Engl Thunder 50 Combo

Model 320. Gain, Bass, Treble, Reverb, Lead volume and Master. I like it simple, that?s why it is good and practical amp. There are no unimportant knobs and traps you have to play with, there is everything you need.

This amp sounds just great! I have tried different kinds of amps and i must say that ENGL just have the touch. Why not all the tube amps sound like these? Clean is beautiful and with little of reverb you can make it really sing. Crunch channel is good you can have lots of different kinds of sounds out of it very easily. Lead channel is awesome, when you press your pedal to switch the lead channel you almost drop from your bench. With 4X12 cabinet it only gets better. The sound rises whole new spheres. You can blast off the walls of your house with it.

I am little incapable to tell you about the reliability because I have owned this amp just a one month. I think it extreme reliable because it is made in germany :) For this month it has worked perfectly.

No experience about their customer support.

I have no bad words to say about this amp it`s just great. It fits almoust all sorts of music styles that you can play with guitar. If someone there consider buying tube amp, please take a test with ENGL thunder I bet you fall in love with it.

Input Gain, Bass, Middle, Treble, Crunch Volume, Lead Volume and Master Volume. Might not sound like much, but you can get alot of different tones from this amp without having to do much.

The three channels are pretty good. The clean sounds ballsy and upping the input gain makes it great for strong rhythms. The crunch is great, put the input gain up a little and crank up the crunch volume to get a great AC/DC tone. Add more gain to the crunch and you'll get close to Izzy Stradlin. With the lead channel you can pull off heavy chugging metal or with a bit of tone rollback, soaring solos.

The lack of Reverb on the 322 model is dissapointing, the clean channel would sound even better (although it is pretty sweet). Buy some sort of pedal and you're all set.

The footswitch I bough (The Z-4) was a bit expensive also, and requires a stereo Instrument Cable. Loses marks for lack of Reverb and The cost of the footswitch.

I'm using a 1995 Gibson Les Paul with two P90's in it and a Fender Strat with a hotrail in the Bridge.

I play anything from Indie Rock to Heavy Rock and it sounds great, the different overdrive types make this amp really versatile. Using my Gibson which is usually noisy with the P90's there is no real noticable noise when not playing. Although when you pump up the Lead channel volume, you will get some squealing but this is expected.

I noticed with a hot pickup, the Clean channel roughs up nicely and the distortion kicks you in the chest. You won't find this kind of punchiness in a Marshall. There is no dull muddy sounds with this amp. I was considering a JCM2000 TSL 100 and the only thing I can think that's better than this amp is the fact that the Marshall would be louder and only because it has a 4x12 cab. This amp is loud, you should never need to use maximum volume.

I was playing with the Bass up full and the punch that comes from every note is fantastic. You get that double tracked, Tom Morello feel from it, it's just so strong!

This amp is the best amp you can buy at this price range and stands up extremely well to it's more expensive brothers.

It feels fantastic to be able to get the smoothness of My Bloody Valentine and the sheer brute of Pantera with one amp!

I haven't had any trouble with it, but it seems tough. Even the footswitch is tank-line.

I bought this from Thomann and they are usually good with returns. I don't know anything about ENGL.

I have had Marshalls and a Roland and this amp trumps them all. You'd be looking hard for a Marshall that will have the same satifying sound.

If it was Stolen? I'd be annoyed and I would definatly replace it/

I'vo bought it two years ago (2003). All tube combo. It has three channels: clean, crunchy and lead. Mine has a reverb and a lead volume which balances the clean channel with the other two. It also has a master volume, preamp gain and 3-band EQ which it's shared for all the channels. This features make it a bit hard to set for live performance if you want to play with different channels in the same song. Relative volumes are hard to tune, specially if you want to use the gain knob to set the amount of distortion. Mine came with a Celestion Sirver Series V12-80 which sounds great but I haven't tried any other high end speaker so I can't compare.

I use this amp mainly in the clean channel which it is very clean. When pushed, the gain knob gives a very nice overdrive-breaking tone although it get's a bit noisy. The Lead it's very veratile channel, ussing Gain and Lead Volume you can get from slighly overdriven tones (almost clean) to heavy metal distortion. I barely use the crunch channel but it's vey similar to the lead but with less gain.

The amp's overall tone it's very warm and middy. Sometimes I miss a bit of treble and bass but, in the end, is the amps personal character. You have to live with it :-).

The volume it's more than enought for gigging or practising. This amp delivers a great tone at low volumes which it's great for home practissing or recording.

