Loadbox suggestion for ENGL Fireball?

neonlight

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Jul 14, 2011
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www.philsunday.com
Hey guys,

I'm looking for a loadbox to run my ENGL Fireball 100 directly into my Presonus Firestudio Project without having the need of a cabinet.

Do you have any suggestions for a loadbox that should work?

Cheers!
 
just google for loadboxes. I don't think they differentiate amp to amp (unless I'm missing something)

Do you have a cab? What you can do is keep your Engl hooked up to the cab and run the fx send into your interface. To ensure that no sound comes out of the cab, just simple get an old guitar cable, cut off the end and splice the wires inside together and plug that into the return. That way there is a signal going out but no signal on the way in. Silence
 
Thanks for the Tip! I've got a cab but it's in the rehearsal room, so I simply wanted a solution for recording my ENGL at home without the cabinet.
On Google I only found construction manuals, but I don't want to build it by myself... The other things I found were pretty expensive.
Since it seems not to be that hard to build one if you're technically skilled, I can imagine that there should be a cheaper solution than 130 €..

EDIT: I don't need a loadbox with speaker simulation built in. I want to run it with Impulse Responses.
 
oh okay. Well check to see because I know a few amps will actually still have output in the preamp even on standby but it is only a few select amps. I have read about DIY loadboxes but I'm too scared to blow out an amp over $100 difference haha
 
Honestly guys DIY load boxes are EASY. Easier than changing pickups in your guitar!!!

A suitable resistor, speaker cable and a box to put it in is all you need!
 
So this resistor + this plug + a box = dummy load box. Right?

I'm a bit confused by this sentence: ''Power: 150 Watt / 55 Watt without heat sink''
What does it mean? I should use a heat sink otherwise it can only handle 55 Watt?
 
im pretty sure with engls you can turn the master volume down all the way down and you wont hurt the output transformer but the pre tubes are saturated from a diff volume (been a while since i sold my blackmore) so you might want to look into that option. and yes its a lower rating without the heat sink but it comes with the heatsink so thats not an issue

i use a diy load box with my 5150 all the time. be careful though. those resistors get hot. almost burned my house down one day :rofl:
 
For starters I never really recommend the whole cable in the FX return to break the signal to the power amp as depending on how the amp is laid out, cross talk in the tubes and current being pulled on the ground can still leak a signal to the power amp, even then, the power amp is still an amplifier and is still amplifying noise on the wiring so there will always be a signal going to the transformer unless HT has been removed.

As for affordable loadboxes, they really don't exist, which was why I started making load boxes which lead to me starting my own business. You have the THD hotplate, the Marshall Power Break, Webber Mass and the Rivera RockCrusher. All which are plenty expensive. Then on the really expensive end you have two notes which have digital impulse and cabinet simulation. What I offer is as about as cheap as it gets, the Loadbox II offers an active buffered out with a speaker saturation simulator, meaning you get the sound of your power amp plus the natural compression of speakers/cab all in one in a line out signal ready to go straight into the line in on your interface to get hooked up with VST impulses. That one will cost 162 Euros. The Loadbox (Loadbox I) is a simple load box that just provides a load for the amp, but has no line out, you would have to use your fx loop send into a DI and into a mic pre of your interface. That one will cost 89 Euros. Price includes shipping to Europe. Keep in mind that I do all my prices in US because the currency exchange rate constantly changes and I have lost money on miscalculations, so the euros are rough estimates as of the current exchange rate of today where 1 Euro equals 1.36 USD.

As for the tonal difference between getting the sound from the FX loop versus getting the sound from after the power amp, I did I comparison in the main loadbox thread that I made here. Getting the sound after the power amp with speaker saturation sounds so much more realistic and pleasing, but if you are on a budget and just want to silently record, the the original loadbox is a good buy too.
 
You don't need one with the Fireball. Just leave the standby on, the preamp output will still pass through the FX Send/Line Out. I do it all the time with the Fireball my friend has.
 
I took a look at the fireball schematic, the original 60W, not the 100W. The standby switch is on the cathode of the power tubes and there is no switch on the HT which means that the preamp will work with the standby on. You can get the sound from the FX loop which isn't the best sounding thing in the world and be sure to not accidentally turn off the standby.
 
