Not a NAD: Engl Steve Morse

[Antag]

On the way back from selling my Mesa I took a short detour to the Wembley Guitar Centre where they have just got an Engl Steve Morse 100 in stock.  Apparently I was the first person to come in & try it :)

Nice amp.  The blue front panel is either a love-it or hate-it thing, although it's darker in person than in any of the pics I've seen.  It has a absolutely gorgeous clean sound & a whole load of great low/mid gain rock crunch sounds.  The MIDI switching makes it fantastically versatile & the switchable mid controls are a great idea.

The thing that let it down was the mega-filth sound.  To answer the question that always comes up - YES, it has plenty of gain for ANY flavour of metal, it's an Engl for god's sake, of course it has enough gain! I just couldn't find a tone I liked.  I'm coming to the conclusion that I just don't like EL34s for very high gain.  I played around with the controls for ages but I just couldn't get a sound that made me go "YEAH!".  The word that springs to mind is "brittle".  I much prefer 6L6s or better still 6550/KT88s.

Take my comments with a pinch of salt though - I only had a chance to play through the Engl "Std" 4x12 with V60s (which sound pretty good with a Powerball or Fireball BTW) & there may well be a great metal tone lurking in there somewhere given more time to play & a different cab.

It's a damn nice amp, but I don't think I'll be buying one...

[Nolly]

Really interesting to hear your first-hand experience. I've not particularly enjoyed the high-gain clips I've heard so far, but then again, clips are an extremely unreliable way to form an opinion.

[Antag]

As I said, there are dozens of fantastic rock sounds on tap - it can cover just about all flavours of fender, marshall & hot-rodded marshall tone that you could wish for.  The cleans & crunches are better than my Savage & at least as good as the Hughes & Kettner Triamp MKII (& I never thought I'd be saying that!)  The MIDI switching is an absolute winner from Engl.

It's just that ultra-metal sound I couldn't dial in which is disappointing (as a predominantly metal rhythm player I need that sound).  The only EL34-based amp where I could get something close to that sound has been the Triamp - but even then I could name half a dozen 6L6 or 6550 amps that had better.  So it's possibly my anti-EL34 bias at work in this review.  Also, I wonder if a V30-loaded cab might sound a ton better (the V60s are OK, but perhaps not suited to all amps).

In short - if you're in/near London & intersted, go down there & try it.  Then try & convince me that I'm wrong... :)

[dave_mc]

haven't tried the steve morse, but i agree with you about the triamp mk II i tried- the first four channels were great, but i wasn't fussed with the high gain sounds on channels 5 and 6...