ENGL (Powerball) Tubing/Mods Thread

[Stooly]

At my last gig my Powerball suddenly cut out in the middle of a song. No power tubes lights were on. I checked all my cables first, guitar etc. No luck. Then I switched the amp to standby and back on.....bam, back in business. Fresh tubes from Doug's tubes and properly biased. I checked the tube sockets and everything else as much as I could. I can't see a reason for the problem..... I'm not sure about the reliability at this point. I might have to take it to a tech to have it checked with a fresh set of eyes. Any ideas?

 

[Pedrojoca]

At my last gig my Powerball suddenly cut out in the middle of a song. No power tubes lights were on. I checked all my cables first, guitar etc. No luck. Then I switched the amp to standby and back on.....bam, back in business. Fresh tubes from Doug's tubes and properly biased. I checked the tube sockets and everything else as much as I could. I can't see a reason for the problem..... I'm not sure about the reliability at this point. I might have to take it to a tech to have it checked with a fresh set of eyes. Any ideas?

Even though it was solved when you flicked the standby on, it could be something happening at the same time, since you've reported issues with the battery before. Is this a Powerball I or II ?

 

[Stooly]

It's a Powerball I.When it happened, I tried changing guitars, and checked all the cord connections and it wouldn't come back on. no sound at all. I clicked the amp to standby and back and had full power again and played 4-5 more songs without an issue.

 

[vanhendrix]

Fresh tubes are about as reliable as fresh strings: gotta get a few hours on them to weed out any of the defective ones before they're stage ready. Try checking that all of the powertubes are seated correctly. If they are, maybe it's just a freak occurrence? I've had my PB shut down tubes before, then after an hour of being unable to find the cause I get mad and just fire it back up, only to find there was never really a problem at all.

Flipping the standby resets any of the fail-safes in the powertube monitoring system. Like any other bit of tech out there, 90% of the time the solution is to turn it off and on again.

 

[Stooly]

Thanks guys, played for 2 hours on it 2 times without incident. I'm just a bit apprehensive to take it on a mini tour coming up (crosses fingers). I'll just take my Mesa Dual Rec. as a backup...

 

[vanhendrix]

Hey guys, just an update on what I'm running with my PB these days:

After buying my JVM I noticed something right away: the powerbal is quiet, like really quiet (and no, it wasn't just the phase inverter tube this time). If you run both amps (100 watts) balls-out, the JVM will be way hell and gone louder than the powerball, and that made no sense to me.

It finally got to the point where some friends and I were doing a shootout with the help of some contacts at local guitar stores. We were able to borrow: JVM Satriani, Bogner Ecstacy, Bogner Uberschall, Mesa dual rec multiwatt, Engl Invader 100, Peavy JSX, EVH 5150 30 50 watt, as well as my JVM 410h and Powerball. We got all these amps, brought them back to the jam space and had the loudest, heaviest (litteraly. Goddamn tube amps...) afternoon of all time. Anyways, we were running all these amps pretty much balls-deep. It was super loud, but we had our fancy hearing protection that all serious musicians should use. It soon became blatantly apparent that both the engl amps were much quieter than the rest. Quiet to the point that when my friend was running his 5153 50 watt, at maybe 3 oclock, you couldn't even hear the Invader completely dimed. So then I got mad.

I hooked up the powerball and hit the mid open/focus (or mid boost to those of you with PB2s). I'd always known there was a jump in volume there but I was shocked by how much it changed the amp. Suddenly it could hold its own again. To stop the haters: this wasn't an issue of "cutting through" it was pure and simple volume. His was louder until I hit that button.

TL;DR

The "mid boost" button isn't a mid boost at all. When it's in the "not boost" mode, it's actually a drastic cut to the overall output of the amp. Therefore, the "mid boosted" mode is the real sound of the amp, and the real output of a 100 watt head...and boy does it have a shitload of mids.

 

[Pedrojoca]

TL;DR

The "mid boost" button isn't a mid boost at all. When it's in the "not boost" mode, it's actually a drastic cut to the overall output of the amp. Therefore, the "mid boosted" mode is the real sound of the amp, and the real output of a 100 watt head...and boy does it have a shitload of mids.

holy crap, what a thread comeback. I'll really have to check on this whenever I can, because at low volumes, the thing is an absolute HONK with that switch on.

also, glad to hear from you again vanhendrix, it's been a while ehe

 

[Diversions]

After reading this thread I've purchased some new preamp tubes for my powerball 2. I'm wondering whether I can just go ahead and put them in? I'm not all that familiar as I've never had to replace tubes before but will I need to bias it? Sorry if I'm coming across as dumb. Thanks

 

[Diversions]

Sorry about that last post, just realised it's only the power sections. Having said that is there anything I need to worry about other than just a straight replacement? Thanks

 

[Pedrojoca]

Yup, just straight up replace them! Didn't remember this thread at all, I just realized I'm using this exact tube combo for almost 2 years now

 

[m4dd0x]

hi guys, just want to thanks everyone for this POST. As a powerball mk II user, i pass from » I want to sell this shit » to I absolutely love this amp. Once again, BiG ThanKs!!!!!!!!

