Sixty five vs HD130

I was looking for a HD 130 head and ran across a very nice looking Sixty Five reverb head.
Can anyone tell me the difference between the two amps (besides the wattage)? Do they sound different?
Is the sixty five a good buy or should I keep on looking for a HD130?

Personally- I prefer the 65's. The volume is almost the same and they are cheaper to re-tube! With or without the 12ax7? Mike.

With the 12AX7.

Nice amps. The amount of actual sound energy out of a 130 as compared to a 65 is pretty close. I have one of each and have had several 130's over the years. The trend IS towards smaller amps anyway. Besides, two El's are a lot cheaper than four. HOWEVER, I usually suggest when re-tubing a single pair amp to buy a matched quad so that when they take a dump, you don't have to re-bias unless you are anal like me! Mike.

Ok, maybe I'll go for the sixty five then. I'm looking for a MM head to match my two 412-GS and it shouldn't be any problem with a sixty five?

You can always sell a sixty-five head again. They are highly sought-after. For most applications the HD amps are sort of a thing of the past, except for bass guitar. In a small club a sixty-five will be plenty loud, in an outdoor setting, even modest PA reinforcement will allow you to use a sixty-five just fine.
That being said, running two 412GS cabs (that's 8 speakers) with a sixty-five head may not give you the clean headroom you are after. Again, it comes down to where you play and what kind of sound you're after. If you play rock/blues the sixty-five will allow you to run the amp a bit hotter and take advantage of the moderate compression/overdrive it yields. This is especially true for the tube phase splitter variant.
Cheers,
Lars Verholt

Thanks for chipping in Lars. I don't want to be the only opinion. I wish more people would chime in here and I DON"T want to be the "guy" who always shoots his mouth off! Mike.

I used my 2/12/65 for inside and some outside gigs. Mostly though I used my HD130 with two 2/12 cabs for outside playing.
Later towards the end of my band days, I just kept the HD130 with the two cabs in the studio and ran her on the low power setting. I guess it was mostly cause I just liked the look, and I didn't have to bend over to far for amp adjustments.. Getting old I guess.
The sound was the same as far as I could tell but the HD130 was much louder with more headroom. Dave.

This one has hi-lo switch in the front. I've seen amps with hi-off-lo switch in the front are they the same amp? Mine" has on/off and stand by on the back.

The export version of the old 2100/2275/2475-65 and -130 amps, with 12AX7 phase splitters, are wired with a separate 2-pole power on/off on the back. The power selector in this version is a two position switch (even if the label next to the button has 'off' written for the non-existing middle position).
The separate power switch on the back is mounted in the hole where the ground lift switch is on the regular US issue.
Cheers,
Lars Verholt

Ok, the power selector switch is a black plastic switch (same as I have on my 212HD 150) not a chromed one as on pictures. The label only says hi-lo, no "off"
Is there any way to tell what year it is from?