of October, knee surgery two days ago, $$$ even with good insurance and property tax due end of this month... But I knew that this amp would not make it through the upcoming holiday season at that undervalued price.
rjsanders Posted November 8, 2014 Posted November 8, 2014 exciting. innards most byootiful. kinduva anti-Fischer approach (Ken prized shortest path techniques). looking forward to followups
rockabilly69 Posted November 8, 2014 Posted November 8, 2014 Then we better get together for some wood shedding after it arrives. Was a horrible time to buy an amp, had an unexpected, painful knee injury middle of October, knee surgery two days ago, $$$ even with good insurance and property tax due end of this month... But I knew that this amp would not make it through the upcoming holiday season at that undervalued price. That would be fun!
212Mavguy Posted November 9, 2014 Author Posted November 9, 2014 Ken Fischer was really big on short signal path, true, but what folks find out that try to build his designs is how critical the lead dress is in his amps. Some wires create sonic problems if they are a quarter of an inch off of optimum placement or lay next to a wire they should be crossing at a right angle to in order to keep background noise or other issues quiet. If you look at the actual signal path in the Harry Joyce it's pretty short compared to a true PTP amp with all the parts wired to each other instead of mounting them on a turret/eyelet board. And we might remember how nice some of those rat's nest looking amps actually sounded. What looks like a lot of wire is for the 6.3volt tube heaters, not in the signal path. I like the way his grounding bus is tucked away down low for the front end controls. The innards of this amp display a lesson in amp building philosophy as well as technique.
gpuma Posted November 9, 2014 Posted November 9, 2014 I think that as long as we don't see pics and hear clips...[finish as desired]
rjsanders Posted November 9, 2014 Posted November 9, 2014 +1. the KF legend abounds in tales of how he could discern sights & sounds of fabbing. one included the weave of cone paper in speakers and its effect on tone. another transformer winding diffs. and so forth. HJ fabbing was notable for component placement. & of course ease of troubleshooting and corrective maintenance. these approaches yield superior results and illustrate why a Heritage guitar will sound better in more expensive amps. a contemporary example might be Komet 60, which employs KF and HJ approaches. "boutique amps for boutique guitars" indeed!
212Mavguy Posted November 11, 2014 Author Posted November 11, 2014 Indeed! Thanks Dan for posting the pics.
rockabilly69 Posted November 11, 2014 Posted November 11, 2014 Indeed! Thanks Dan for posting the pics. How could you not love that amp, clean Hiwatt crunch with one extra gain stage, and built to survive and sound good through nuclear holocaust!
peterbright Posted November 11, 2014 Posted November 11, 2014 That is an amazing piece of amp heaven.
mark555 Posted November 11, 2014 Posted November 11, 2014 Great post with lots of history. I am in the market for a new amp, but can't afford anything so exclusive. I almost fell over when I read how much a used Dumble sells for!
rockabilly69 Posted November 12, 2014 Posted November 12, 2014 Mark, last year I bought two VOX AC15's one was the circuit board model which was very reasonably priced, and the other was the hardwired version. I was blown away by how good the circuit board model sounded! It had a great clean tone, a smoking blues tone, and some serious crunch when needed. The hardwired version sounded a hair better but it didn't have reverb and I found the bigger cab a pain to move around. Here's the circuit board amp...
smokedtires Posted November 13, 2014 Posted November 13, 2014 Wow what an incredible looking amp. If it sounds even half as well as the wiring looks then I expect you'll be VERY pleased. Congrats!
bolero Posted November 13, 2014 Posted November 13, 2014 wow that HARRY JOYCE is beautiful....thx for the detailed post I never knew what the difference was between them & the older ( and newer ) HIWATT circuits congratulations Mavguy! Daniel I'm digging that AC15 demo! I also liked the circuit board AC30 cc2's I owned at one time. but I couldn't play them like that!
212Mavguy Posted November 14, 2014 Author Posted November 14, 2014 There is another Harry Joyce on ebay right now. It's a 50 watt head with the same features as my 30 watt. This will likely go for opening bid for some very fortunate future owner. I love buying amps off eBay, have had very good luck picking out some screaming deals on little known top end stuff.
rockabilly69 Posted November 14, 2014 Posted November 14, 2014 It looks really good Mav! You're right someone's going to get a fine amp!
mark555 Posted November 18, 2014 Posted November 18, 2014 Thanks for the sound clip Daniel, I am going to PM you about amps and see if I can draw on your knowledge, I know you have a lot of knowledge about all this stuff. It may be a day or two but keep an eye open for a note from me.
212Mavguy Posted November 19, 2014 Author Posted November 19, 2014 Hey mark555, I just took a few minutes' browsing at the British ebay site, think it's ebay.co.uk and there are currently over 16,000 amps listed. I saw some fantastic amps there at great prices for what they were. I think it would be easy for me to spot something really nice and at a good value just like here in the US. I have been known to browse across the pond for vintage tubes...I'm going to put some on my watch list for you. Won't recommend anything that I would not be delighted to own myself. The HARRY JOYCE Custom 30 made it to Utah, but I have not been able to open it yet, am in California visiting relatives. Jonesing to say the least! Will report two- three days from now. Gonna return to that Brit site for more drooling now.
rockabilly69 Posted November 19, 2014 Posted November 19, 2014 The HARRY JOYCE Custom 30 made it to Utah, but I have not been able to open it yet, am in California visiting relatives. Jonesing to say the least! Will report two- three days from now. This has got to be killing you Mav!!!
212Mavguy Posted November 19, 2014 Author Posted November 19, 2014 You might have to wait a bit for that one....
mark555 Posted November 19, 2014 Posted November 19, 2014 Hi Mav, thanks for looking out for me, I am really wondering what to get, expensive amps at £2000 are out of the question. Where in Utah are you? Daniel, great playing, that little Vox sounds very good indeed. Were you using the 150 in the photo?
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