"Har-mon-y, it has happened to me..."
It's strange. It's strange to think that those black-and-white pictures you see of guitar factories from the 1800s could have any relationship to us now. Those mustachioed guys in those workshops – worlds away, right? It's the twenty-first century, after all. We have MIDI integration, taco trucks, and all of Breaking Bad on streaming – could any of those guys imagine even one of those things?
All jokes aside, it is true that for most of those turn-of-the-century-type musical instrument stories, you won't find as direct a connection to today. So many modern musical institutions either came later in the middle of the twentieth century, turned over after their inception, or outright disappeared because they maybe weren't all that good to begin with. Today we're talking about one of the exceptions to such a rule. It's been a long time coming for this classic American name, so why make them wait any longer?
This is the Harmony Series 6 H620 tube amplifier.
History, Harmonizing
Introducing the Harmony Series 6 H620 Amplifier
We're dropping in on this story around the turn of the twentieth century in America's manufacturing Midwest. Chicago has earned a status as a hub for manufacturing in the country due to its central location and closeness to greater railroad systems pointed at either coast. After the Industrial Revolution, cities like Chicago became huge centers of manufacturing, commerce, and industry. What can you find among these many new industries emerging in the turning century? Consumer musical instruments. What's among the many new modes of commerce? Mail-order merchandise.
It was no accident that the Chicago-based Harmony became popular at the dawn of mail-order and department store merchandising. Midwest mail-order and department store companies like Montgomery Ward and Sears picked up names like Silvertone, Supro, and of course, Harmony, for their catalogs and stoked the flame for quality musical instruments for the next sixty or so years to come.
Years go by, times change. We get rock 'n' roll, MTV, the Internet, all the usual history book stuff. Twentieth-century history aside, what do we have today? Harmony returned relatively recently with new lines of guitars and amplifiers inspired by their classic mid-century models. Today, we have the Harmony Silhouette, the Harmony Comet, and, our guest of honor, the Harmony H620. Part of Harmony's Series 6 amplifier line, this tube-based combo plays with a unique American tone. With their legacy as a classic American name, it's only natural, after all.
Like an H6
Harmony Series 6 H620 Amplifier Design
The Harmony Series 6 H620 joins Harmony's Series 6 line of amplifiers. All sharing a unique look and sound, these three amplifiers all come together with similar designs only differing in their wattage and speaker size. We're talking about the middle-of-the-pack model today, the H620. This twenty-watt, tube-based amp sits right in the middle of the Series 6 H605 and H650, their five and fifty-watt models. It utilizes two 6L6CG power tubes, three 12AX7 preamp tubes and an Italian-made Jensen Falcon speaker. If this all sounds a little "get to the good stuff," just know that this Harmony comes together with some great foundations under the hood for players looking for something honest and authentic out of a modern tube amp.
Along with fixings for a great modern tube foundation, the H620 is outfitted with a couple more modern additions to build upon its basics. For one, the H620 comes equipped with an onboard attenuator which scales the amp's power down from its twenty-watt max. If you're looking to push the amp a little more for greater breakup or roll it back for more indoor-friendly volumes, the onboard attenuator is a great element to drop in. Its attenuation abilities allow for this twenty-watt to fit just about anywhere while projecting comfortable volumes, if that's one of your prime concerns.
What's more for the modern design of the H620, it features a dedicated ¼" line out for utilizing the amp as a tool for recording. Capturing its output directly, the H620 also finds its way into home studios or just more straight-through setups where mic'ing an amp might not be a big deal. This line out coincides with the amp's zero-watt attenuation setting, where you can silence the amp completely while getting its line output. Bedroom players and home studio recorders who are known to get out to a gig every now and again are sure to see the stars align with these features.
Sixth Harmony
Harmony Series 6 H620 Amplifier Sound and Playability
Alright, so with all of that out of the way, how does this thing play and what does it sound like? Well, if you're looking for those kinds of Internet-friendly buzzwords, we've only got a few. At its heart, the tube-based design of the Harmony H620 falls at an interesting intersection between American cleans and British chime. Landing more in the American camp but with some definite English in there, the Series 6 H620 can hit all the crystalline cleans and tube-born breakup you've come to know and love from similar tube combos, but that isn't the end of the story.
The H620 is set up differently from your classic American and British tube combos. Where the former might depend on pure, straightforward tube muscle to get its clean and dirty voices across and the latter might utilize different input channels for "normal" and "boosted" voices, Harmony somewhat splits the difference. The H620 utilizes a single input, like an American, but offers something of a channel-switching experience like a Brit. Let's talk about this a little more specifically.
At the core of the H620 (and the other Series 6 Harmonies, too), is a conversation between Volume, Presence, and Gain. These three controls will establish the basic building blocks of your tone. Let's run a couple of these down.
- Volume – Left for quieter, right for louder. This control naturally is affected by the Presence and Gain, making for an immediate coordinated dance between the three. One change in Volume might affect Gain, one change in Gain might affect Presence, and so on.
- Gain – Left for cleaner, right for dirtier. The Gain control is where a lot of room for tonal negotiation at different volumes is born. Twisting between different Volume and Gain levels can produce low-output breakup, high-output teetering, mid-output cleans, and anything else you can dream up in that general spectrum.
- Gain Boost – As something of a compromise between having single channel and dual channel inputs, the Gain Boost works to elevate the amp to a definitely raised level – different enough from its basic level – but keep everything streamlined and relatively within the same ballpark. Pull the Gain knob out to engage the Gain Boost mode of this amp and get a definite bump in output.
- Presence – Our final stop on our tone-sculpting journey, our American-style Presence knob. While a Presence knob won't affect your sound in your usual zero-to-ten linear fashion, like many American amplifiers before it, it will highlight different frequencies within the signal as you roll through it to find some tonal sweet spots.
Like we said, there's quite a bit of room to mix and experiment on this amp by itself. Onboard, you have access to truly clean tones as well as bona fide tube-born distortion with everything pushed. Where other "clean" single-channel tube amps may demand an overdrive pedal to push its voices and achieve saturation at reasonable volumes, the H620 does not. Its Gain and Gain Boost functions reach these conclusions effectively for honest to goodness, touch-responsive breakup. Play however you like; Harmony isn't here to get in your way.
Onboard, the H620 also loads in a three-band EQ section for accessing different tonal voicings, a tremolo effect, and a reverb effect. Altogether, these features stack up to make the H620 not only versatile and gritty, but lush and expressive at every level of operation. With Harmony, you can have your cake and eat it too with effect flourishes like a splashy or cavernous reverb or an undulating or hammering tremolo. The H620 is effectively an all-in-one tube experience that one can be comfortable with performing with a guitar alone. It features enough flexibility and expression to do so.
Harmony Series 6 H620 Amplifier Final Thoughts
With today's Harmony guitars and amps, we have a pretty tangible link to the birth of electric musical instruments as we know them today. Their distinct mid-century styles and honest amplified tonalities pair up for something that is unique to today, all-American, and entirely musical. Maybe the days of circling things in a catalog and mailing it out to North Lawndale are long gone, but the spirit of what drove such mania is still alive and well today. Harmony's back at it with American-made instruments, and we're glad to see it. Grab some friends, grab an H620, and join in on this harmony – we can't do it without you.
