Engl E580 MIDI Preamp

I don't know what year the amp was made. I have had it for almost 2 years now.

***I bought a used model which requires 230v 50hz, I am using a regulated power transformer which is giving it 220v 60hz(I couldn't find a perfect match). I only say this just in case this somehow effects the performance***

Clean and Crunch channels + Lo and Hi gain Modes + Vintage and Modern Modes = 8 Basic sounds stored to 128 presets with a second bank of 128. Thats 256 channels!!!!

The Gain knob has a feture built in so that as you increase your gain, your volume level actually stays the same. Try that with any other tube amp! This makes adjusting your tone very easy.

Low Low-mid High-mid and Treble Knobs, plus Low boost, Mid shift, and Bright buttons plus a Clean Bright which only works on the clean channel. It also has Low and High boost which only effect the recording output. It also has Channel Volume and Effects Loop mix, which goes from bypass in the lowest setting to full serial in the highest setting(you can actually hear the relay inside the unit as you switch to serial. It has a global volume which is not midi storeable, however everything else on the front pannel can be saved to a midi preset and recalled.

Very Versatile, I played in a Metal band with it, I played in a Progressive Metal band with it, I have played Jazz and Funk Concerts with it, and now I use it in a Rock and Roll cover band.

Very well laid out front pannel.

The only feature I have ever missed would be a global eq section to adjust for different venues, however I understand that adding more things in the signal path takes away from the tone, and I don't need more adjustability.

If any piece of gear deserves a 10, this is it.

My rig is as follows: Ibanez 2027-->Bad Horsie2-->Ernie Ball Volume-->Engl e580-->T.C. G-Force (in the loop)-->Mesa 2:100-->Mrshall 1960 Slash 4x12. I run my effects in stero.

I used to own a Triple Rect. which I sold to pay for this....No Regrets :)

First I should say that I have been using my G-Force with this thing for so long that I don't know how well I will be able to seperate the tone I get from the Engl and the tone that the G-Force is adding to it. Here goes.....

Overall The preamp is on the bright side of the scale, not pearcing, but definately bright. It sounds good while playing alone, but when it is in the mix of a full band, it just cuts through perfectly. It sits very well in the mix in a rock or metal band.

The cleans are as clean as you can get. If your pickup is wound very hot, you will get some grit from that, but the amp itself stays clean. It can be very glassy, or you can tame the high end for a smokey sounding warm vintage clean. If you turn all the eq knobs up,you can start to get some grit out of it. The clean channel will actually get kind of crunchy if you turn the gain up.

Hit the Hi gain button and you've got some great bluesy snarl.

Cruch channel with the Lo gain mode sounds awsome. Very nice saturated distortion.

Crunch channel with the Hi gain mode......LOOK OUT!! I play metal with the gain knob on 3!! It goes all the way to 21!! When I use the LB0 preset the amp sounds like the appocalypse!! Heavyest distortion I have ever heard, but very articulate. You can hear every individual note even with the gain turned way up!

I would describe the distorion as being Heavy and thick like a Mesa, but with a more biting Soldano/Marshall midrange.

The Vintage / Modern button is probably the coolest fearure on the amp. In modern mode, the amp is not as responsive to picking dynamics. This can be a good thing....If you want your clean to stay clean no matter how hard you strum, Modern mode will do it. It's great with piezo instruments. I run my distorted rhythm channel with the Modern mode on. I get heavy cruch without having to beat the crap out of my guitar, that is a great thing when you play for three and a half hours per gig! The Vintage setting lets you get some spanky response out of the amp. For example, I have a crunch channel that I use for "Would?" by Alice in Chains, and I can do the whole song (Soft verse w/ very light dist. Heavy Chorus with full dist) all on one channel just by picking harder!

The amp does hiss pretty loudly on the High gain settings, but it is a tube amp, so it's to be expected.

I use the G-Force for effects but I also use the Parametric eq to take some high end out on some of my patches. As I said earlier, the amp is pretty bright, and I like a very rolled off high end on my lead channels (alot of people say it is TOO rolled off....)