 

[Pedrojoca]

hi guys, just want to thanks everyone for this POST. As a powerball mk II user, i pass from » I want to sell this shit » to I absolutely love this amp. Once again, BiG ThanKs!!!!!!!!

Glad to hear that, a few years have passed and I still love mine!

 

[Mikeyprs]

now i've got some funds I plan on grabbing me some new tubes for the powerball (v1) - what do you guys think of these??

Matched quad 6P3S Silver Grid (6L6 5881) Russian tubes NEW! NOS! | eBay

Suitable??

 

[istikis]

hi guys, after rereading several times (do not read English well lol) I would like to correct me on some doubts.

1) -. Would it be correct change only V6 by JJ Electronics 12AT7 / ECC81 tubes and others non touch them? (I need to gain a more defined and organic sound). Do you only by changing this tube would solve this problem?

2) -. For change v5, v7 and v8 is necessary to change the power tubes (v1, v2, v3 and v4) for optimal results? (Which combination you recommend me to play Heavy Metal and Thrash Metal?)

Thanks in advance

regards

 

[vanhendrix]

hi guys, after rereading several times (do not read English well lol) I would like to correct me on some doubts.

1) -. Would it be correct change only V6 by JJ Electronics 12AT7 / ECC81 tubes and others non touch them? (I need to gain a more defined and organic sound). Do you only by changing this tube would solve this problem?

2) -. For change v5, v7 and v8 is necessary to change the power tubes (v1, v2, v3 and v4) for optimal results? (Which combination you recommend me to play Heavy Metal and Thrash Metal?)

Thanks in advance

regards

1. Yes you can do that

2. It is not necessary, but I would recommend it.

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Update of doom:

I played my trusty ol' powerball at the last show with the band. Our drummer grew up inside of an explosion, so he plays pretty loud. To match him I run the thing with the channels on half to 3/4 and the master dimed. I must say after all these years of research, I'm most pleased with simply sticking those Mesa 6L6GS in there. Those made all of the difference to me, especially at that volume.

To back this up, I did an attenuator shootout at my local high-end guitar shop a while ago. I plugged in their powerball for reference and dimed the thing. Right away that goddamn swarm of bees that I knew all too well from the start of this thread showed up. The next time I showed up with my powerball, currently running all mesa tubes but with the stock type in each spot, and the amp sounded completely different.

 

[elkulon]

Violent bump...

After seeking for info, for soooooooo much time, I decided to make a radical request...:
Can anybody share some photoshots of both sides of PCB????

The thing is, I live in Argentina, which is by far a third world country. It's virtually impossible to get an Engl PBall (and any Engl, Mesa, Soldano, or any of those brands, the only "gettable" are Fender, Marshall, and Orange, in part, and most of it are SS), and more sadly, for me is reaaaaaaally impossible to aford one of those, because of importation issues to the country (the most expensive buy allowed by goverment is $28, not enough...); so, my plan B is to build one of them.
From there there are other technical issues; as you may know, Engl released wrong schemes by purpose, to avoid mass cloning. Only 2nd channel (Hi and Lo) is been traced by some guy, Mzaar (from Russia, I'd believe), but that's it. No 1st channel, no PI, no PA, no FX loop, no switching system, not even PSU. So, I'm f@cking lost.

That's why I have the request; to make a decent aproach to the correct scheme and to be capable of cloning the full thing (or most of it), by tracing from real images of an actual amp.

Could it be possible???

 

[chopeth85]

Hi ! i know is an old post but i have an Engl Powerball II and i want to change preamp tubes ( i play mostly at home so power tubes is not the most important thing to me, the stock tubes are still in perfect condidition. I have read all the post and i´d like to testing some preamp tubes. My main target is to get a "less" aggresive crunch channel, a more mild and soft clean channel ( though i think is really beautiful ) and increase the saturated tone ( i love the high and aggresive sound but maybe a bit less dry ) so i was thinking in buying this tubes to test different sounds:

- tung sol 12ax7 gold pins double triodes balanced x2
- tad 12ax7wa premium selected.
- jj ecc83s gold double triodes balanced.
- tad 12at7 premium selected balanced.
- GE Nos 5751 double triodes balanced.
- JanNos 12at7wc double diodes balanced.


I know there are many tubes here haha, but the ones i dont use i can use in other amps.

Would you give me some advise , talking about the position or the selection? thank you very much!

 

[gregor]

Just found this -OLD- thread and having owned a Powerball for around 13 years (!) I am happy to see that there is some good news getting it to cut through. When I got it, it had a hard time matching my friends 5150II and I thought it was just the settings etc. I am going to try the pre-amp "CTFD" mod. I really should have done some internet trawling earlier. The change in power tubes is also interesting and some above has noticed some change with replacing them with JJ's. The JJ's look exactly like the originals, which makes me doubt any real change in tone by replacing them. Maybe using Sovteks would be useful as they have a similar frequency response to the JJ's. Comments…