Never had a problem. I've replaced the tube myself so I've messed a bit inside of it, looks very cleanly built. The cabinet it's very sturdy. In two years and a half I've never had a problem.

I don't know, never had to contac them.

If somebody stole it probably I'll have an excuse to buy a MESA/BOOGIE, haha! I love this amp: it's cheap, I's well built and delivers a great tone.

The way I see it: This amp doesn't excel at any of his tones, it doesn't have the Fender cristal clean, not the Marshal overdrive. But works great in all of them, it's like a generic tool. It serves you in any field. It's very worth buying.

I play in a couple of UK bands one of which is mainly rock and the other is more of a function band that plays around europe. I've used many different amps over the years and have been playing a Marshall DSL 100 head through a 4x12 cab for the last two or three.
I've been using a boss GT6 with a Fender Tele and a Strat.
I've just purchased a thunder reverb 50 and I can honestly say that this is the most functional amp I've ever used. It does absolutely everything right, the Marshall has always given me a headache at low volume obviously as there's no tone but with the Engl you can get a great overdrive sound at any volume - in fact I've ditched the GT6 and I'm back to using the overdrive on the amp with a boss delay and a Boss chorus pedal and for me personally this amp has a really good quality effects loop, I find the overdrive is great - it really sings in a way that you don't get with amp modelling effects etc. If I had to have a criticism it would be that it could use a extra knob for crunch gain, but that's being picky at this price. I would say this is the kind of amp that you would probably keep no matter what else you bought along the way.

I've not had any problems with this amp so far

It doesn't have that much features, but that's good for me. It has 3 channels (clean, crunch, lead) and they share the same EQ, that's the only thing I don't like about it. For the rest...it has an effectsloop with a dry/wet knob on it, and that's about it (and a cab out). "Basic", but that's what I like about this amp. It has a lot of power though! You can blow the walls out of your room with level on 2, so it's really suitable on stage or with a band.

The clean sounds fenomenal....really warm and full. I use a not so expensive Ibanez AXS32 with two humbuckers and I can get a very good clean out of it. The crunch isn't that special....it's crunchy :), which is good for (softer) rock purposes. The lead channel.....awesome.....I can get a wall of sound like Rammstein's last album, or other more subtle and gentle distortion sounds. It is really versatile and the sound is excellent. I have placed a Boss GT6 in front of it, to give some boost to the input signal and now I can get any sound I want (even on Crunch channel).
I'm not giving it a 10 because the crunch channel is a bit redundant for me.

Well...I bought it second hand and I got it checked by some technician and nothing was wrong with it, so I guess that's pretty reliable. Germans....

I missed a knob for the reverb level and I contacted ENGL by email and they forwarded it to the disributors in the Netherlands and they emailed me back. There's a new knob on the way :)

Excellent! Nothing more, nothing less.

It has 3 channels: clean, crunch, and Lead.
Mine is the model 322 so it has no reverb (I chose to use a separate reverb which I think is a better solution because I don't like lots of reverb in my distortion)
The good thing is that it has a tremendous power for a 50W amp.
The bad thing about it is that all 3 channels share the same eq.
The rating for its features is really subjective. I would like to give it 10 for simplicity and power, but the eq part is a lack for perfection.

I play Heavy and progressive Metal and I must tell this amp suits it perfectly!!!
The guitar I use the most is an ESP M-II special with EMG 81 (neck) and EMG 60 (bridge). Make no mistake: this is the best combination if you want to whipe everyone's ass on stage!
The amp is sweet and silent even in lead mode.

The CLEAN is awesome. Very rich, warm, fat yet smoth. You can feel each and every single note. It responds perfectly to your string atack when doing clean rythm.

I don't use the CRUNCH that much but I've tried it several times and I must say, if you are into blues, don't you turn your back on this beauty. I've used it even for things like Pearl Jam and Eric Clapton and it's amazing.

The LEAD is God blessed. It is definitly one of the best ROARS I've ever heard in ANY price range amplifier.
It has lots of gain, power and presence. It has a unique Engl tone. There is nothing like it. It's Megadeth, Metallica sound: powerfull and clear!!! It has a GREAT response to picking tecnique and you won't loose any notes as you speed up. BUT it doesn't have a punchy, fat lead sound (because it's a combo) which you might find if you had a cabinet 4X12 (I won't do it because I like it simple to carry around each gig). And you won't miss it in the mix of a band (I'm supose to play guitar, not the bass part)

No problems until today. I don't even carry tubes nor backup amps with me.
But you must be carefull with the transportation. It's all tube, not solid state. What you loose in reliability and resistance, you get in sound.

