My New Egnater

[gjohung]

About 3 years ago. My Mesa Boogie smoked, ended up replacing all the tubes. On my eys shopping trip I discovered Egnater and GC. I played the tweeker, and then Rebel 30 Combo. I almost walked away with a Rebel - and I saw a Marshall Haze 40 at price much lower as a store demo. For the next 3 years I had love hate relationship with the Marshall Haze. One day it would sound good - and then mushie...etc.. Sitll a good amp.

Last week I walked into GC and found a Rebel 30 Combo for a clearance price tag of $399. I couldn't believe it. I played for about an hour - reminensing 3 years ago. Like a DeJa Vue. I put a desposit of $150 and walked away.. Last sunday I scrapeed cash and what ever my credit card limit was and picked up the Rebel 30.

I won't goto specs.



Channel 1 - cleam channel. Is this like a bass man or deluxe reverb... even a AC 30 ish with Tube mix..but much balanced.punchy..and real compliment to my 52 RI Tele. But then with the Power Amp low 1W and voluime high, it gets that cranked up fender sound. Strats out of phase and some SRV tone..



Channel 2. I can'c compare to Haze.. because it does have lot of gain..But this one does have adequare gain to cover most needs. I think it works best with gain around 12 - 2 and use pedal. everthing they said here is true..

Note that I am manily Strat. I am playing through Eric Johnson, a Custom Shop & a Road Worn... and also PRS CE 22.. Tele 52 reissue.



Silent Mode:

Took aXLR.and plugged into my Mackie 12 channel - via headphone - Senhizer.. I use the Aviom system at gigs so I needed to get used to EIM sound, Pretty good for built in circuut...all the tube Mix and Power Seting works even through XLR. Now in a nutsahell I need 3 levels....clean cruch and lead... Rebel only offers 2... My Xotic EP booster was perfect. I also wanted to use OCD. well OCD into Channel 1 made the sound so thin....and Channel 2.... I got this oveloaed buzzy tone... My Tube Screamer was too noisy in front..

I am not sure if this is only XLR thing or Rebel can't talke front pedal too good. My best methid was just EP2 on front... works good for both channels. I ordered the SP..So I will test if when it comes..

So far good.. I building matching pedal board.

EB Volume. VOX Wah EP2 OCD. and into amp.

In the FX loop Boss Delay, Boss Chorus, Fulltone Tremolo.

Alternate method would be running my Line 6 M13 usind 4 Cable Method. I do have 2 expression pedal. using as Volume, Wah, and real versetile way of using expression pedal as gain control for Tube Driver, Tube Screamer, & Rat ... modeling. i love the way you can increase or decrease gain on these Overdrive and Distortion Models.

It worked good for my Mesa MK 3..I will see how it works on Rebel.

Keep you posted.

 

[gjohung]

I am still testing at home before I take it on real gig..

Issue: 1
I ran my modulation and delay on FX loop. Boss DD3. The slap backs makes a ticking noise. or few immediate delays looks like it is overloading. Moving the DD3 to front it does not do that. But Using OD channels with DD3 on front makes the sound Muddy.

Probable cause... Bad DD3? unlikely... works fine on Front of Amp and also through another Amp Tech 21 TM 60. Rebel 30 FX loop only accepts Line Level.

But doesn't Guitar Amp FX Loop has a range...?

Help

 

[gjohung]

Been testing at home.. I have a love hate relationship already. I am testing first time with the band tonight....

1) Issue 1 ... the oveload on FX loop cannot be cured with Ebtech Line Level Shifter
2) Rebel Does not take pedal good.. Dirty Channel TS-9 sounds thin flabby and buzzy. OCD make it too compressed.. Best result on My EP booster.
3) Amp is not silent.. with nothing plugged in it has a hum..

I am rehearsing with M13 tonight.

I will keep you posted

ghj

 

[gjohung]

just came back from rehearsal.... uggg.... I so wanted to use Rebel's Overdrive channel so I did the 4CM. with my M13 - and hum... and M13 cannot run as true bypass when running 4CM. Well with the band...the hum does get lost in the mix..but it is there.

I was switching between using clean channel with M13 tube driver and tube screamer... somehow it sounded so thin... With Rebel's drive channel my reverb and delay is mushed up... lowering the drive helped a bit but... not the way I wanted..

May be using and dialing in good clean tone as base and configuring M13 is the way to go...

_________________

I actually got Xotic EP and SP (just got it today. Didn't get to try it on Rebel..

