I tested the Fireball 100 with a Fender American Deluxe Strat outfitted with a bridge humbucker into a new Marshall 4×12 cabinet and a Mesa Boogie 2×12 Rectifier cabinet. A variable and switchable effects loop is included as is an adjustable onboard noise gate, useful for helping tame the extreme gain possible with the amp, which is powered by four 6L6 power tubes and four 12AX7 preamp tubes. Also included is a power amp monitoring that informs you when a power amp tube has failed. Each channel also has individual master volume controls. There’s also a bottom and mid boost that affects both channels. The clean channel sports a bright switch for more “sparkling” clean sounds. The two channels share a passive EQ section with bass, middle, treble, and presence controls. The Fireball 100 is a two channel amplifier with individual gain controls for the clean and lead channels. Let’s see what makes the ENGL Fireball 100 tick. It doesn’t do a thousand different things, maybe just two or three, but it does those very well. The ENGL Fireball 100 is one such amplifier. However, sometimes so many options can be too many options. There’s a time and place for such designs. Some designs are based an “all things to all people” approach and offer an amp with multiple channels, multiple levels of EQ, and effects so that it can sound like everything from a Pignose to a Dual Rectifier.

When it comes to guitar amplifier design, there are several different approaches. If you’re a Death Metal or Hardcore player who’s seeking an amp capable of extreme gain that’s well constructed and fairly priced, the ENGL Fireball 100 is worth a try.

Fire ball sound