I'll do a more in depth review as to why I'm not a big fan of Engl amps
General observations:
- Those who say they've never had a problem with their Engl, wait until the amp is at least 5 years old. I've seen a dead SE (the supposed flagship) for sale on here and there's currently a Steve Morse with dead effects loop for sale; also seen local "refurbished" Fireball 60s, etc. If it breaks, you're in even more trouble; it'll be pretty hard to find a tech willing to work on a thin, upside-down, often multi-layered PCB with really small and crappy components. Endorsed bands have backups, and they'll probably have a replacement sent if one breaks down.
- Most of the models have pretty good straight up metal sound, flat EQ and without the need for a boost or much pedals; it's hard to get another good sound out of them though
- Cleans sound similar on pretty much every model I've tried: not warm, crystal clear and without much character. It would help if the loop was as good as, say, a VHT/Fryette UL, so good effects would shine through on the clean channel, but the loop is average
- Crunch sounds are pretty worthless; they sound like a watered down high gain channel on most of the models I've tried, similar as if you would turn your volume knob down on the high gain channel
- Amps don't come with a footswitch, while you can get generic footswitches for some models, you have to buy Engl's shiny overpriced footswitch for others in order to access all the functions. And, of course, you won't be able to use that same 200$ footswitch with any other model, since they made sure about every model gets a different footswitch (9 different footswitch models to choose from)
Particular observations on amps I've tried:
- E530 preamp: the only model worth the money IMO, as you can get it used for 400-500$. Same observations as above on clean and crunch channels. The high gain channel is more "organic" and less compressed than other models I've tried.
- E570 Special Edition preamp: Ultra-compressed fizzy POS. Unless you play death metal from beyond the grave, you won't need these types of gain. The "Classic" mode is a laughable attempt at vintage types of sound and I didn't find the switches to alter the horrible basic voicing enough to make it worth playing.
- Thunder: I owned the combo. I'll say it's not that bad, it has your base Engl sound with a good amount of gain, nothing special. Considering the biuld quality and other amps available in that price range, I wouldn't pay more than 600$ for it brand new.
- Fireball 60: What can I say... a little bit less gain than the E570, but the basic idea, without all the "bells and whistles" between the ultra clean and ultra high gain. 5150 stomps all over this
- Powerball II: It gets a bit interesting, the high gain sounds are much better than the E570 and Fireball 60, but this amp doesn't do anything else really. A disguised, overpriced one trick pony
- Savage 120: I didn't give this one a good enough run. The voicing seemed really harsh to me and it was really noisy. Back then, I didn't experiment much with tubes, I should probably have tried something different. I would give this one another try.
- Blackmore: Nicer pure tone, more open. Better cleans and crunch than other models, but still shines best on high gain channel. Also one of the few models that can benefit from a tube screamer type of boost. Unusable as a 4 channel amp, it's more of a glorified 2 channel amp. I would say it would be worth it if priced like a 5150/6505
- Steve Morse: Probably the best sounding of the bunch, maybe the EL34s help? All channels are usable and channels 2 and 3 are voiced differently enough that they can be used for different applications. Nice flexibility, noise gate works pretty good. The low/hi md voicings is a nice option, making channel 3 the best channel I've played on any Engl amp. If it was built like a Mesa, its price tag could be justifiable
Hope this long post is a bit informative
