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Engl Gigmaster 15 vs Rockmaster 20 Combos


burton4snow

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I am interested in these combos but there is not much on the interweb about them. Anybody know the big difference between the two besides one has reverb and the other does not. Anybody played any of these? Does Engl make decent stuff?

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The Engl is a solid state amp with a preamp tube to add a little tube tone, likely a starved tube design as well. I have one in my Marshall Valvestate and a couple of other amps. Nothing to get thrilled about. The tube is more a sales gimmick then it is a real tone enhancer. If the tube was supplied a high voltage it would have a bigger impact. If I were to choose a hybrid, I'm prefer to have power tubes and a SS front end.

 

The amp does get good reviews. Its got a decent clean channel and it does have an effects loop for potting your time based effects after the preamp where they sound best. The reviews that are out there aren't bad but because the amp is fairly new you wont have much feedback to bass a purchase on.

 

The 20W is all tube. It has practically no reviews because its new. When an amps been out there a long time like Fenders, you have techs servicing them and doing maintenance who are more likely to give you an honest evaluation of how well they are built and perform compared to other amps in its class. On something new like this you'll only find sales promotions that all paint the amp as being fantastic and since they are new and users likely have a warrantees to fix issues, you probably wont find much negative info being posted at this point.

 

If you are an Engl user and know their older products then you'd have to trust their new amps will have the same quality or lack of compared to their older amps. That doesn't always work out especially on smaller budget amps, but many amp manufacturers know even their small amps need to be solid so people will stick with the brand when they upgrade. Word of mouth is extremely important in the age of the internet too.

 

 

The 20 is all tube and uses a pair of EL84 tubes for the power and a pair of 12AX7's for the preamp. Other then coloration and gain staging it likely sounds similar to other amps in its class. You can be a creative with tubes for tone as you can with SS because there are no new tubes being designed and manufacturer, therefore all tube amps have many similarities when it comes to how they are designed and the components used to build them. Some use better transformers and caps. The rest is simply monkeying with the tone stack, how the tubes are gained up, and the speaker choice of course.

 

They only way of knowing this might be the best choice for you over other EL84 amps like a Vox or Fender is to try one. Otherwise you throw the dice and find out by buying one. No ones opinion is going to matter much because the chances of their guitar sounding the same as yours is very slim.

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