I LOVE my rig. You don't need an FX processor with it, but when I run my rig it is the greatest tone! If I go a week without playing it, when I finally plug in I am in heaven! The amp is a joy to play through.

Also, when I use to record direct, I get even better tone than I get with a pod. The Engl by itself is a little midrangey for recording, but with the added help of the G-Force I get smooth tube tone direct.

Another benefit is that if you blow up your Power amp or cabinet, you could go direct through the P.A. system.

This thing sounds AMAZING. The only amp I have ever played that had a tone I like a little better was a THD BiValve, but that is one great channel, the ENGL is 256 great channels!!

I have had issues with my unit a few times. I think it is because I am using the wrong voltage with it (see "features" above). The preamp has a two stage fan, I thing that when it gets too hot, it draws more voltage than my converter can supply, so it kicks off momentarily, but sometimes it is enough for the unit to restart and go through its turn on process. It only seems to happen when it's really hot. I bought a $10 fan at a hardware store and that seems to have fixed the problem. Other than that (which I think is my fault) the unit has never caused problems.

I e-mailed someone with a question about fixing the unit to run on 110v power but I never heard back from them. I don't don't konw of any authorized dealers in my area.

I have been playing guitar for 18 years.

If I had to replace it I wouldn't even have to think about it. This is the best piece of gear I have ever owned. I love it. I use over 10 presets per night playing cover songs. It has a great tone for everything from Clean to Dirty to Cruchy to Balls out Metal.

I didn't shop around for this. It was between the Triaxis and this, and it seemed like this is the superior preamp (no personal expereince with the Triaxis). I needed something with alot of channels.

This amp makes me want to play.

MIDI Preamp with all the features you can have. 4 basic channels with indipendent EQ's. All changes you can store very easy to 256 presets and 40 factory presets are given as examples. Soundshaping features as bright, ultra bright, bottom boost, middle boost, classic or modern. All of them are very usefull. Semi parallel FX loop. Direct out. Even if you want, you can connect a second preamp.

Well that's it!!!(as written below from Kurt) I was searching for the tone i had in my mind and ears. I tried many different preamps and amps. This one made the race. I own a ada MP1 and a Hughes+Kettner Access. Both are good preamps, but the it seems ENGL is from another planet. I was never really satisfied with the other to. They have good sounds but it was not 100%. I really love Santana and Satriani sounds with much sustain and a warm sound. This unit gives me that and much more. I used to have a Hughes+Kettner Zentera. It has a broud range, but the tones are digital! The Soldano sound copy is great, but still it's digital.
On the ENGL i'll find this as well and it's tube sound and not just tube sound, it's a very harmonical and definied sound.
I play various guitars and i always take a guitar because it gives the sound a certain character. The Access is very flexible as well, but it kills the character of the guitar. The ADA has a very awfull sounding clean channel IMO.
The distorion of the E-580 is just the one i was looking for years. Very dynamical and it gives me this special feeling. Even at high gain it's very clear.
I can find all the sounds I want out of this unit. Before I needed 2 preamps to get the sounds I was looking for and still I was unhappy.

As written above I use different guitars. John Petrucci, Frank Gamble, Rocket Roll, RG 550 with EMG PU (Ibanez). Gibson Studio and a Fender Strat. I like different sounds for different expressions. All of the guitars don't loose their identity.

The power amp makes also a big difference to the sound. I own a 50/50 from Mesa and a VS 250 form Hughe+Kettner. I made a direct camparsion. The Hughes+Kettner made deffinitely the race. It was too harsh with the Mesa. As cabs i use Marshall 1960.

So far so good.....

I just have the unit for 3 weeks, but falled in love with the first downstroke on the guitar. It's a very expensive unit and makes some noise at higher gain settings, But these are the only 2 things i found.
I've been playing for 15 years and tried a lot of different equipment.
This unit makes me stop searching. It's like heaven and hell!!!

I tried the E580 at my local dealer. Hard to find one that has the Engl on stock. By now I guess you know the features. I was pleased to see how easy it is to quickly dial in all sorts of great tones. From a technical point of view, this is a complicated amp.

