Engl Powerball 100 Head

Well, its all tube 100watt - you got a clean, crunch clean, lo distortion and high distortion - then you got 4 different volume settings for each of those channels - then you have 2 overrall power gain settings for all 4 - this is unbelivably versatile!

Well i`m currently using this with a bc rich warlock - soon getting a telecaster and an epiphone - I feel comfortable playing all kinds of styles of this amp cos it has such a good tone on all channels. I play country and classical, but also love metal - my band heavy metal band jus recently did a few gigs witht his thing and it sounded like we were playing wembly, its incredibly loud!

Well its german made, enough said.

I haven`t had to deal with them, nor will i expect too.

Well, i`ve been playing for almost 10 years now and own marshall avt 100 - i use bc rich guitars too. I got this powerball a few years back and it has proven to be incredible - i feel i can play anything on this thing, i don`t expect to be buying any other amp for a very long time. If anyone stole it, i swear i would kill em, someone scratched the top of it once and they sure did pay for it hehe anyways, this thing is awsome, it not only looks the part, but it plays it too - mesa watch out.

Made in 2003 - 4 channel all-tube head (6l6s) - Channel 1 (Clean), Channel 2 (Crunch), Channel 3 (Lo Gain), Channel 4 (Hi Gain) - the custom footswitch is the way to go, giving the player all the channels at their feet, plus a contour/reverb and master a/b (the last two mostly seem to affect volume for me. But then, I've not had the amp for very long (around 2 months) and I never read manuals, so there is probably more to be found once I dig in and mess with it.

Built-in noise gating that really helps clean up the gain channels. I somewhat wish it had some onboard effects (chorusing, delay, and such), but this is a very small issue and I would much rather have the solid, warm, and beautiful tone that this amp dishes out. Effects can sometimes color sound too much in my opinion.

I'm using this amp with three main guitars, an Ernie Ball Music Man Petrucci 6-string w/ piezo (the piezo is actually running over to my old Marshall now) and Dimarzio custom pups, a Jackson USA SLH2 Soloist w/ Seymour Duncan pups, and an Ibanez RGT42BP w/ Dimarzios.

The Powerball just rocks for all applications. The band I'm in plays around with everything from Tool to Jefferson Airplane. We do covers and originals and work with high gain and the cleanest cleans. This amp nails it all dead on! I used Marshall prior to this rig and there is absolutely no comparison in my mind. As soon as I plugged this thing into my 2z12 cabs (one Vox w/ Celestion Neodogs and one Splawn w/ Vintage 30s), I was treated to an undeniable presence of sound that made me understand - finally - why so many guitarists still prefer tubes over the "new technology" amps. I have no further questions on this subject. I don't even use my Digitech GNX3 for anything other than the piezo on the Ernie Ball now. The magnetic pups are plugged straight into the Powerball sans effects...and it is a great feeling to stand across from this monster that can sing with crystal purity and then punch you solidly in the chest at the press of a button.

I could break each of the channels down one by one, but suffice it to say that if you are looking for a high gain amp in the vein of a Mesa Rectifier or Bogner Uberschall at a much better price (and in all honesty, a much better sound), look no further. Sure, the Bogner can push a bit harder on the gain side, but neither of the competing amps I mentioned do much for me in the clean department. They're great amps, don't get me wrong, but they are niche products, for lack of a better description. If you're into extreme metal and couldn't care less about acoustic-like sound, go with the others. If you're a cross-genre player, I'd strongly recommend the Powerball. I've pulled chunky distortion powerful enough to liquefy bones out of this thing (the first time I slammed a chord home on the Hi Gain channel I literally stopped and went "WOW!"), but I've also found a squeaky-clean and harmonically rich acoustic side to this amp that took about ten seconds to dial in. To sum it up...it's just really good stuff!

Well, I've only had the amp for a couple of months, but the friggin' thing looks and feels like a tank! It was designed and made in Germany, so...well...you know there's no question about quality of workmanship. I've no doubt that this beast will live a very, very long life...with only the tubes needing replacement. Another quick point on this subject...there is a built in monitoring system for the tubes that will alert you via LEDs when one of the tubes is about to jump into the casket. Nice touch on an already solid product. I'll hold my opinion though until I've had the unit for longer and can make an informed statement.

Haven't needed to contact them yet. I'm hoping I won't need to. I'll hold opinion at this time in this area as well.

If this amp were stolen, I'd be very pissed and would likely call up a bounty hunter or something...but then I'd save the money and buy another Powerball. In shopping for a new amp to replace my Marshall (which I was just not very pleased with), I looked at the Bogner Uberschall (too brutal for me), the Bogner Ecstacy (very nice...but very expensive too), the Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier (more talk than walk...nice distortion if you sit down with it and tweak for a few hours, but very muddy too), the Bad Cat Hot Cat 30 (nice, but just not as versatile in my opinion as the Powerball), and a few other less notable competitors. I chose the Powerball for two reasons: sounds GREAT! and you cannot beat the price. Sure, it's expensive at $1,600 ... but you get more than what you've paid for in this case. I played amps costing as much as a $1,000 more that sounded like mass-produced corporate garbage next to the Engl.

