Review: Engl Savage 120

 

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we are reviewing a monster of an amp, 120w of tube power, which is considered the most representative of the German brand Engl: the Savage 120!

This head came out originally in 1993, a time in which digital amps were basically useless toys, and in which if you wanted a no-compromise guitar tone you had to really go for the real thing: a super large, super heavy (22kg!) rock amplifier, with a lot of tubes (even in the fx loop) and volume, and if you wanted to reach the perfect tone you had to crank it to the point of being almost unusable.

The Engl Savage is a head that embodies well the attitude of the brand: high priced amps, hand made in Germany, which provides impressive solidity, reliability and mids capable of cutting through the most dense mix: usually if in a concert only one of the 2 guitarists has an Engl amp, the other one gets completely covered.

The Savage offered back then features that were not common (and still today are not), making it a very complete, full optional amp: 2 fx loops, 2 master volumes, 4 channels, and a ton of knobs and switches to craft your tone in a very detailed way.

How does it sound? As I was mentioning, it has a very distinctive mid range which is very cutting, but it features also a lot of flexibility; as a reference, think about a Marshall as an amp with prominent mid highs, while the Engl is an amp with its distinctive tone a bit more in the mid range, slightly more nasal and with a ton of additional gain.

Compared to other popular heads of the brand, for example the Powerball, which came out almost 10 years later, the Savage sounds more classic and in your face (more punchy, like a Marshall JM800 compared to a DSL or a TSL, which sound more modern), a bit less scratchy and slightly more nasal, while the Powerball is a little bit more modern, but both heads retain the undeniable Engl character, which I really love.

Today this amp is sold in its Mark II version, which comes in 60w and 120w and features a serie of extra optionals (noise gate, MIDI switching) and tweaks in terms of tone, which doesn't modify too much the soul of this head.

Thumbs up!

Specs for the Mark II version, the one currently sold:

- 4 Channels: Clean, Crunch I, Crunch II, Lead

- Power: 120 W

- Preamplifier tubes: 6x Engl ECC83 / 12AX7

- Power amp tubes: 2x Engl 6550

- 2 Tube-driven FX loops with separate balance controls

- Noise Gate with adjustable threshold (footswitchable)

- MIDI Channel Assignment and Controller Enable Switch - Write / Copy (for MIDI programming)

- Sound Switching options: Input Lo / Hi, Bright, Preshape, Contour (Clean, Crunch I), Mid Le./Bo., Depth Boost, Gain Lo / Hi, Contour (Crunch II, Lead), Rough / Smooth

- Controls: Gain (separate for each channel), Bass, Mid Lean, Mid Bold, Treble (Clean, Crunch I), Bass, Middle, Treble, Tone Balance (Crunch II, Lead), Volume (separate for each channel), Presence A, Presence B, Master A, Master B

- Controls (rear side): Noise Gate Threshold Level, FX Loop I Balance, FX Loop II Balance

- Outputs: 1 x 4 Ohm, 2 x 8 Ohm, 2 x 16 Ohm, 1 x 16 Ohm

- Made in Germany

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