Ever since the electric guitar became a staple of American music, the guitar combo amp has been the essential tool of the gigging guitarist. These amplifiers range from small models that are ideal for bedroom practice sessions to high-wattage powerhouses capable of producing stage-shaking volumes. With so many essential elements to consider, Sweetwater guitarists look for specific details when considering their next combo amps, and so should you. First on the list is the type of amp.

• Engl Thunder 50 Combo
• Engl Thunder 50 Review

Engl Diagrams, Schematics and Service Manuals - download for free! Including: e325 schematics new, e335 ii schematics new, e350 schematics new, e625 schematics new. Operator´s Manual Guitar-Amplifier Thunder 50. The Thunder delivers that unmistakable ENGL sound-warm. (Thunder 50 Reverb, Combo model E320 only).

Is it a tube amp, solid state, or some hybrid of the two. Tube amps are classic, and while they vary considerably in tone, they do share some remarkable sonic characteristics. There are some tub combo amps that have so much headroom that you're unlikely to send them into overdrive, but for the most part, tube amps are geared to break up.

The overdrive you get from tube amps is highly dynamic, starting with a bit of grit and getting progressively heavier as you hit it with more gain. This lets you control much of the character of your guitar combo amp's overdrive from the volume knob on your guitar, rather than on the amp itself. Solid-state amplifiers tend to be far more locked into their sound. They may be incredibly versatile, allowing you to dial in a wide range of tones, but your playing dynamics will affect them far less than tube amplifiers.

There are two ways amp manufacturers get around this limitation. First, digital modeling has progressed wonderfully in the past several years, and many 100% solid-state amplifiers do a fantastic job imitating tube amplifiers. The other is by hybridizing solid-state and tube amps together, normally by including a tube-driven preamp with a solid-state power amp. The result is some natural breakup and plenty of power, without the power amp tubes. The total power of your guitar combo amp is a rough indicator of its loudness. It's only a rough indicator, since the volume of a 30-watt solid-state amplifier won't be in the same ballpark as the volume of a 30-watt tube amp. However, so long as you're comparing similar amps, the relative wattage can provide some indication as to the volume you can expect from your amp.

More sophisticated models may even have switchable circuits, allowing them to run at low and high wattage. That makes them ideal for both practice sessions and gigging. In the same way that wattage is only a relative indicator of the volume you can expect from your guitar combo amp, speaker size provides you with an idea of the tonal range of your amp. The general rule is that the bigger the speaker, the deeper the lows you can get from it. While, in theory, smaller speakers would deliver more highs, high-impedance guitar circuitry notoriously underemphasizes frequencies above the upper mids, so that quality is generally lost.

By far the most popular configuration is 1 x 12', with 2 x 12' and 1 x 10' trailing far behind. How many channels do you need? If you want to change your amp tone quickly on the fly, then you need a multichannel amp. Two channels is the most common configuration by far, with the high-headroom configuration acting as the 'clean' channel and the low-headroom gain staging providing the 'dirty' channel. Typically, each channel includes its own equalizer section too, allowing you to dial in totally different sounds.

By the way, while two channels is the most common, there are amps with several more channels, often which you can configure between a number of different tube combinations to create an entire amp collections worth of tone you can access onstage. These amps have their own unique quirks, but they can be incredibly cool. Lastly, your guitar combo amp may come with onboard effects. In general, you only find a large number of onboard effects on smaller practice amps where they serve as a convenience, since onboard effects seldom compete with guitar effects pedals.

There are two common exceptions to this rule: tremolo and reverb. Traditionally, amplifier tremolo is tube driven and adds an old-time vibe to your tone, and onboard reverb uses a genuine spring reverb tank driven by tube circuitry. Both of these effects tend to have a particularly dynamic quality, making them popular among seasoned players. These are just a few general rules about guitar combo amps, and there are many additional nuances to take into consideration. If you're not sure where to start, the give us a call.

Your Sweetwater Sales Engineer will be happy to help you find and maybe even finance the perfect amp for you.

. back. back. back. back. back.

Thomann is the largest online and mail order retailer for musical instruments as well as light and sound equipment worldwide, having about 10m customers in 120 countries and 80.000 listed products. We are musicians ourselves and share your passion for making music. As a company, we have one single objective: making you, our customer, happy. We have a wide variety of pages giving information and enabling you to contact us before and after your purchase.

Alternatively, please feel free to use our accounts on social media such as Facebook or Twitter to get in touch. Most members of our service staff are musicians themselves, and therefore excellently qualified to help our customers from the choice of their instruments all the way to maintenance or repairs. Our expert departments and workshops allow us to offer you professional advice and rapid maintenance and repair services. This also affects the price - to our customers' benefit, of course. Apart from the shop, you can discover a wide variety of additional things - forums, apps, blogs, and much more. Always with customised added value for musicians. Guitar Tube Combo Amplifier The Engl company has proven that German companies, too, can produce amps at an competitive international level.

Engl Thunder 50 Combo

The Screamer is an all-tube combo amp with 4 channels that are designed so as to leave nothing wanted. Clean comes as convincingly as crunch; moderate, rather traditional lead sounds are also possible, and the great hi-gain lead sounds are eponymous (from cream to scream, you might say).

The relationship between hi and lo-gain lead sounds can be preset to fulfil all your requirements. Not so typical for a tube combo is its great reverb. The built-in 12' speaker sets liberates its 50 Watt power to great effect. And if that doesn't suffice, the Screamer offers the connections for all possible speaker types and combinations.

Engl Thunder 50 Review

Power: 50 Watt. 1x 12' Celestion Vintage 30 speaker.

Four features: Clean/Lead, lead boost and VLS (master volume indicator). Dimensions: 57.5 x 48 x 27 cm.

Weight: 23 kg. Hi, I lead a new amp Engl screamer it sounds really great, Germany has the property that every aspect is obvious. Have a quality structure, previously blackstar ht 40 and I didn't get the result I want 600 but I've used a Marshall JVM, engl reverb on every sound able to perfect the tank is very good, tube preamp (engl) tube poweramp (engl) the goods to Russia, it doesn't require that you have a lot of very good tube amp a tube change made in China is using and do I need to change the extra Iron Engl screamer::).