1987 ENGL Straight 100 (E501)

Overview

After playing the E101, and later acquiring a Savage, I started looking for the ENGL Straight’s and ENGL Jive’s, which are models made in-between those two. The design language is still very similar to the E101 series, with large black round knobs, a slanted face, and the inverted style - tubes facing downwards, even on the head versions.

Unlike the E101 though, this amp is a much more traditional style circuit, with no digital controls. Instead, it’s a standard two channel amp, with a number of rocker switches for additional tonal shaping, and a master presence and volume section. It does retain the 100 watt power rating and quad of 6L6 power tubes, along with a long spring reverb tank, with this control moved to the rear panel. This particular Straight is a “standard” model, which only has a single button footswitch that allows channel changing on the fly. However, there are upgraded models that have a 3 button footswitch, which allows not only channel switching, but also bypassing the reverb, or engaging the lead boost feature. You can see the plugged hole where this feature would go on this amp, and most likely you could easily add this feature if you really wanted… except, like modern ENGL’s, this amp has no silk screen print on the PCB’s, and they are mounted upside down in the chassis. I really dislike this behavior, all it does is make the amp harder to work on or repair in the future, and someone who really knows what they are doing can still reverse engineer this if the worry was that people would build clones.

As for the tone, it’s quite clear they made some changes in the voice compared to the E101 to appeal to heavier musical styles. The gain channel is much more articulate, the gain more usable, with plenty of saturation on chugging palm mutes. The various switches help shape the tone, and a real presence knob helps fine tune the high end more than the E101’s simpler presence switch. The clean channel is great as well, very full sounding and combined with the full length spring reverb tank has a really nice sound.