I will keep you posted

 

[gjohung]

ok... stauts update.. I made all analog pedal..... EB Vol - Vox Wah - SP - EP - OCD - Rebel 30
FX out Ebtech Line Shifter - Boss Tremolo - Boss Super Chorus - Boss Digital Delay - Ebtech Line Shifter - FX return
With Rebel's 2 button Foot Switch connected

Brought by 60's Road Worn & 52 RI Tele

Clean channel - great sounding Fender DR or TR isn.... Delay Chorus sounds wonderful Xotic SP is where it should be. EP to kick it up a notch

Dirty Channel - umm....too chummy. somehow it sounded like something is....?? Out of phase.?? My gain for Channel 2 was at 1-2 o'clock. Tried Bright On and treble 9 o'clock ---sound ok but does not cut through

I can still hear very low hum

We use AVIOM system the silent recording the OD channel sounded too fuzzy.

i am not happy with the soung

 

[gjohung]

We jus finished 5 set weekend revival at out church.. It was intense and going crazy with no sound check lack of organization.. blah blah, typical church event? It was full of grace..!!

Guitar - EB Volume - Vox Wah - SP - EP - OCD amp FX: Ebtech Line shifter Tremolo - Chorus - Delay - all Boss..

It was perfect opportunity to try out different guitars and other styles. First night was with my PRS Custom 22. Some songs required a overdriven and clean tone. Power chord was great. But then switching to Lead Solo made the tone very thin and sharp, piercing.. I had bright off and Treble at 12N. My boost was just with my EP booster. which should boost the level not alter the tone. I wish there was a amp boost like my Marshall Haze. May be that is the limitation of Rebel 30 being just a 2 channel amp.

Second day Morning was a mixed audience with age group range was large...It was time for my 52 Tele RI. On the drive channel Tele delivered real gutsy tone. I have a 4 way mod on my Tele. and the parallel "humbucking" mode really came through. switching to clean tone gave me real spank, my boss tremolo mamade it sound like an old Twin or Deluxe with Vibrato, Yep the surf sound.

Being the strat guy that I am rest of the 3 sets were on my Eric Johnson strat. I know the PU are little more hotter than regular strats but... I did get a good tone with EP boost and SP comp. Some of the power chords were almost humbucker like on OD channel.. Solos still sounded thin..I need to figure another way. Where it shined was clean tone with Boss Chorus.... it has been a while since I experienced this nice ChorusIt just good old CE-3. Actually I loved it better than my M13 chorus.

Looks like FX is loop is working.. My delay DD-3 slap back didn't bother as much.

So that is what it is..

 

[gjohung]

Update.. rehearsal... Like I said My needs are 3 tier.. clean - OD - OD solos.. Rebel being only 2 channel I only get 2 options.. without actually changing the control.. Can you change settings in a same gig/set.?

So I tried the dirty channel with Gain up to 1 oclock... and used OCD with gain on 9 oclock level 10-12. Looks like it works... it does get a bit piercing with tone on 12.. Now still my best bet is EP boost... but it does not really change the gain... may be a little...

How can I get this 3 tier level with just 2 channel.

ghj

 

[C1-ocaster]

I had a Rebel 30 combo.
It's a fantastic sounding clean amp, and I think it's sounds better than Fender. Egnater clean is not as high end and crisp clean as Fender. To my ears it's more dimensional, warmer, with sweet mids.

The high gain is not much to speak of as it's NOT a high gain amp.
There is decent sounding gain for grittier blues tones, but not enough for saturated distortion and long sustain.

My Rebel flaked. It would NOT take a distortion pedal at all.
I don't know if the pedal blew out the input or if a pre tube just went on it's own, but the high gain channel could not take a pedal nor matter where I put the gain setting. I believe there was something wrong with my Rebel, but judging from your experience with pedals and the higher gain channel I'm wondering if Egnater is using bad pre tubes or there is a design flaw.

Using pedals into the clean channel worked just fine, but then there is the limited eq with just bass and treble whereas the higher gain channel includes mids in the eq.
That "piercing" tone you describe is what I heard in my Rebel as well.
I think there is something wrong.
Contact Egnater and explain the problem, they may be aware of what needs to be done to correct things.

I liked Egnater cleans so much that when I got an opportunity to get a demo closeout Egnater Vengeance head I went for it.
Normally it's a $1000 head, but I only paid $500!
Sweet deal, so I also got a 3yr warranty to be covered.

I've been back and forth with that amp liking it then not liking it, for the past month I've been really liking it.
Lots of pre tube swapping but the current setup is sounding great on clean, gritty blues and hard rock, and high gain metal it's all in there.

You should check out the Renegade. To me that amp has all the cool features of the Rebel but has more high gain and overall a bit smoother tone.
The Tweakers are nice too.
GC as you know is closing out Egnater and the prices are crazy low.

