After I've now had some time to get more used to the amp I must say that I like it more the more I play it.
One thing I noticed is that it shows the character of the guitars/pickups a bit more than the Krank or Laney did. I'm surprised, as I didn't feel that the Krank colored things a lot, but it is interesting.
The amp has a lot of low mids which makes it sound very fat and modern. It is interesting, because it has a nice treble like Marshalls, but the mids are sooo different. With the Voodoo LesPaul/Nailbomb the tone I get reminds me a lot of the last Accept record. It also highlights the abrasive mids of the Nailbomb. With the Miracle Man in the baritone, as said, things sound massive and huge. When I played the guitars through the Krank it sounded good, but now through the ENGL I hear more nuances. Also, the volume difference of the guitars shines through much more (the baritone, due to the scale and strings, is way louder). THat is interesting as it's not just "more saturation". The gain is very dense, but has a lot of "structure" and transparency, and a lot of "thump" to it punch). As I said it sounds quite modern overall, but in a good way. You can see why people such as Steve Morse are among ENGL users.
Also, with more volume the amp naturally sounds better.... and less forgiving! It highlights sloppiness more than on lower volumes.
The clean channel is nice and clear, I think most people would like it. It isn't too far off from the Laney, i.e. clear contures, a bit hard-edged, good cut, works well with pedals. It unfortunately doesn't have that Fender sparkle.
Finally it has reverb and a boost switch. Both do what you expect.
I haven't used the powersoak yet, because you can only uise it with a single 8 Ohm speaker - both my cabs are 16 Ohm. Which leads me to the one thing I dislike about the amp:
ENGL could have designed the connectivity in the back a lot more idiot-proof, as for example Hughes and Kettner do. For example, "you can only use jack A if nothing is plugged in this jack B, but something needs to be plugged in Jack C with a stereo cable." If you do it wrong, the manual says the amp will be damaged. Well... sounds like fun. And there are lots of combinations like this.
Finally, two minor gripes:
- for the price ENGL could have included a footswitch.
- The power tubes have a red light behind them to make the amp look cooler. It really isn't nowhere to what Laney or Hughes and Kettner do. Because the power tubes are not centred but more to the left, ENGL only put the LEDs behind them... it looks a bit off-centre really. What were they thinking? That less is more? Then they could have skipped them right away.