The only thing I could say negative about Engl is that they're somewhat difficult to find in the States. I'd heard samples of the sounds long before I found anyone in Florida that had one I could try in person.

4 channel 100w 6L6 powered high gain head. 2 channel strips - one for clean/crunch and one for higain #1/#2. Gain is shared on those stips along with some EQ settings. 4 Volume channel controls though, and TWO footswitchable master volumes. Great for dialing in a volume boost or cut in the pwer section. Global presence and punch dials, along with a global open/focused switch, footswitchable. Open is more the 'scooped' tone and 'focused' is more midrange punchy. Clean/crunch channels has bright and bottom boost buttons, while higain channels have inidivually assignable bottom boosts. Lots of tonal options here to get great tones with a variety of guitars and setups. Has cool red lights behind the tubes and an open grill - looks absolutely menacing on a dark stage!

VERY IMPORTANT: The cabinet you choose to go with this amp makes an unbelievable difference in the quality of the sound. That's why before I even get into what the amp sounds like I'll go through my cabinet saga. When I first played the head in the store I played it through a Bogner 2x12 loaded with Vintage 30's and that sold me on the head. It sounded killer, so I purchased just the head at the time, thinking to myself 'damn, can't wait to plug this into a 4x12'. At my rehearsal space that I share with some friends there are a number of cabinets including a 4x12 Line 6 slant cabinet (speakers unknown) and a 4x12 Marshall slant with Vintage 30's.

So I played through the Line 6 cabinet and the clean and crunch sounded ok but the hi-gain sounded terrible. Plugged into the Marshall and everything sounded better overall but I figured I should get the cabinet that 'goes with' the head, so I went back to the store and bought the Engl 4x12 cabinet loaded with Vintage 30's, which had been at another store location so it wasn't available to try out the day I bought the head previously. They didn't have another Powerball head and I didn't bring mine to try the cab out, but what the heck, Engl makes it so it must be great. Right? Wrong. I get the monster Engl 4x12 back to my rehearsal space, plug it in, and it sounds like ass. I ask myself, how the heck can the Engl 4x12 sound so much worse than a Bogner 2x12? Dunno, but it does.

So I bring EVERYTHING back to the store and try and solve the cabinet dilemna. We A/B the Engl cab with my Powerball head against every other cab they have, and sure enough the Engl cab sounds the absolute worst out of any of them. It makes the Powerball sound like a dual-recto, no lie, and it's a very dark sounding cabinet (clipped high end), with a weird muddy bottom end and lower-mid punch. The cab that won out by a long shot ended up being the Bogner 4x12 'hybrid' Ubershall cabinet that is loaded with (2) Vintage 30's and (2) 75w Celestions in an 'X' pattern. THIS CABINET RIPS! DO NOT BUY A CABINET FOR YOUR POWERBALL WITHOUT CHECKING OUT THIS BOGNER CAB. PERIOD. I got the straight 'bottom' cabinet version. It's now the best sounding rig I've ever owned or played through, and the review here reflects this amp/cab combination.

CHANNEL 1 - I play a PRS Custom 22 Artist edition with Dragon pickups as my main guitar, and this just sounds awesome through the Powerball. The clean channel is sooooo clean - glassy, articulate, spanky, whatever you want. It's very much a Fender clean, and I used to own a pristine 1964 Super Reverb and this clean channel is right in the ballpark. Even if you dabble in jazz or country alongside your bone crushing metal tunes Engl has something for you here, that's how versatile this clean channel is. With the single coil tap settings on the PRS it a great clean, and it stays clean at any volume. This channel loves pedals and I can run any number of my cool Fulltone or MJM vintage sounding overdrive pedals through this channel to get an almost infinite number of additional sounds out of this head. I tend to use the 'bright' button here turned on to give it extra clarity. It's a very pro sounding clean channel and playing any number of styles of music gets you that 'album' sounding clean. Very impressive.

CHANNEL 2 - The crunch channel absolutely rocks! With the bridge humbucker I can get any number of vintage sounding crunch tones from Aerosmith to AC/DC to Sabbath at 1/4 to 3/4 gain. This has to be one of the best examples of a 6L6 powered amp doing an EL34 impression. With the gain at 3/4 to full there's just the slightest amount of compression and a hint of vintage fuzz even. This channel is done right, and is such a suprprise in a head like this. Usually you expect a high-gain head to just have killer high-gain channel and a mediocre clean channel. Engl throwing this crunch channel in tweaked so perfectly suits me well because I like to play vintage rock sometimes for fun. When

Only had it a few weeks so can't say for sure, but it's made in Germany built like a tank so it looks like a keeper. It's got a tube monitoring system for the power tubes with status lights and if a tube goes bad it will pull it from the circuit automatically and cut the amp to half power so that you can keep on rockin if you're in the middle of a show. Great feature.

