The Engl E635 Fireball 100 is a straightforward all-tube guitar amp that is designed to deliver the best of rock and metal sounds. Whereas the Clean channel of the Engl Fireball 100 delivers crystal-clear cleans or creamy crunch depending on the position of the Gain control , the Lead channel provides searing gain sounds that can be boosted from moderate rock distortion to a brute high-gain metal steam hammer. In addition to a Bright switch reserved for the clean channel, the amp offers a shared 3-band EQ and bottom and mid boost switches for both channels. In addition, the noise gate with adjustable threshold effectively suppresses unwanted background noise in high gain settings in the lead channel. For the integration of further effect devices, the Fireball 100 is equipped with an FX loop , which can be continuously switched from parallel to serial operation by means of a balance control . Last but not least, the Engl E635 Fireball 100 Head draws a full 100 watts of power from four 6L6GC tubes for a powerful sound with stage-ready volume.
The clean channel of Fireball is very beautiful, voluminous, sparkling, truly three-dimensional. This sound fills the entire room and as if envelops your notes. A sharp punchy clear sound is really good, but by adding a little overdrive with the Clean Gain knob, we get an unreal sound. Most guitarists will be able to play an entire concert on this channel with the handle of the gain twisted to the right. On a clear channel there is a Bright switch, it is optimally tuned and makes your sound more vivid, without busting. That is necessary. With this switch, you can revive the sound of your humbuckers and make the sound of your Stratocaster singles even more resonant.
Even at high volumes, this sound does not become coarser, but, on the contrary, even more saturated and surround. Even super clear sound sounds very long and the feedback is really musical. Fine!
Turning on the Lead channel, we instantly got resilient, aggressive distortion, which is what ENGL amplifiers are known for. Take the full range of the Lead Gain control you can use. With minimal settings, you get a cool rocky bite sound, at higher overload values, it just washes you away with a stream of metal. There is everything you need: overload, sustain and excellent flageolets. No matter how much overload we tuned on this amplifier, we could still play minor and major chords with extra steps, and these chords sounded! Usually with this level of overload chords are blurred. Surprisingly, all the notes sounded clean and expressive. Although, most likely, guitarists playing on this amplifier channel will not use such steps in chords.
Changing to dropped-D, we began to play riffs with palm-muting. Turning on the additional Bottom mode (it affects both channels at once), we received a very large, powerful sound, while maintaining extraordinary clarity. No matter how many bottoms we wore, the top still sparkled. Awesome At the same time ENGL Fireball is very quiet, partly due to the built-in noise gate, the threshold of which is regulated on the rear panel of the amplifier. Depending on which footswitch you connect to your Fireball, you can switch channels, Mid Boost, Master A / B, and turn on / off FX loop. As a result, you have very flexible settings, many options, it is very convenient to work on stage. That is why so many modern guitarists use Engl. These are great sounding amplifiers with a more than reasonable price.