Engl Fireball 100 is easily their best amp - Change My Mind

Bad.Seed

Bad.Seed

Well-known member
Dropped a demo video for the Engl Fireball 100 today as part of my Engl Month content. The Fireball 100 was the amp that turned me on to Engl in the first place, and honestly, I think I started with the best.

After trying some of the other amps in the Engl lineup, I've found they all have a really interesting saturation to them, almost "ratty" in nature, as well as a lot of compression. They're wet sounding amps, generally modern in voicing, and most are loaded with features

I think this one appeals to me so much because it's very stripped back in features, and seems to be the least compressed and most raw, especially in the mids where it matters from a mix standpoint. This amp also has A LOT more low end than most of the other Engls I've tried, save for the SE E670, but the lows on that amp aren't really usable as they're switchable as opposed to on a dial on the power amp and when the switches are on, the low end is just super boomy.

Anyways, curious of other's opinions on both the Fireball 100 and the other Engl amps they may have tried.

Video is below:
 
I have liked the few Engl;s I have played until the are in a band mix. They get walked on by damn near any other amp. The SE is a great amp and I'm sure there are others but the ones I've played are missing mid presence.
 
Damn you Kyle... You never seem to fail to cause G.A.S. LOL

Great demo.

Your self having owned a Splawn Nitro and a Quickrod, how would you compare those 2 Splawns and the Fireball 100 tone and gain wise ?

Thanks
 
I saw an Inferno in the background of some of your other vids. Have you gotten to that one yet? I think that one and the Steve Morse are the 2 best ENGL's. To me (and I think it was the base concept when designing the Inferno with Marty) it takes the best qualities of several in their lineup and rolls them into one. If you get the chance try a Morse also. That one is more organic sounding than other ENGL's. It can hit high gain easily and Ch3 gives you so much control over the mids.
 
I like my Engl Artist Edition E651.

...and E530 + E850/100.


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Bash_Man said:
Damn you Kyle... You never seem to fail to cause G.A.S. LOL

Great demo.

Your self having owned a Splawn Nitro and a Quickrod, how would you compare those 2 Splawns and the Fireball 100 tone and gain wise ?

Thanks
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The Engl is different than anything Splawn in pretty much every way possible.
 
Reversed half stack of my favorite Engls is on the pic. I am not able to say, which one is better, they are all great. And I miss Inferno, which I sold.

As @Spaceboy mentioned, some Engls could have a problem in a band context. I was badly surprised by the Savage 120, it was buried by 6505. IMHO so far the best Engl in a band context is quite surprisingly the Powerball2, which killed my buddy's 6505 instantly. He switched to the Powerball as well.

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MadAsAHatter said:
I saw an Inferno in the background of some of your other vids. Have you gotten to that one yet? I think that one and the Steve Morse are the 2 best ENGL's. To me (and I think it was the base concept when designing the Inferno with Marty) it takes the best qualities of several in their lineup and rolls them into one. If you get the chance try a Morse also. That one is more organic sounding than other ENGL's. It can hit high gain easily and Ch3 gives you so much control over the mids.
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Yes, I posted my video of that one last week. I actually really dug it. It was just missing a Depth control on the power amp for me. Lacked low end when compared to my other favorite amps. Voicing wise, I really liked it
 
mcstinger said:
E530 is a nice preamp. Quite cheap, straightforward, easy to dial-in and sounds great. Must be pleasure to play it through 850 :)
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Yes, many years ago when I was looking for a modern high gain amp, this is the rig I chose. The E530 is basic which is what I wanted at the time. The E850/100 has a wide range of sounds, works great with my TriAxis and MP-2, but haven't tried either for many years!
 
The problem with engls not cutting through isn’t their midrange presence, they have a metric shit ton of midrange ( save for the powerball). They use small iron, simple as that. Their amps, if playing unmicd with something like a 5150, is going to get fucking buried. A big iron amp like a recto, or a 5150, is going to smokeeee virtually any Engl. anyone who has owned a savage, or Blackmore model etc next to a 5150 or something knows exactly what I’m talking about.

I dig the savage in the studio, some of my favorite tones ever have been done with them. When I was playing live? I couldn’t get rid of them fast enough.