Haven't tried to contact them yet. Will perhaps post an updated review regarding reliability and customer service in the future should I have problems that don't get resolved.

This amp has to be the most incredible deal on the market. It smokes any high gain head in it's price range. The only other factor being the purchase of a great cabinet to go with it that might have you spending a few extra bucks. For $2,400 total I have the best amp and cab combination ever. Anyone who hears it craps their pants, not just at one of the tones but at all of the tones, in and of themselves and then the fact that they're all available in one amp head. My hat's off to Engl for creating this brilliant, brilliant amp. If I had a wish list the only features I would like to see is (as one reviewer mentioned) an even higher powered version for more headroom and perhaps the addition of a parametric EQ for the mids, plus MIDI and even 4 individual channel EQ sections. Looks like Engl is actually coming out with something like that soon though, but at about double the price. For the time being my Powerball is the ultimate amp, and you should check one out now!!

The 100w head was produced in 2003. 4 channels (clean/crunch/lo gain/hi gain) with a master A/B switch, 6l6 tubes, a noise gate, fx-loop, contour/reverb option. Got it with an Engl 4x12 slant v30's cab.

Basically it has all the options you could long for in a tube-head. These options also make it very versatile.

I would have liked a seperate EQ setting for the clean and crunch channel, as i like the clean with very different settings.

It definetly has enough power, i use it mainly at home for the moment, i will use it for gigs in some time.

I'm currently using it with a RG2127X and an ESP KH-2 (doing this one away) and it suits my music styles perfectly. I use it for prog rock mainly, but also some jazz and blues. So far it has not been noisey at all, but a little of the noise gate helps with that of course. The variety in the head is amazing. You can make the lo-gain sound really modern (with extra heavy bottom or scooped settings when needed), but also quite like the classic marshall jcm's. The definition of the sound (both rhythm and lead hi gain) in combination with a V30's cabinet is amazing, it's clear compared to the Mesa's/Diezel/VHT's i've heard. Besides that, the clean is amazing! No distortion whatsoever up to the volumes i've heard it. It's not a JC120 but hey, you can get pretty close to the ol' fender sound. I even use the clean channel for my piezo at the moment. Which also sounds amazing. (yeah i know, i'll plug it in the PA if i have to) For me they could have left off the hi gain channel. I rarely use it, because it lacks the 'personality' i'm looking for. The lo-gain however rocks the house. Wait, i should say, it brings your house down! Get your nu-metal riffs out and you'll be amazed of the sheer power this amp brings to your ears. Besides that, it's one of the few 100w+ heads that sounds good on bedroom volume. I basically use a lot of highs and lows in my sound, and the scooped settings are still very defined on all channels. All notes are articulated very well in my preferred sound. Not quite like other amps i've tried.

I've only had it for about 2/3 months so i'd like to postpone my comment on the reliability of this amp.

I've only had it for about 2/3 months so i'd like to postpone my comment on the customer support for this amp.

I've been playing for about 12 to 13 years i guess. Mainly over solid state amps and some line 6 gadgets. The other gear i use currently are only the TS9DX and a Dunlop wah, but i don't really need the TS with this amp.

What i love about this amp, is basically everything, i'd never get another head, possibly a rack but not another head. IF it got stolen or lost, i'd get the same head or go for an all tube Engl E530 rack. A Mesa Mark IIc+ would also be an option.

I'd definetly not pay for a Mesa Dual Rectifier, (even if the price wasn't twice as high)

Before buying it, i spent 2 years comparing it to other heads, with basically having tried about all heads, this one came out on top with glory.

In the future i'll run this baby through some rack fx and use the engl midi switcher to relay-switch and switch fx.

Just bought my second ENGL head. Powerball 100 watt head is THE BEST HEAD I've ever played thru. FULL,SMOOTH,and super WARM sounding!!Heavy rock is does like it was designed to handle. This goes steps beyond the TSL100. You might think it sounds just like one but MODDED by Jose!All the extra gadgets are all needed, helping create a vast variety of tones. TUBES with 6L6's sound FAT! Super tight and QUIET for so much gain. This is my NUMBER1 amp hands down.

Ibanez Vai/evo pickups, or custom Warmoth guitars with this head going thru 4x12 WIZARDS or GENZ-BENZ 2-10 cabs, all loaded with Celestions from 30 watt- 70 watt celsetions! KILLER!!!Any guitar thru this amp SMOKES!No distortion in clean mode at high volumes,very Fenderish.Also WARM/SMOOTHEST sounding distortion at any volume!!!

So far so good!!!!This is a german amp people. Backordered like a bitch/hard to get and hope I dont need tech support.

If you live in California it is easy to get support if a problem arises.

Been playin for 23 years and still love that Halenesqe/Jose modded tone that everybody is trying to capture. This amp is WARM and bottomy and SMOOTH people. Screw those BARKY Boogies!! If you can test drive one/snag it!I grabbed this one from LINE6 cause they are modelling the sound of this amp for there new product.They must think its impressive also. My ears are super picky and this amp RULES the roost!