I've definitely heard that about Engl amps as well - hard, if not impossible to work on.
I bought my Powerball II for $500 because it had a serious issue. I forget what, exactly, but apparently it was a known issue - I gave the amp to my tech immediately, and luckily I have a good relationship with the people at Engl, so they provided schematics as well as replacement parts that were updated in order to fix the issue. - I understand not everyone gets this treatment.
I've had a few chats with Martin at ENGL and he's always been helpful, but he does dodge a few of my more technical questions. I'm not blaming him specifically, clearly there's a company policy about it. My guess is that authorized techs have access to certain materials or can be provided with partial schematics, but I'd bet they would get in a lot of trouble if they shared it. I do wonder though, I mean if I had materials for a 30 year old ENGL and I was closing my repair business anyway, why not share stuff? Idk, maybe this stuff is happening but it's all behind closed doors, kind of like how some people trade factory service manuals for vintage cars (that the manufacturer would certainly not approve of even if they don't make the car anymore).
The irony is nobody wants to copy an Engl amp in the first place
Well the funny thing to me is that the one that is probably the most special in my eyes, the Savage Mk1, there is a schematic online for. Not sure exactly how accurate it is but it's there.
And that actually brings about a crucial part of this whole thing, and the reason it bothers me enough to comment on it. Not putting the component information on the PCB really only serves to make tracing issues difficult for people who do their own repairs, or your average electronics repair shop. If someone is an electrical engineer and they are really dedicated to building an ENGL clone, they are going to be able to figure it out anyway by checking the voltages and notating the component values manually. Yeah it's a pain in the butt, but if someone physically has your amp in their hands, they can figure it out, all you did was slow them down at the cost of hurting a much wider user base. (This is a common topic in computer info security, once an attacker has physical access to a device, they are eventually going to get your sensitive info, so at what point do you draw the line with how complicated/time consuming your security measures are?)
Or maybe I'm misunderstanding why they do it like this, maybe the point is specifically to prevent people from doing crappy "home repairs." I've seen my share of shitty amp repairs (like my Rev F which is off at Mesa right now). But to come around to that car example I mentioned above, this is an issue in that industry too (especially with electric cars) called "Right to Repair," which would likely apply to guitar amps too.
I feel like tech like this should be made open, or at the very least, there should be a period of time where the documentation becomes public. I.E. once an amp is 15 years old, the schematics should be open access, or similar. I mean, that's the only reason we even have guitar amps in the first place, RCA tube/amp schematics were published publicly, then Fender made amps and published schematics, people modified and innovated off of those (ex. Marshall, Mesa) and look at all the cool stuff we have now.
This sort of behavior from manufacturers irritates me. Do we have a reference list of what manufacturers are supportive of, or hostile to, repairability?. So far it seems to just be scattered around forums. It'd be useful, I think, to have some place that collected together people's experiences with trying to (have someone) repair their amps, whether the manufacturer provides schematics, if there are dirty tricks being pulled like in the picture above, etc.
It's hard to tell, for example there are schematics for pretty much every Marshall amp, but I am not confident in saying that if you emailed Marshall right now asking for a JVM410 schematic if they'd give it to you. I'm also more forgiving of keeping the current production stuff under wraps for at least a few years. I don't know for sure and maybe even some manufacturers don't, but the usual product/release cycle is that a new product sells like crazy, then tapers off drastically, so it makes sense to protect a design for the first few years after launch. Anecdotally, I've seen about 5x as many 2007-2008 JVM's from the first year than I have any other year.
Here's what I do know
Not hostile:
- Marshall
- Fender/EVH
- Mesa (will send you schematics of any amp that is not current production if you ask nicely)
- Ceriatone (obviously, but even for their own design/spinoffs they will give them to you)
- Jet City/Soldano
- Laney
Hostile:
- ENGL
- Rivera
- PWE
- Splawn
- Steavens
- Fryette/VHT
- Mako
- Anyone that goops the internals
There's others of course that I'm not sure about. For example I can't find a KSR Orthos schematic anywhere on the web so I *suspect* they won't share it but I also do not necessarily know for sure because I've never asked. One other "wrench" in the mix here, some of the official schematics are suspected to have some falsified details, such as schematics from 2ch Rectifiers. Whether Mesa intentionally used incorrect schematics or if they just don't have a 100% accurate schematic could be a subject for debate - I'd give them the benefit of the doubt from talking to them the other day, where they sent me the RA100 schematic just outright, and also told me that they didn't have internal schematics labeled as "Rev D, E, F or G" for 2 channel rectos. I think it's more of a case of 30 year old amps being manufactured with slightly changing specs so there's no one perfect schematic to apply. I'd also give smaller/boutique makers a little more benefit of the doubt, they have an idea or concept and are trying to protect it because it's their livelihood - but companies like ENGL are far from little boutique shops.
...... Sorry for the thread hijack, I'm way off topic now
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the amp EQ (natural EQ curve, and how do you set it), the compression (and gain), and the overall volume. How does the small irons ENGL uses influence that in your opinion?
