LordRiffenstein
8 januari 2003, 13:59
Jullie verstaan Engels allemaal?? :razz:
I own the Diezel for about a month now so I think it’s a good time to do a review, the honeymoon period is over and I had the opportunity to play it in a band-situation.
Most people know the Diezel and it’s specs, 4 channels with their own eq, master volume, deep (sub-bass?) and presence controls…. It’s all in the manual :smile:. I use the amp with an Engl standard 4x12 loaded with Celestion V60’s or with a Marshall 1936 2x12 loaded with G12T75’s. I usually play teles but I also used a Fender Flame (hollowbody) and a strat with the amp. My VH4 came loaded with 4 EH EL34’s and Sovtek 12AX7wb.
The first thing you will notice about the VH4 is the amount of thight bass it has in every channel and that’s even without turning up the Deep. The presence control reacts very differently from other amps I have owned/played, it adds sparkle to your tone. The Diezel is one very loud beast BUT it sounds good at low volumes. It really starts to shine when you turn the volume up and when you reach 1 o’clock, it will go into power amp distortion and sound very sweet. Therefore I prefer to run the channel volumes low to be able to turn up the master volume a bit more.
Although I never cared for the Sovtek 12ax7’s I wanted to see first how the amp worked with those. The clean on this amp is amazing. I have played a fair share of old Fenders, Voxes etc to know what a killer clean is and the Diezel comes close. It won’t replace your old Fender but its coming convincingly close. You can have it fat or sparkling, great jazz tones to spanking funky. The first crunch channel gets you into blues brake up, classic rock and stuff. I had problems dialing in this channel with the stock tubes, it sounded a bit flat to me, either to much mids or to much highs. I did find a nice AC/DC-tone and some great blues tones with the Fender Flame. Channel 3 is big fat Marshally tone. It starts where channel 2 left of, more gain, fatter mids, great sustain. KILLER rock tones to be found here. It reminds me of the overdrive channel on a Bogner Shiva. On channel 3 there’s plenty of sustain to make every tele sing. I run the gain around 12 o’clock and that’s enough for my taste, turn it up and you land in heavy metal territory. Plug in your fav metal axe and wank away. Tight bottom, enough mids to cut through and smooth highs. And then there’s channel 4, what can I say, gain mayhem galore. This channel has more mids than channel 3 and with the gain around 11:00 you get killer tones, fat and smooth leads. I was very pleased with the amp with the stock tubes BUT I wanted to try out some other tubes so I installed my fav pre amp tubes, JJ/Tesla ECC83S. They made the amp smoother sounding without the touch of annoying highs the Sovteks have (to my ears anyway). I loaded V1-4 with the JJ/Teslas and it sounds HUGE, fat and smooth. I can now run channel 2 with the bright switch on without getting annoying highs. The lead sounds fat but when you dig in there’s enough sparkle and high end to cut through nicely. Channel 3 makes my Tele sound like a Les Paul (Led Zep anyone?). Will it end here? Probably not as I’m going to try some other tubes, some NOS stuff as well, but it’s nice to know that I get KILLER tones with the JJ/Tesla’s.
Bottom line, this is one helluva amp. Is it a master piece? Well I don’t know, who knows what the sick mind of Peter Diezel comes up with next. Anyway, this is a serious amp for the serious player. The only ‘complaint’ I have is the amount of bass, it’s to much for me so I have the bass pretty low, hey that’s what the controls are for, right.
The big question, how does it compare to the Engl?
Ok, I am one lucky bastard to own these two amps and I think I can honestly say that I don’t prefer one over the other. They are both great amps with their own distinct voicing. They both have a wide range of tones available and I’d be happy to gig with either one for the rest of my live. Feature-wise they are comparable although the Engl takes the edge with the 2nd master volume. I find the Engl to be a bit smoother sounding than the Diezel. The Diezel is more rough around the edges but that’s not a bad thing at all. If I compare their 4 channels I’d say that the Diezel ‘wins’ on channel 1 and 4 and the Engl on channel 2 and 3 but that might change next week.
My originals band will record a demo soon and I plan on using both the amps for the recording sessions so I will have some nice soundclips available then and it will give me an even better view on the capabilities of the Diezel.
