ENGL powerball and ENGL in general...

[hunter]

My very personal and subjective 2c are with regards to any Engl I've played, that they lack dynamics and punch. Same with the Pwerball II at Messe.

If you look in the back you see tiny output transformers, and that's why. There is not enough iron to deliver the spike of power needed for a good attack and dynamic range.

However I haven't played the SE and would like to try one.

[JDC]

hunter have you played the invader, heard somewhere it's basically a SE with a less complex control panel

[hunter]

hunter have you played the invader, heard somewhere it's basically a SE with a less complex control panel

nope haven't

[asianaxeman]

Hi Lew, I've had the screamer and fireball for ages and if you want to get the best out of a screamer than put it through a decent 212V/ 412V cab. I've had good results with my 212V - samples below.

In my opinion, once you've tried these amps there's just no going back, you just want to try more ENGLs and I'd be interested in trying the invader and savage next. They have a much tighter low end than rectifiers and cut through the mix better. In direct comparison of the screamer to the marshall JVM for instance, I think the highs are much more controllable, less shrill, much easier to get a decent tone even with bright pickups (eg painkillers), the high gain channels are also a lot less noisy than my JVM (when using the same gate on both).

You have to love the very transparent FX loops with these amps and I disagree with someone above who said they don't take OD pedals well, I've had very good results. Using an overdrive pedal I can quite easily make the fireball a 3 channel amp- clean, crunch (clean channel with a good transparent OD which doesnt affect your tone - I use a hotcake), and ultragain channel - for metal / leads. These amps clean up amazingly if you know how, I often use my screamer on channel 4 and if you switch to split coil pickup with the volume down u can get a good clean if you want 'pedal free' switching. Despite having the expensive Z5 footswitch, I've never needed it.

Screamer clips
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwaRzeUWoLE&feature=channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_Sc6TP1GBk&feature=channel

Fireball clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kN2vcwTt9sQ

Remember the advantages of 50w vs 100w amps by the way, less expensive tube replacements in the long run! And as someone said above the 2nd crunch channel when cranked sounds Godly, blows away my JVM. Good luck with your purchase.  :band5:

[asianaxeman]

btw differences between black powerball 2 and silverface

each of the 4 channels now has a gain control, there's a midboost feature, footswitchable noisegate and fx loop

[Lew]

Chers AAM! Those clips are a lot better than I managed to get it sounding. They sound really good.

[asianaxeman]

thanks dude, it does make a world of difference going through a decent cab. I got the 212v cab cheap when my local guitar store was closing down, about half price. Beats the shite out of any marshall cab.

[gordiji]

sounds good to me asianaxe, sometimes when i hear negative feedback on the screamer i ask myself am i on another planet, have i missed something.....then i play and think this is a great do it all combo. maybe the the other
amps out there are greater still, but me thinks we're so spoilt for choice!

[Antag]

hunter have you played the invader, heard somewhere it's basically a SE with a less complex control panel

nope haven't

I've played the Invader but not the SE, however I think that's overly simplistic.

I guess they are "basically" the same in that they both have a 100watt El34 power section (OK the SE is also available with 6L6s), MIDI switching (as I've said before one of the best features out there) & 4 channels, but there the similarities end.

The Invader has 4 totally independant preamp channels - dedicated Gain, Eq & Vol per channel, whereas the SE has similar shared Eqs between 1/2 & 3/4 as the Savage/Powerball et al.  The SE is absolutely jam packed with other features: 1 serial & 2 parallel FX loops, switchable speaker outs, a cable tester (?). external bias controls & all sorts of other gubbins.

[dave_mc]

yeah, the SE is one of those few amps I've tried that I was like  :o upon firing it up. Unfortunately, it's an awful lot of money, and if you just need the engl tone and not the versatility there are other engls which'll do it for £1000 (if not £1500) less... and some of those are pretty versatile too.

[Madsakre]

The only engl i like is the Fireball 100(the new one) All the others are voiced terribly imo. and their eq's are also quite inactive :S