HH Audio
British amplifier manufacturer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
HH Audio (formerly HH Electronic[1] and HH Electronics[2]) is a British amplifier manufacturer that was founded in 1968 by Mike Harrison near Cambridge, England.[3] The company moved to Milton, Cambridgeshire, in 1969,[1] and had built a factory in nearby Bar Hill by 1977.[4] By 1979, they had achieved success in Europe with a range of instrument amplifiers, and their public address products included mixers, power amplifiers, speaker systems and digital effects units.[5]
The company entered receivership in 1984,[6] and the brand passed to Carlsbro.[7] Mike Harrison continued to design amplifiers as Harrison Information Technology.[8] By 1989, the HH brand was owned by the Headstock Group, owners of Laney Amplification.[3] Headstock revived the brand in 2012, launching a new line of sound reinforcement equipment.[2]
Amplifiers
HH was initially known as a manufacturer of audio amplifiers, and found early success with solid state power amplifier designs.[9][7] Its first solid state studio-quality amplifiers, such as the TPA50, were used by many recording and broadcasting studios, including Apple Records,[10] LWT's Intersound Recording Studios[11] and the BBC (for whom HH built the AM8/12 studio monitor amplifier).[12][13]
The early 1970s saw HH's first power amplifiers using integrated circuits. The IC-based TPA D range was introduced as a successor to the TPA series, including the TPA25D, TPA50D and TPA100D.[14][13] For PA applications, the IC100 power amplifier and MA100 mixer amplifier, both delivering up to 100 watts, were available in the UK and Europe by late 1972.[14][15] The MA100 offered five input channels with bass and treble EQ, and built-in reverb; the MA100S was a lower-cost version without reverb.[16] The IC100 introduced the striking electroluminescent panel lighting[17] used on HH's instrument amplifiers through the late 1970s,[9] with the company changing to more conventional panel designs in the 1980s.[18]
The IC100 was also available for musical instrument use in a combination
version built into a cabinet with two speakers.[14] In 1977, HH introduced the V-S Musician guitar amplifier, based on the IC100 series. It had two input channels, one of which featured four-band EQ, three EQ presets, and a "Valve Sound" overdrive using a combination of transistor distortion and filters, with spring reverb. Reviewing the V-S Musician in Fachblatt MusicMagazin, Gerald Dellmann said that he had never heard a transistor amp that could produce such a warm distorted tone
.[19] A bass version, the V-S Bassamp, was also available, and both could be purchased as standalone units or mounted in a combo cabinet.[20]
HH's final generation of amplifiers, the V series introduced in 1979, were based on MOSFET technology, allowing higher output powers with low distortion, and incorporating more sophisticated cooling and output protection features.[6] A 1982 US review of the HH V800 described it as a superbly-crafted piece of equipment—utterly reliable and virtually indestructible
.[21]
Other products
HH introduced an electronic piano, the P73, in 1981.[22] The P73 offered five piano and clavichord voices, and was controlled by a microprocessor. The P73 was used by keyboardist Duncan Mackay.[23]
In late 1983, HH launched the Tiger microcomputer, the design of which had been acquired from Tangerine Computer Systems, featuring a Zilog Z80 processor equipped with 64 KB of RAM for running the CP/M operating system, a Motorola 6809 processor with 2 KB of RAM for input/output control, and a NEC 7220 video controller with 96 KB of RAM supporting 80-column, 40-column and videotex-style text modes along with an 8-colour 512 x 512 graphics mode. The machine was equipped with a modem for access to Prestel and other online services. As was common with microcomputers of the era, the core functionality was situated in the keyboard unit, with a separate unit combining a 14-inch colour display and dual floppy disk drives. The base system was priced at £2,795.[24]