Cya,
Yoeri
I own the Diezel for about a month now so I think it’s a good time to do a review, the honeymoon period is over and I had the opportunity to play it in a band-situation.
Most people know the Diezel and it’s specs, 4 channels with their own eq, master volume, deep (sub-bass?) and presence controls…. It’s all in the manual :smile:. I use the amp with an Engl standard 4x12 loaded with Celestion V60’s or with a Marshall 1936 2x12 loaded with G12T75’s. I usually play teles but I also used a Fender Flame (hollowbody) and a strat with the amp. My VH4 came loaded with 4 EH EL34’s and Sovtek 12AX7wb.
The first thing you will notice about the VH4 is the amount of thight bass it has in every channel and that’s even without turning up the Deep. The presence control reacts very differently from other amps I have owned/played, it adds sparkle to your tone. The Diezel is one very loud beast BUT it sounds good at low volumes. It really starts to shine when you turn the volume up and when you reach 1 o’clock, it will go into power amp distortion and sound very sweet. Therefore I prefer to run the channel volumes low to be able to turn up the master volume a bit more.
Although I never cared for the Sovtek 12ax7’s I wanted to see first how the amp worked with those. The clean on this amp is amazing. I have played a fair share of old Fenders, Voxes etc to know what a killer clean is and the Diezel comes close. It won’t replace your old Fender but its coming convincingly close. You can have it fat or sparkling, great jazz tones to spanking funky. The first crunch channel gets you into blues brake up, classic rock and stuff. I had problems dialing in this channel with the stock tubes, it sounded a bit flat to me, either to much mids or to much highs. I did find a nice AC/DC-tone and some great blues tones with the Fender Flame. Channel 3 is big fat Marshally tone. It starts where channel 2 left of, more gain, fatter mids, great sustain. KILLER rock tones to be found here. It reminds me of the overdrive channel on a Bogner Shiva. On channel 3 there’s plenty of sustain to make every tele sing. I run the gain around 12 o’clock and that’s enough for my taste, turn it up and you land in heavy metal territory. Plug in your fav metal axe and wank away. Tight bottom, enough mids to cut through and smooth highs. And then there’s channel 4, what can I say, gain mayhem galore. This channel has more mids than channel 3 and with the gain around 11:00 you get killer tones, fat and smooth leads. I was very pleased with the amp with the stock tubes BUT I wanted to try out some other tubes so I installed my fav pre amp tubes, JJ/Tesla ECC83S. They made the amp smoother sounding without the touch of annoying highs the Sovteks have (to my ears anyway). I loaded V1-4 with the JJ/Teslas and it sounds HUGE, fat and smooth. I can now run channel 2 with the bright switch on without getting annoying highs. The lead sounds fat but when you dig in there’s enough sparkle and high end to cut through nicely. Channel 3 makes my Tele sound like a Les Paul (Led Zep anyone?). Will it end here? Probably not as I’m going to try some other tubes, some NOS stuff as well, but it’s nice to know that I get KILLER tones with the JJ/Tesla’s.
Bottom line, this is one helluva amp. Is it a master piece? Well I don’t know, who knows what the sick mind of Peter Diezel comes up with next. Anyway, this is a serious amp for the serious player. The only ‘complaint’ I have is the amount of bass, it’s to much for me so I have the bass pretty low, hey that’s what the controls are for, right.
The big question, how does it compare to the Engl?
Ok, I am one lucky bastard to own these two amps and I think I can honestly say that I don’t prefer one over the other. They are both great amps with their own distinct voicing. They both have a wide range of tones available and I’d be happy to gig with either one for the rest of my live. Feature-wise they are comparable although the Engl takes the edge with the 2nd master volume. I find the Engl to be a bit smoother sounding than the Diezel. The Diezel is more rough around the edges but that’s not a bad thing at all. If I compare their 4 channels I’d say that the Diezel ‘wins’ on channel 1 and 4 and the Engl on channel 2 and 3 but that might change next week.
My originals band will record a demo soon and I plan on using both the amps for the recording sessions so I will have some nice soundclips available then and it will give me an even better view on the capabilities of the Diezel.
Cya,
Yoeri