ENGL Powerball Pedal: Lead Distortion Stompbox | First Look 

SLAAAYYYYERRR

@Mike Graham It's an old joke on this channel about people trying very hard to be brutal and extreme and scooping mids. You're right about Slayer themselves though

You'll get all t3h bitches with this pedal

To be honest, i love Engl. I have 4 Engl amplifiers. But the powerball has a lot of drawbacks because you do not see them a lot anymore. To much compression and only deep mids are the biggest two. Both of these are bad for a live sound to cut through. So yeah, this pedal sound like the powerball, and there is a reason i will never own a powerball as a engl enthusiast. But to be fair to the pedal: If the pedal behaves like the real amp, the demo was with very bad settings. The engl xyz-balls need, depending on the cabinet, lots of mids. Like 7/10 or more. The bass can be reduced a lot, depending on the guitar to 2-3/10. And with a humbucker guitar you will mostly not need more gain than 5/10 to get a thight and useful sound. Also the volume was cranked, so maybe they pushed also a little amp distortion. But all of this will not make up for the lack of high mids. So, i appreciate the demo, but it's just two sounds without knowing the signal-chain.

I doubt they did themselves a favour sending the pedal through the Invader front to back. Summed up some of the harsher freqs. Probably, Idk... However the Powerball sounds somewhat similar, like His Majesty stated before.

Truth

these companies making pedals that are amp clones are rip offs, theres no fucking way they can do that. Amps are fucking huge

Should have heard how crappy the first powerball sounded...

Maybe when they actually get an emulated sound to sound just like a tube they will.

actually lots of people do exactly this.

@@DroctorKloebner Tosin Abasi for one. He does say it depends on the type of distortion you want. Power amp distortion is cool for old school rock but it makes your sound messier and less precise.

DoctorKloebner one of the best to do it by far is Hum

On older amps that didnt had 3 prongs cables the ground lift was needed. if you're getting shocked, you flip the switch and it shouldnt shock you anymore. Can you see the flaw ? You could also unplug the amp flip the plug 180 degrees and replug it, does the same thing basically.

@@crazysandwich thx for the info mate

@@wfrancis25 basically what crazysandwich said but the main intention was against hum (on an old amp i have it's literally labled "anti-hum"), but having it in the wrong position could certainly zap you, since then the amps ground and chassis is referenced to mains. Through a capacitor no less (often aptly named the death cap), wich when intact should at worst pass enough current to give you a little tingle, but it's a) still very stupid and b) those caps fail and they can fail short. And then you have a full 120 or 230 volts on your amp and the guitar connected to it. You might not even notice it if you say wear rubber sole shoes on stage until you touch something properly earthed, like a mic while muting the strings and then you are in for a less than pleasant experience. If it hasn't been done yet, you need to disable that circuit and install a proper 3 prong cord (since you mentioned you already repaired it i'd assume you know at least the basics on how to do that) or have it done by a professional (since you weren't aware that this was an issue that exists you probaply aren't that experienced). Don't work on an amp yourself if you are not 100% sure what you are doing, but if you want to look into it, uncle doug and the guitarologist are great resources on that topic and amp repair in general. Or just google "death cap amp". Stay safe

@@uzmeyer1752 ,wow thanx for all the info guys. I am electronic Tech, but valve is definitely not my strong field. I am going to open her up some time this year. to replace all the jacks. At which point I'll check that earth thing out. Now that you mention the tingly feeling. 20 years ago when I bought the amp, I got a mic with it. and yeah she did tickle me when the lips touched it.

@@wfrancis25 A few years ago i was playing with my 15-20 watt pepco amp with a 2 prong cable. You wouldnt believe the spark i got between my lip and the mic. a full inch of length, it stinged pretty badly. Now i only play with 3 prongs equiped amps :)

Distortion pedals are designed to go into the front of an amplifier. This trend of using distortion pedals are preamps is new and often misuse of equipment designed to be used in another fashion.

@@ScienceofLoud It's not misuse of the pedal, even if it's designed to be played through a preamp. You aren't going to damage the pedal or the amp, the worst thing that can happen is that it won't sound good. I don't see what's wrong with just trying it. Ola uses a solid state power amp for his pedal reviews most of the time and it sounds amazing.

Idk how good my ear is anymore, but I was searching thru all types of distortion pedals before 2015. Ultimately I landed on the Moen Violent Metal. The least nasal of all the pedals back then

I have an out of production Digitech TL-2 that is really good.

I think it's just his over saturated tone.

Aye! 🤘🏻🔥

This was a strict NAMM release, it was all secret until today. Hands were tied.

i think something's wrong with the mic or , it sounds like the palm mutes are clipping

Aye, I'm here! 🔥🤘🏼

I already have a video on this topic: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-FY3C2hWKE9U.html

quick answer, yes, you will burn the amp, because you will miss the appropriate resistance in the circuit. watch the video linked in the other comment.

@@ScienceofLoud thanks for the update

@@tolvajakos thank you for helping out

You do what you need to do. I currently don't have a workshop and haven't had one for several years now, I physically can't build guitars at present. I've had to adapt into education, but let's be real here: there has always been product reviews on this channel.