Engl Powerball Settings

On this page we list some of the possible settings you can use to get different tones out the Engl Powerball amp head.

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More tips from Engl on getting good tone:

Tip 1 – The amount of distortion depends on what kind of pickups your guitar is equipped with. Single coil pickups may overdrive the preamp when the knob is set to about the 2 o’clock position in Clean operating mode, pickups with very high output levels (humbuckers or active pickups) will evoke distortion at even lower settings. If you want squeaky clean tone, back off on the Gain knob accordingly.

Tip 2 – For a crisp glassy tone, set the Bright Switch to the On position. This setting boosts the treble response of muddy pickups.

Tip 3 – If you want more bottom-end oomph on Crunch sounds, activate the Lo Punch button. At very high gain knob settings (greater than 3 o’clock) and with high output pickups, you should deactivate this button for a more focused, crisper tone.

Tip 4 – To get acquainted with the amp’s fundamental sounds, set all tone controls to the center or 12 o’clock positions. For higher Gain Crunch sounds, your best bet is to turn the respective Treble knob well done to prevent the pickups and speakers from interacting at hi levels and generating feedback (the recommended setting is between the 9 o’clock and 1 o’clock range). The Clean and Crunch channels are equipped with dedicated Treble knobs. This means that you can tweak the top end of each of the two channels separately to suit your taste and the given sonic scenario. You will find that grittier tones generally sound better with a touch less treble because preamp saturation makes higher frequencies figure more prominently into the signal.

Tip 5 – If you really want to beef up the low end of your lead tone to dial in the sound often employed in contemporary styles, press the Bottom button. Note that you can activate this feature separately for each of the two lead channels.

Tip 6 – Try the Open and Focused voicings out for different applications. As the names suggest, Open gives you a more expansive sound that is excellent for grinding out heavy-duty riffs, while Focused brings up the low mids, making it a great choice for leads.

Tip 7 - – To get acquainted with the amp’s fundamental sounds, set all tone controls to the center or 12 o’clock positions. For high Gain lead sounds, your best bet is to turn the Treble and the Presence knobs well down to prevent the speakers and the pickups from interacting at high levels and generating feedback (the recommended setting is somewhere between 9 and 2 o’clock range). Since the two knobs sweep through different frequency ranges and influence the signal at different places in the amp’s internal signal chain, you can dial in different combinations of treble and presence settings to come up with many interesting sonic variations.

These tips and more information on each of the knobs, switches, and buttons on the Engl Powerball can be found in the manual