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Hartke 3500 vs HA3500


Dave Vader
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This weekend, in Exeter's notorious Wants Centre (usually filled with wildly overpriced budget guitars) I found a fully flightcased Hartke 3500 for only £140.
Since my current amp is behaving like a twat, I had been idly googling for one of these, and found the cheapest on ebay to be about twice that, so I snapped it up.
(Fans of weird coincidence will be pleased to know that I would not have even been in Exeter had I not been there to borrow an old Peavey head from my mate in order to have a working gig rig until the current problems are sorted - didn't need it in the end, spooky...)

It is great, I am very happy.
However, I am now intrigued as to the difference between a 3500, and the current production HA3500 (other than the words Transient Attack on the front).

Any ideas Hartke experts out there?

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From an old thread that I stumbled upon while looking into these a while ago:

---x---
The MOSFET version was dumped around '98 due to reliability issues, in favor of a bipolar transistor design. The MOSFET versions would literally go up in flames, and you cannot get a MOSFET replacement PCB, only a bipolar retrofit.

Another reason why it was dumped can be the fact that it used lateral MOSFETs (most probably 2SK135/2SJ... from Hitachi) which are not manufactured any more and replacements are expensive. Also DBX integrated circuits are not manufacured any more (at least to my knowledge).
---x---

I've no idea if any of that's fact...

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Great amps though, and a cracking deal.
Hartke do seem to suffer pricewise s/h a bit, and can't understand why. Generally reliable and well made,
lots of tone shaping and loud as f*ck, can't see what's no to like.I've had both versions of the 3500, and they were just spot on.

For years myself and I suspect lots of others thought they were made in USA, which I believe only very early ones were?

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