Engl Powerball Amplifer Tip

in #guitar7 years ago

Hello once again friends! After much research, I’ve come across a simple trick that will improve your tone with this amp and make the gain much more usable! I’ve always like the tone of the amp, but it always had this fizziness to the sound that you couldn’t dial out. So, I replaced the 12ax7 tube in the second position with a 12at7 and this totally changed the sound! A 12at7 has about 70% of the gain of a 12ax7, so the lead channels become much clearer. The fizz in the sound is gone, and you can turn the gain up to 10 without getting any muddiness.

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So, if you have an Engl Powerball (or any other Engl for that matter) and you want to refine the gain and make it more usable, I highly recommend installing this tube! I’ve included the diagram from the manual below, as you want make the tube change in the V6 position. Other Engl amplifiers may have a similar gain structure, so this may work in multiple amps. Thanks for stopping by and I hope this helps anyone considering selling this amp or trading it. I will post a video with a demo of how it sounds after the tube change.

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That amp looks sweet, also i never tested one, but i tested the emulated version on Amplitube plugin and sounds really nice... Hope i can test the real deal one day, and put this tricks in action!

Cool man. How do you like amplitube? I’ve never used that software, and you’re right about those plugins sounding so close to the original amps. Bias FX has an Engl clone too and it’s damn close.

Yep, those last gen simulators are pretty impressive... Ive been using them for years because never had enough money to buy the real deal... The last versions of amplitube and Bias FX are the best so far... Good enough to make high quality recordings and hard to tell if its the real amp or a simulation...

Absolutely man. I’ve recorded some stuff with Bias and it sounds just as good as a Mic’Ed amp to me.

Pretty cool. Never used an Engl before. I just had a friend talking about the AT7 preamp tubes though. 👍🏾

Thanks! Yeah, it definitely helps tame the gain and make it more usable. Definitely worth trying! I love Engls..they are pretty versatile.I really want to try out the Engl Savage. I know The players in Primal Fear and Accept were using them...that’s basically the sound 🤘🏻