Pull the trigger? Ceriatone Hey What OL504

[jimijames]

So I've long wanted a hiwatt amp, but can't afford/justify spending ~$3,500 on an amp. Well I've been eyeing the Ceriatone and one just popped up for sale near me. Although it's not ~100%~ what I would want if I were spec-ing it out for my own purposes. Two big issues are the Ceriatone transformers (vs. heyboers which I would get if I were doing it from scratch) and the additional gain stage, which I'm not 100% sure I would want or need as I get most of my distortion from either a fuzz pedal or turning the amp up all the way (no HOA where I live and the cops haven't been called yet) and hitting the front with a barber gain changer for some additional compression/sustain.

Although, this is for sale cheaper than the kit with transformers. I think it's still probably cheaper overall to spec it out myself and just install the heyboers on arrival, so my biggest question is about the additional gain stage. Does it make sense to get the OL over the standard version and possibly save a few bucks, or would it be better to just call up Nik at Ceriatone, spend up and get something that's 100% what I'm looking for?

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[Ewizard]

In my experience, I say get the amp you want. If you are not too savvy with electronics and are new to building amps, making circuit changes can become challenging if you are not happy. If you buy the kit you want, you build it the way you intend to and it will be much easier to service and deal with if it doesn't work right, or you want to change an aspect of the circuit.

If you buy the one with the extra gain stage, you stand the chance of not liking it, which then means removing it and altering the circuit to accommodate that change. This then also means you have an amp that is no longer complete ( if that matters to you ) and you end up with holes in the chassis that don't belong anymore. That is my two pennies. Get what you want, not a compromise.

[beaubrummels]

If it's near you, why not ask if you could play it and see if it will take your pedals first?

FWIW a normal Hiwatt has a truckload of clean headroom, you have to really dime it to get it to distort. So having a little more gain wouldn't be a bad thing, as long as you could still run it with the master full and the input gain down and still get cleans. I don't know how much gain their extra gain stage is adding, however.