As I said: you can get great sounds easily - much better than my Triaxis. All tones sound convincing. I have been playing for 23 years and I have owned all sorts of amps: Marshall, Fender, H&K, Peavey Tubefex, Johnson Millennium etc. Right now, my main rig is Triaxis, G-Major, Mesa 20/20. I am used to working with (complicated?) MIDI rigs. My band plays all sorts of Rock covers so I need a wide variety of sounds and I want them all to sound great.

After playing thru the Triaxis for 1 year, I have come to the conclusion that it's just not my preamp. It was a great unit when it was introduced in the early 90's, but I think Mesa should have come up with a successor for this popular unit by now. The triaxis' tone controls suck (by design) and I just can't get Marshall-like tones with it. It's all Mesa tones and yes, I have spent months of serious tweaking. BTW, I am particulary picky about my crunch and hi-gain sounds.

I have to agree with the guy who wrote that this preamp is noisy. You definitely need a good noise gate.

Well...

I was trying it out in the shop and I was talking to the sales guy. As we spoke the display suddenly went dead. The fan was still going and we could see the tubes glowing inside, but no display and no sound. This was a fairly new demo unit and we couldn't get it fired up again.

Could be bad luck, so I'll give it a 6 here....

The unit dying on me was probably bad luck or maybe an old, instable firmware version. The sales guy assrured me he will inform me when the unit is back online and what went wrong. I may ask him for another unit alltogether. I'll give it a shot and sell my Triaxis and get an E580 instead. Too bad you can't get them used....

If you're reading this you probably already know all the features that this preamp has. So instead of dwelling on all the positive features I'll comment about what I think needs improving. The first thing one does notice is that this preamp is very sensitive and therefore has a fairly high noise factor. While they did incorporate the noise gate on the newer 570 I am not sure it is a great thing to do unless it can be totally transparent which most nosie gates do not achieve. I use an ISP Decimator noise reduction and it is extremely transparent and it works terrifically. There are a few other points that should be mentioned too, they need to dial in a volume equiv. when you go from say a clean channel to a high gain the output drops a bit and that is a little frustrating when using it as if it were an amp as opposed to a preset preamp. The chrome front panal looks awesome and it does catch eyes, but from a functional stand point it's terrible, in low light or if you are using a light strip you cannot read the lettering to know which knob is which. The preset organization is poor, first off, it should have a display that allows you to name presets, who can remember if 43 is blues or 44 is and so on. For a unit this pricey it should have some of these simple intuitive features. It is a very involved machine when trying to program the midi. The absolute best user friendly unit I have and have used is the Roland GP-100 Engl should get there hands on one of those and make their own version of it's midi programming. That said, otherwise the unit is a gem, and has a ton more features than other competitors. The Soldano 99 is awesome too, but has no where near as many features, you're paying for a name and motorized faders. Not to say anything bad about that unit, cause it is awesome, and sounds great, but I totally feel it is not worth 3k! Yahmaha made the DG-1000 which used the same layout as the 99 at a fraction of the price, it might not sound quite as good, but it has virtually the same functionality. The VHT preamp is another, awesome sound, some nice features, but it's basically a 3 channel amp that doesn't allow different settings, potential for greatness only to be twarted by lack of ingenuity. I am a huge VHT fan, and love their products, and would have bought one of their preamps if it allowed presets! Bogner Fish, CAE, anything like them, waste of dough is what they should call it. In todays age 3 or 4 channel preamps are useless. If you are in a gigging band or a pro atmosphere you can not be limited to just 3 sounds IMO, but in the studio they are awesome pieces, and they do sound great, but they are not very versatile, and that is where the Engl kills them, because while it might not be as feature laden as its cheap counterparts ala Boss, Line 6 etc, it has ten times as many as it competition and it has that 100% sounds to match.