I've heard that using load boxes makes the tubes wear out way faster. Is that true?
And also, is it theoretically possible to modify a tube amp to have a separate switch for the poweramp? So that if the switch is turned off, it would work just like a preamp. I have an Orange Rockerverb 30 watt clone and was thinking of ways to use it at home for recording.
 
I have suggested pulling power tubes out and just using a head as a preamp, but nobody wants to try it. I've tried it with my broken AT100 and it was fun.

Q: In a magazine Q-A, a player wanted to pull tubes to reduce power, but the "expert" said this would cause a meltdown of the remaining tubes. Of course, it was suggested that the expert's attenuator product was the preferred way to go. Is any of this true?

A: This is a person who should know better!

Removing tubes from a multi-tube fixed-bias output stage is never a problem. You can remove any number of tubes, and yes, that means you can take one tube out of a two-tube amp; one, two, or three out of a four tube stage, et cetera. This sounds heretical to techs stuck in the mire of convention, but it is something that has been known since tubes were invented.

The even-number tube extractions reduce power symmetrically. Neither the tubes nor the transformer will be damaged. Power will be reduced and so will frequency bandwidth - you will lose some bass and some treble. This is the point that switching the impedance selector to a less-than-load setting is supposed to correct, but it is completely subjective whether you should. The only 'should' of the matter, is do I like it this way, or do I like it that way?

In the uneven tube extractions, asymmetric power reduction occurs. Conventional thought says "the one tube on one side of the circuit will be trying to match the output of the two tubes on the other circuit half". This is wrong. The single tube can only produce so much power, and that's all it does. It doesn't melt down. The transformer does not blow up.

So, what's missing from conventional thought? The realization that tubes are "self-limiting power governors", which was stated in The Ultimate Tone (TUT), and explored in more detail in TUT2 and TUT3. TUT4 explores all of this in great detail. Our "expert" should get a copy.

In the end, you can pull tubes to reduce power, unless the amp is cathode biased - then you have to split the bias resistor. In any case, you do not have to worry about the impedance selector either.

- http://www.londonpower.com/faq.htm
 
THD Hot Plate is good.

Resistive would be Rivera Rock Crusher, Aracom, Alex's Attenuator, Palmer PDI-03, Sequis Motherload (last one not really great).That's all. Don't try anything else it's worse.
 
I have suggested pulling power tubes out and just using a head as a preamp, but nobody wants to try it. I've tried it with my broken AT100 and it was fun.

Pulling all the tubes can be a hit or miss, but it is a good alternative instead of needing a loadbox. The one problem with that though is that the power of the tubes causes a voltage drop to the preamp tubes. Since during normal operation some designs have the preamp tubes boarder complete failure voltages, any additional voltages to the preamp tube just may fry them. In order to really know for sure you have to check the live voltages when you pull the power tubes and see if you get a safe voltage which is not advisable to someone who is inexperienced with high voltages because there is way more than enough power in a live amp to kill.

Keep in mind that a 12AX7 maximum anode voltage is 300v with an arcing failure usually rated at 500v, and some amps I have seen anode voltage at 460v, the large current draw from the power section may be what is keeping that voltage down. A factory hot biased amp can easily reach over that 500v mark if all the power tubes are removed.

I also want to note, from the quote. Pentodes are not power regulating governors as much as they are current regulating governors. More current pull does not always mean more heat, anyone who can understand a load line with heat dissipation curve superimposed can see that. While pulling two tubes out of your amp and not changing the impedance selection will increase the power being drawn by those tubes over their maximum rating, it won't be large, with a 120W amp that has two tubes pulled, the two remaining tubes will dissipate something between 60W and 120W. It will sound different and could mitigate the life of your tubes. If you want identical operation of full power, half the impedance on the output. As a rule of thumb it is generally safe and advisable.

THD Hot Plate is good.

Resistive would be Rivera Rock Crusher, Aracom, Alex's Attenuator, Palmer PDI-03, Sequis Motherload (last one not really great).That's all. Don't try anything else it's worse.

Um, okay.