German-made ENGL amps are terrific! Opinions!

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2/18/2000 9:31 AM

Carlos

German-made ENGL amps are terrific! Opinions! Hi!     Try German-made ENGL amps! They are handmade (PCBs though) and offer excellent quality, apart from that they have great TONE!   They should be quite cheap in the States with the dollar so high.     P.S. I played Marshall, both non-master and master, and Boogies, Fender and VOX. So I appreciate a good tone. But I need versatile amp with four gain settings, yet easy to handle!     CU     Carlos

 

2/18/2000 4:39 PM

Jim S.

I once retubed an Engl "Straight" amp. It's a 1x12 combo with two channels, clean and overdrive. It sounded nice enough, but these amps are a nightmare to work on. The circuit is impossible to get at without dismantling everything. I seem to remember that components and traces were on the underside of the PCB. I couldn't even locate the bias circuit (I had no schematic or layout diagram, but still, this is normally easy to find), so I was forced to find and install a pair of EL34's that were "close enough", with changing the bias voltage.     Handmade? Engl's are no more handmade than any other modern, PC-board-based, channel-switching amp. In comparison, I'd say that Mesa/Boogies exude much better quality from inside their chassis. My recommendaion: guitarists who is concerned about serviceability should stay far away from these beasts.

 

2/18/2000 4:41 PM
Jim S.	Correction: I meant to write "withOUT changing the bias voltage".

 

2/18/2000 8:18 PM
Carlos	Hi!     They are indeed soldered by hand.     See: http://www.engl-amps.com/engl-amps/     Press the "staff" button!     CU     Carlos

 

2/18/2000 9:18 PM
Southpaw	Come on, now, Carlos. Do you really believe that girl did all those neat, robot-soldered points on that board? Maybe the AC cord, that's about it.

 

2/18/2000 10:24 PM

Farrow

You know, I assembled PCBs for five years in high school and college, and while I wasn't the greatest at it, there were certainly people on the line that could out-solder a wave-solder machine any day. I think the boards probably ARE hand-soldered (not that it makes any difference) because of the capital expense of a wave-solder machine. If they're fabricating PCBs entirely in-house, I'd go with hand-soldered.     Farrow   http://surf.to/pharaohamps

 

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