OK, here is where this thing shines. If you're like me and you have been searching for "your" tone then this might be it. I was never 100% happy with most of the amp companies. I liked the Marshall sound, but there were certain times I love the Boogie sound and sometimes a combination of the two was awesome but hard to come by. I am a big Hughes and Kettner fan, and they make some amps that nail the sound I was pretty well, I used to own a triamp, but 6 channels still wasn't enough. Diezel has some awesome heavy tones, but their cleans and light OD is just OK, VHT has awesome heavy and interesting clean, but again couldn't get that in between. In other words there are not many amps or preamps out there than can get everything you want and not only get it but get it well. I have a Marshall JMP-1 and I do feel that nails a lot of the Marshall tones well, but not all. I have a Roland GP-100 tons of different tones, and I'll call them 90% tones, because they do well but are not 100% there. It is another unit though I suggest to everyone. This is where the Engl shines, because it can get everything from dark jazz clean to plexi to all out hard and they're all 100%. Engl has a great sound, and if you're one of those who is not happy with just one sound this is the ideal preamp. It's hard sounds to me are a marriage of Marshall meets Mesa leaning more toward the Marshall. I don't know how they did it in an analog stage but they managed to capture a blend of that Marshall crunch with the mesa buzz, I love it. I am told that 570 can even get a little heavier than the 580 but if you take your time and dial things in well I can't imagine ever needing something heavier. Those in between distoritions are the best though, think AC/DC or ZZ Top sounds you can get some serious sound going there. Many people have compared this to the Triaxis, and to me they are not in the same league. Again I am big Mesa fan, but they're not quite in the same boutique leage. The Triaxis is awesome if you're looking to get a bunch of Mesa tones (although I never thought it did the rectifier justice) but this is an preamp that can nail lots of different tones in a subtle way all usuable and all awesome.

I haven't had to do anything so far in this respect, but from what I understand Engl builds like a tank. So far mine has had no issues what so ever.

I have not had to deal with them at all.

Sorry to have made this a long post, but I am sure most of you who are thinking of buying one of these are comparing it to a few others, and that is why I wanted to include a lot of those comparisons. To me, and to many others it seems, there is no equal to this preamp. There is no preamp out there that sounds as good AND offers this much. There are a few that might sound comparable, but they have far less features, and there are others with more features but sound far less. All in all it is an awesome piece of gear. I am sorry I don't get to use it as much as I would like because my rack is too big for me to gig with at small to medium sized venues, it's too damned heavy and tough to transport. So I use a Hughes and Kettner Zentera as my main amp out. If the Engl could do everything the Zentera could in that sized package for me it would be a no brainer, but for now the Zentera get's what I'll call 95% sound and is portable with additional features. I don't want to get into comparing the two of them because they are very close, but are intended for different purposes. If you are looking for an amp that will model others the Zentera is your best bet out there, if you are looking for a highly versatile sound of your own then the Engl is hands down the best unit out there, and I have tried them all. The only downside to the Engl is of course the price. They don't come around used very often, and I believe there are only two retailers in the US. And if you have to order one from Europe be prepared to pay over $3000 US. The price may make other preamps seem more appealing, but if you can afford it take the plunge, I doubt you'll be sorry, or wait to try and find one used as I did. I am the owner of KWCABS guitar speaker cabinets, and I started making them because I was in search of a tone. We make only the best cabinets out there out of all Hardwoods and top quality materials. Tone is something I take very seriously and the Engl is right on the top of the list. Feel free to check out my cabinets at www.kwcabs.com if you are interested in achieving the best tone on the next stage of your signal. Take care and good luck.

Very strong MIDI preset implementation .
All knobs , all settings , are hooked up to the midi .
A couple of hundred user sounds can be remembered and recalled instantly .
Front panel lamps are a bit confusing . Knobs work fairly well though . Some features are operated by combined button presses : this is very fiddly and irritating . Simple A-B , original to modified , comparisons are needlessly difficult to make .
Unlike the newer E570 , there is no inbuilt noise gate . A pity .

Four general modes : Clean , Rock , Overdrive and Metal .
Overdrive is the best IMO .
Clean is really clean and can be set up for warm jazz .
A wide range of very useful sounds . Many very 'exciting' sounds .
Presets are curiously organised though .

Don't know . Engl say it is good for gigging .
I took the lid off and had a look inside . Seems fine .

Online forum is poor .
Emails are answered .