I've been playing for 10 years now, but I only started to do live performances five years ago (I'm 21). I play in a Hard Rock band, AlluminiA (www.alluminia.web.pt). We play things like Metallica, Iron Maiden, Ozzy, Megadeth, Slipknot, Guns'n'Roses, Dream Theater ... and we are now heading towards the creation of our first album.
I'm simultaneously the singer and rythm guitarist in the band. Among several other devices, I like to use my afore mentioned M-II, and I use a boss GT-3( there are features on this pedalboard that allows me to use only 1 footswitch as a sub control pedal to control all efects on it, which makes everything really simple because I move a lot on stage and don't like to have the pedal board beneath my feet).

Before I buy this amp I tried lots of gear in every price range: Mesa, Framus, Marshall, other Engl stuff, Peavey, Laney, Carvin, Randall, ... PRICE WAS NO PROBLEM TO ME. I had money to spend in my pocket. But I wanted to make sure I would choose right, according to my needs (and I needed something practical to carry around and still great sounding), so I searched, I tried a lot and I failed a lot in finding that sound each of us have in our head: our definition of sound perfection. And then I found mine where I didn't expect it to be. Inside a small, cheap amp...
Don't be deceived by it's size. This is a BEAST! A lion in a match box! I am very happy with my choice.

But remember: NO amp is perfect! And other's opinion is s Shitt. And sometimes a bitch (a really confusing bitch). And that includes mine!
The best you can do is TRY FOR YOURSELF. Try lots of amps and decide for the one that satisfies you the most (not only the sound). I can only give you my sugestion: If you're a Metal player who likes it really simple but cares a lot for great sound, try the thunder 50 combo.

Well, it's made in germany (superb quality), and its equipped with a superb Celestion V30 speaker. And it's a 50W full tubeamp with clean channel and two channels for distortion (lead/cruch), and both distortion channels have seperated volume controls, to get that extravolume for solo ect. Gain, master volume. Then you have a basic EQ (bass, middle, treble) wich all channels share. Well, this is a bit of a problem, cuz you don't want so much mids when doing riffs, but you need them when doing a solo. So seperated eq-pedal is a great pal for this amp.

And then there's the gain.. Wich, again, all channels share. When you have the gain turned up to like to two o'clock, and you switch lead > clean, the volume rise is HUGE. Well, you can live with this by turning up the lead/crunch volume, and turning down the master, and this adds noise.. It just would be so much easier if it had seperated gain nobs for clean and distortion.

It's a simple amp, but what quanties/parts it does have.. Well, they're superb.

Well, i'm using two guitars wich are both loaded with EMG-pickups, and i'm playing music like Slayer to Black Sabbath, and doing clean stuff also, like Pink Floyd. But i won't go heavier than Slayer. And i do a lot of soloing.

To the amp. Distortion channels, they're just great. With crunch channel you get great 'Metallica' etc. Like raw, midscooped tones, and while turning down the gain, you can get ac/dc or sabbath like tones. It's very versatile from this part. And with lead channel you get even more gain and a great sustain for singing leads, and this one doesn't get 'fuzzy', so you can play as fast as you could imagine, without messing up the tone, like it does with these "super heavy smash" -pedals, so you can't even seperate a note from another.

This also responds to your playing very neatly, like the way a real tube amp should! And it does. With decent gain on the crunch channel, you can get tones to your clean parts easily by tuning down the volume from your guitar. Now you might think that "hey, i can do that with my 80$ 15w peavey too!", but it really is different with a real thing.

Now to the clean part. It's, again, awsome! It's crystal clear when you turn down the gain, with eq, you can make it really smooth or neat, or crancked up vox like aggressive and sharp.

Well, it's made in germany. I can't imagine where it would break a part. I think it can handle the same that my boss pedals, and army tanks do. The tubes are also attached with a way, that it handles gigs.

Never had to deal with them.

How long? Well long enough to know what sounds right for my purpose. I'm using boss pedals, they won't let you down by any means. And if would be stolen, and if i had the money i would probably get an ENGL Powerball wich has seperated EQ, gain etc. and if i couldn't afford one, yes, i would get a another one of these. It misses some useful features tha you might miss, but what it does have, it's superb..

To clarify, this is the Thunder 50 Combo Model #322 which is the Scott Moffatt model (some young gun from Europe, never heard of him either). What does this mean? It doesn't have reverb but instead has an added crunch volume. The other Thunder 50 combo model #320 does have reverb but no crunch volume.

