Engl E670 Special Edition Head

This is the new for 2004 Special Edition Head. Not to be confused with the Savage Special Edition.

This head is 100 watt, all tube, full midi controllable, 4 channel head. The channels are configured into 2 groups that share a Bass and Mid control knob. Each channel has an independent Gain and Treble, reverb and volume. Group one has Clean and Crunch channels with midi switchable gain boost and 2 differnt bright switches. And Group 2 has Lead 1 and Lead 2 with a high gain swith 2 differnt mid boost features.
All channels share a midi switchable Deep, Mega Low Punch, Vintage/Modern, 3 effects loops, full/half power, and built in Noise gate, dual/switcable presence, and dual swtichable master volumes! There is also a built in 5th direct clean channel, cable tester, multiple/switchable speaker outlets (like the new Mesa Roadking) and more that I am surely forgetting. This is the most complete amp I have ever owned. Only thing it could have is 4 completely independent channels (like a diezel) and perhaps even more voicing switches to get drastically different tones. I purchased because I was sick of the 2 ton rack setup, but could not get away from the features that midi and a Triaxis afforded me.

My setup is:
Fender Strats with Dimarzio virtual vintage in neck and middle, Duncan JB in the bridge.
I run a crybaby rack wah, into a DMC 8 loop swithcer with multiple stomp boxes, and a TC G-force in the effects loop (for chorus and delay).
I play lots of different styles and needed an amp that could cover lots of ground, as well as being midi switchable for ease of use.
I formerly used a Triaxis/2:90 and a rack mount Recto to get all the tones I wanted (both are now for sale).

Clean channel is very Clean and can be pushed to slight breakup with gain boost and lots of gain dialed in. Very usable.

Crunch Channel - sounds to me like an old marshall. Very cool, but I am still experimenting. Cant seem to get a good SRV type tone here but I know it is there somewhere ;-). I can get killer old stones, and even some 80's metal out of this channel.

Lead 1 - killer distortion! I like the high gain, modern, with Deep, Mega low punch, and the Contour swtiches in. Killer channel. My main distorted tone.

Lead 2 - Killer Lead Channel. keep all the switches the same and kick in the mid edge, which smooths out the high end a bit to make leads sing a bit more. This channel has a bit more pronounced low end, so I am still deciding whether to use it as a lead or monster crunch channel.

Overall the voicing of the amp sounds very much like a cross between a Mesa Mark 2C+ and a bit of a recto together. Many people would likely argue this, but it really depends on how you dial in the sounds. I am very familar with Mesa tones, and I was looking to find the perfect combination of sounds, and I have found it in this amp. I love this amp and its sounds. My only warning is to not get tempted to dial in too much gain as the sound becomes very shrill to my ears.
This amp works great for all music from Jazz, blues, metal, to extreme nu-metal stuff. It responds very well to volume knob changes and pick attack.

So far so good. I purchased the Amp from Rock solid amps. Derek is great and treated me very well. The amp came extremely well packaged and is built like a tank. There are many protection feature that should help keep the amp in great working order. You can check out www.rocksolidamps.com for detailed descriptions of the amp and its protection features. Time will tell if the amp is as good as it seems.

I have not had to use the customer support yet. Rocksolidamps does not service the amps. However, Derek is a cool guy who really took time to help me decide on an amp. There are no local dealers for Engl so I purchased and amp that I could not play first. His site had many sound bytes that helped in understanding what the tone was like. Also Splawn is an Engl dealer, so that helped assure me that the amps were worth the money.

Overall it is a great amplifier. The tones are very unique and likely not for everyone. This is no 1 trick pony, with more features and options than anyone is likly to use. This is the touring amp, which will save you from buying multiple heads to get all the sounds you are after. To me this has more features at a better price than Bogner and Diezel.