Engl unleashes Fireball IR Dual Channel High Gain Distortion Preamp - with Noise Gate and Mid Boost - based on its most formidable amp

I have Engl’s previous Powerball Pedal which I was somewhat underwhelmed by - it seemed to be lacking in both gain and output, and always came across a little underpowered and insubstantial to me. I felt it represented Engl’s legacy somewhat poorly.

While this new Fireball - with updateable 3 onboard IRs, Noise Gate and Mid Boost seems to be a number of steps above the last effort - going by the quality of the demos. High clipping pedals can occasionally be underpowered - and relatively few of these are tested within a proper pedalboard context. Most pedal testing is one guitar, into one peda, andl into one amp - while for us pedalboard champions - it’s important how those pedals play with each other - what sensitivities there may be, and which of those don’t fully reach unity values or above. I have too many insubstantial pedals in the collection - albeit out of the whole not necessarily so many - but definitely a couple of score pedals - particularly vintage leaning fuzzes and distortion pedals.

Some pedals are just more sensitive than others - and suffer issues with impedance and capacitance - which can result in a relatively significant volume drop. When you have 52 pedals on your board - there is no way you’re going to recalibrate all of them - to make up for one low powered one. I have several strategic boosts along the circuit to augment such pedals - where some can sound great - but need to be significantly boosted - which can impact on their core texture and timbre - much better if the output is enhanced within the circuit!

In any case this new Fireball IR 2-Channel Preamp sounds very decent. All of those demos are of course one pedal, one guitar, one amp etc. - so not wholly representative of a pedalboard environment. While there seems to be plenty of range on all those dials. There are so many great High gain pedals out there currently that it’s always a disappointment when you come across something under par - which doesn’t seem to be the case on this occasion, while I’m obviously cautious - based on my experience with the Powerball Pedal.

Controls - Bass, Middle, Treble, Volume, IR : ENGL E212VHB V30 / ENGL E414VSB V30 / ENGL E4122XXL V30, Gain, IR Output : On/Off, Presence, Noise Gaite : Mid Boost / Bypasss, Channel : 1/2, Bypass / Mid Boost.

Rear Ports : 1/8" Headphones, USB-C, 1/4" In, 9V DC [-] 300mA, 1/4" Out.

It’s all very straight forward - and you can see from the IR references that the first one is a half-stack 2 x 12, the second is a full stack 4 x 12, and the 3rd is an XXL full stack 4 x 12 - surely something there for most metal-heads, and if you don’t like any of those - you can upload your own via the USB-C board.

I’m due to get the new Fortin Meshuggah - as soon as Thomann have that in stock - it’s down as a special order item for Andertons! And I think I will be getting this Engl Fireball too - to hot it compares to my favourites. Hopefully it is significant better than the Powerball effort!

It’s well priced @ €249 / $249 / £209 - you can get yours now via a number of leading international dealers. And you can read up more on the Engl Fireball IR on the Engl site - and you can reference the excellent - Manual!