On that Note, the fireball 100 and the savage mk2 is about the only thing that interests me from them these days, the fireball sounds real killer here for sure. Really sick sounding amp @Bad.Seed For sure, really want one now haZ I wish so bad the savage 120 OG model worked for me, I lusted over that amp for years as a kid. Sounded incredible on its own, but man it was such a let down with a band. Still a classic in the studio no doubt though.
 
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VESmedic said:
The problem with engls not cutting through isn’t their midrange presence, they have a metric shit ton of midrange ( save for the powerball). They use small iron, simple as that. Their amps, if playing unmicd with something like a 5150, is going to get fucking buried. A big iron amp like a recto, or a 5150, is going to smokeeee virtually any Engl. anyone who has owned a savage, or Blackmore model etc next to a 5150 or something knows exactly what I’m talking about.

I dig the savage in the studio, some of my favorite tones ever have been done with them. When I was playing live? I couldn’t get rid of them fast enough.


On that Note, the fireball 100 and the savage mk2 is about the only thing that interests me from them these days, the fireball sounds real killer here for sure. Really sick sounding amp @Bad.Seed For sure, really want one now haZ I wish so bad the savage 120 OG model worked for me, I lusted over that amp for years as a kid. Sounded incredible on its own, but man it was such a let down with a band. Still a classic in the studio no doubt though.
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This I agree with . The cymbals eatthe amps up. I love the amps on their own recording though
 
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dave74 said:
Anyone here know how the Victor sig-model compares to other more common Engls? I mean what is it based on and how is it different?
Sweetwater has them listed as "on the way".
https://www.sweetwater.com/c623--Am...GpWq30WZPD6YXTJvuwwaAsVqEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

https://www.engl-amps.com/shop/signature/victor-smolski-ltd-e646/
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It's supposed to be a tweaked Powerball. Sweetwater is supposed to have a bunch of new Engls in stock this week, including that one. I'm going to try to get one for a demo.
 
VESmedic said:
The problem with engls not cutting through isn’t their midrange presence, they have a metric shit ton of midrange ( save for the powerball). They use small iron, simple as that. Their amps, if playing unmicd with something like a 5150, is going to get fucking buried. A big iron amp like a recto, or a 5150, is going to smokeeee virtually any Engl. anyone who has owned a savage, or Blackmore model etc next to a 5150 or something knows exactly what I’m talking about.

I dig the savage in the studio, some of my favorite tones ever have been done with them. When I was playing live? I couldn’t get rid of them fast enough.


On that Note, the fireball 100 and the savage mk2 is about the only thing that interests me from them these days, the fireball sounds real killer here for sure. Really sick sounding amp @Bad.Seed For sure, really want one now haZ I wish so bad the savage 120 OG model worked for me, I lusted over that amp for years as a kid. Sounded incredible on its own, but man it was such a let down with a band. Still a classic in the studio no doubt though.
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Thanks dude! Fireball 100 is easily my favorite of their lineup.

That actually isn't the first time I've heard this about Engl.

I have personally witnessed a Blackmore get swallowed in a mix against my Deliverance 60. I also brought my Powerball II to practice and it got disappeared by my other guitarists Rev E dual rectifier. That thing has a little more mid bark than a typical Rev G, but I've got plenty of amps that don't struggle against it.

With that being said, I did take the Engl Fireball 25 to that same practice room, and it stood up to the Dual Rec no problem. I was honestly shocked by this, certainly wasn't expecting it to be able to hang, but it did. Keep in mind though, small-ish room. we play relatively loud at practice but not to asinine levels. I've brought other amps that struggled in that room for one reason or another, but the little FB hung, no problem.

I actually went out to Sweetwater this week to meet with Engl's CEO and one of their amp designers, Marty. Both incredibly nice guys. It came up in conversation how people complain about their transformers being small. Now of course, they're going to defend their product, so obviously we can all take this statement with a grain of salt, but according to them, when sourcing materials for transformers, there are lower and higher quality materials. The lower quality materials essentially are less pure/dense and actually result in an overall larger transformer. The materials they buy are supposedly a higher quality/higher purity and therefore result in smaller transformers.

Again, grain of salt, and I'm sure this will spark a whole conversation, lol. I don't know jack shit about the science and internals about transformers so I can't comment.

Regardless of all that, Engl has some cool stuff coming up this yea and next, so if you're a fan of the brand, you'll probably be happy.
 
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