Easier to use than the Triaxis .
Better cleans than the Triaxis .
Good German Metal and loads of various Marshall sounds in Classic mode . Plus a selection of Engl's own rasping modern overdrives ....
A Triaxis killer ? IMO ... yes .

URL: http://www.engl-amps.com/

Shipped from ENGL in January 2005.

Beautifully designed by Horst Langer, and hand-built by a small but extremely talented team in Germany.

This is the most functional, and best looking, preamp available today.

The specs are available at:
http://www.engl-amps.com/engl-amps/amps/rackgear/midi_preamp/default.htm

I use the E580 for direct recording only - I don't use (or need) a power amp, speakers or microphones.

I use a variety of guitars with pickups ranging from piezo, custom passive to fully active systems.

My musical styles vary from classical to death metal.

The E580 clean sounds range from crystal clear to warm smooth jazz tones.
The lead sounds range from just-breaking-up blues to scorching harmonic-filled rip-your-balls-off metal.

If you like German metal, ENGL is the amp of choice.

The E580 is extremely quiet - even with the gain set to 21 (yes, these knobs go to 21 !!!) there is very little hum. I *do* use balanced regenerated A/C power in the studio - this quietens most equipment.

The E580 has stereo frequency-corrected balanced line outputs (in addition to direct outputs) designed for recording direct. These outputs include bass and treble filters for speaker/cabinet simulation. These outputs sound OK, but don't offer the flexibility of a dedicated speaker/cabinet simulator. For recording purposes I use a Palmer PGA-05 (active stereo speaker simulator).

I have posted a short sample demonstrating the clean and lead channels to:
<a href="http://www.simonmorrison.com">www.simonmorrison.com</a>
The sample is named (appropriately) E580.mp3

No problems to date.

The E580 has a 2 year warranty.

ENGL Amps USA http://www.englampsusa.com/ provide sales and customer support in the US.

I have been playing various instruments for 36 years.
I have been focusing on guitar for the past several years, and am a self-admitted gear junkie!

My equipment list is available at:
<a href="http://www.simonmorrison.com">www.simonmorrison.com</a>

I have been using a Mesa Boogie TriAxis preamp for several years and wanted to expand my sonic palette.

I had read that the E580 was a TriAxis "killer". I don't agree with this assessment. The TriAxis is a great preamp, and if you like Mesa Boogie tone, the TriAxis should be on your shopping list.

If you want a little more flexibility, and one of the sexiest looking preamps on the planet, get the E580.

I bought this amp in 2001, the most versatile amp I've ever come across. Especially for Rock, but also in the clean area there are a lot of reserves. I can get the Luke & Landau tones easily. Also the very heavy styles (wich Engl is known for) are in there. There are 4 channels, each with 2 different voicings (classic/modern), wich amounts up to 8 (!) different modes. The potmeters are continuous, with red leds. 256 presets. Need more? uuuhhhh....

I use a Music Man Luke off the rack and a Parker (modded with EMG). The preamp goes into a Engl 930/60 poweramp and two vintage 30 cabs.
A Mesa 2:90 power amp would also a perfect match (6L6). Very good sounds in the 580. The gainreserves are almost too much. I never turn the gain above 12 o clock. Very good Landau-like crunch tones too. No matter what EQ settings you use, it never becomes crappy. Every setting is useful. The 580 can be a bit noisy in high settings though.

I had one (big) problem. At a gig, I discovered that all my sounds were gone...(wooops). This was 7 months ago, when I just got it.
I asked the distributor, and he thought my flash-rom needed to be updated or something like that. So I got new software from them, and since then never had a problem. The new software also made sure preset switching was faster. (keeping my fingers crossed though...)

Engl is a small company, but very good at customer service. I get answers within days when I have a question. The make high end stuff, and their service (Erich Koch) is excellent.

Overall, the Engl is not cheap, but one of the best preamps available today. Better than Bogner, Egnator, TriAxis etc. The only comparable preamps are the Soldano's (mega bucks and not that much better and certainly less versatile), and the CAE3+ (try ordering one and wait for 12-16 months)