Very nice appointment of features. It's essentially a 3 channel amp (clean + crunch + lead). Shared 3 band EQ, also has an FX loop, master volume, gain, crunch and lead volumes. All tube.

I do wish that the channels had seperate EQs but read on for more...

I play technical and prog metal. This amps sounds fantastic. From crystal cleans to molten gain. I set up the gain pretty high which makes the amp behave as such: gritty cleans (ala Zakk Wylde), Marshall-y like crunch (ala Spiral Architect or Ark) and molten gain (ala dream theater).

But get this, you can back off the gain control in half, and you have wonderful blues tones too!!!

This is one of those amps that sounds great at bedroom volumes, but when you open it up on stage or rehearsal...it's heavenly! God blessed us with tube amps, and this is a fine example. = )

no problems yet. hand built point to point quality in germany by the Engl gang. nice build quality too!

their distributer was very helpful.

been playing since '85. own lot's of gear, had nearly everything.

I'd be bummed if it were stolen, I find I play it more and more every day. Nice stuff that Engl makes.

I play mainly Rock, and some jazz standard
I used to play on a Mesa Mark IV witch has all the features
you can think of... the Engl is the opposite... only the essentials controls are here.
So Mark IV get a 10 and Engl a 1 ? not for me...
IMO, settings deserve only one purpose... getting tone. and it's way easier to get a good tone on the Engl than on the Mark IV.
there is only one EQ but it works like a dream for me.
you could also plug any external cabinet you want.
mine cames with an internal 1x12 Celestion vintage 30.
witch I like very much.

if can't live without a bright switch, you may consider the screamer 50.

give a 8 here cause even if there are few controls, they really works and finding a good tone is so easy...

One bad thing : you must buy a separate footswitch like the Z-4
(witch is pretty expensive for a footswitch)

3 channels... clean, crunch and lead
clean : very well balanced, not as bright as a fender (wich is a good thing for me...)
crunch is very good too and lead is awesome... very smooth and rich sounding.

seems to very well build. but I'm using it for less than a year
so I can't really say.
So far, so good.

nerver called them

I'm playing for 10 years now. have owned different kind of stuff
from cheap transistor fender to expensive triaxis rack setup.
I went to the Engl cause I was looking for a 'not too heavy' good sounding amp, the Engl beat all my expectations. lighter than my Mark IV, and sound better to my taste. a killer amp. I will buy it again
without any doubt.

This is very versatile. It suits many kinds of music. The tubesound is very good from nice crispy and very clear clean to roaring overdrives. It has 3 channels although on the englsite says that it has only 2 channels. Well anyway it's clean,crunch and lead,I dunno how many channels you make up of it.
Mine is the edition without the reverb but with de seperate volumecontrols for crunch and leadsounds. It's build in 2000 i think,maybe 2001. it has only one eq and although you can make it work with only one eq,there should have been more,or at least a bright switch for clean but then that it what you get for the more expensive screamer-model. Anyway there should have been more options in the eq-part.

My setup is a G&L Legacy Special (GREAT GUITAR! YOU PAY LESS THEN A FENDER CUSTOM SHOP BUT GET THE SAME QUALITY!!!(well at least thats what I hear often,anyway its a great guitar))--->boss ds-2---> boston volumepedal---->engl Thunder---->fx-loop Boss Gt-6
i use mainly the overdrives of the amp and they rock!!!for a while I used the overdrives of the gt-6 but they just couldn't compare to the nice overdrives of this amp.
I play mainly in christian rockbands,some worshipbands in church, most of the music ranging from very soft-pop-rock-kinda-music to hardrock. And it suits everything perfect although I think that the clean sound is mainly suited for more rock-kinda music so no jazz I think but probably that also strongly depends on the kind of guitar you are using.
the clean sound is very nice although it distorts more easliy then the other reviews say but anyway it is still very nice..extremely clear sound. The crunch sound is also very nice,sometimes a bit muddy but it's a very round sound.
and the leadsound...well what can i say,it's the best lead sound i have heard in this pricerange and some above,is very nice with a great defenition a long sustain,a real roaring distortion, like it very much

well it looks very sturdy but i haven't got the chance to really test it because i use it very carefully and no truck has ran over it so i cant reallly say if it is that solid as it looks

I have been playing for about 4 years and this is for it's price a really great amp. Although you can offcourse get a better amp if you pay more,within its price range this amp delivers a great quality in comparison to marshalls or fenders