 

[Len Rabinowitz]

Gc is closing out Egnater? Where did you get that from? Wow! Mesa Boogie and now Egnater...

Or is Egnater closing out gc?

 

[gjohung]

yes.. I was one of the lucky one to get the Rebel 30 combo for 399.. I went back and even more banged up ones were selling for 599.

C1-ocaster: So what kind of OD/DS pedal have you tried? right now I have OCD and EP Booster.. I do like EP booster for giving more level..but not too much gain. Yesterday. I had my Drive channel at 12 oclock Gain.. a tad on the EL84 side with my Eric Johnson Strat.. I got great crunch rhythm tone..and also cleans up when guitar volume is pulled back.. I just had to kick my EP and neck pickup for smooth lead.

Cleans are clean...and takes the modulation pedal good. except through my EIM it had that shrill bite. especial on in between PU selector.....postion 2 and 4 in 5 position Strat. I plan to pull out my RAT. I really loved the RAT in front of my Marshall HAZE..OD Channel..

I had to be very compact for Sat gig.. and I ended up not using the pedal at all... just channel switching and rev. Acutally it sounded pretty good.. does renegade have more gain??

 

[C1-ocaster]

Gc is closing out Egnater? Where did you get that from? Wow! Mesa Boogie and now Egnater...

Or is Egnater closing out gc?

GC is closing out Egnater, they have been since Sept. or Oct of 2013 (corrected date).
I bought my Rebel 30 last July for full price, but with a 15% coupon discount.
Regular price was $900, and I paid $765 with the discount.

In October GC was GREATLY discounting remaining Egnater amps for HUGE savings, many were 50% off retail not just MSRP.
My Vengeance head retails for $1100. I bought a store demo for $500, but some got new one's for about that price.
The Vengeance and Rebel are still sold new at other retailers and they sell for their regular retail prices.
They are still worth their asking price IMO.

If you can find an Egnater at a GC you can get a GREAT deal right now.
Look on GC's website and do a search for what the local stores around you have in remaining Egnater's.
Recently my local GC had the Tweaker 88 head, great amp, for $399!!! That's normally a $900 amp.

 

[C1-ocaster]

yes.. I was one of the lucky one to get the Rebel 30 combo for 399.. I went back and even more banged up ones were selling for 599.

C1-ocaster: So what kind of OD/DS pedal have you tried? right now I have OCD and EP Booster.. I do like EP booster for giving more level..but not too much gain. Yesterday. I had my Drive channel at 12 oclock Gain.. a tad on the EL84 side with my Eric Johnson Strat.. I got great crunch rhythm tone..and also cleans up when guitar volume is pulled back.. I just had to kick my EP and neck pickup for smooth lead.

Cleans are clean...and takes the modulation pedal good. except through my EIM it had that shrill bite. especial on in between PU selector.....postion 2 and 4 in 5 position Strat. I plan to pull out my RAT. I really loved the RAT in front of my Marshall HAZE..OD Channel..

I had to be very compact for Sat gig.. and I ended up not using the pedal at all... just channel switching and rev. Acutally it sounded pretty good.. does renegade have more gain??

At the time I only had my Boss Metal Core pedal.
But as I said, there was something wrong with the amp and it did NOT like the pedal at all.
From day 1 there was something not right with the higher gain channel. It could never get any real gain like some youtube video's I heard. It wasn't a pre tube either because, when I had the gain fully on, if I moved the treble even one notch past 12 o'clock the amp would get super shrill and ultra trebley. It sounded awful.
Plus, when the gain was at full tilt the tone got squished/compressed in a very bad way.
It got worse and worse. First few times I used it it wasn't that bad, but became really bad.

I too have a Strat, a Strat Plus Deluxe, and the Rebel is great for single coil guitars, one of the best imo.

 

[gjohung]

yes.. I was one of the lucky one to get the Rebel 30 combo for 399.. I went back and even more banged up ones were selling for 599.

C1-ocaster: So what kind of OD/DS pedal have you tried? right now I have OCD and EP Booster.. I do like EP booster for giving more level..but not too much gain. Yesterday. I had my Drive channel at 12 oclock Gain.. a tad on the EL84 side with my Eric Johnson Strat.. I got great crunch rhythm tone..and also cleans up when guitar volume is pulled back.. I just had to kick my EP and neck pickup for smooth lead.

Cleans are clean...and takes the modulation pedal good. except through my EIM it had that shrill bite. especial on in between PU selector.....postion 2 and 4 in 5 position Strat. I plan to pull out my RAT. I really loved the RAT in front of my Marshall HAZE..OD Channel..

I had to be very compact for Sat gig.. and I ended up not using the pedal at all... just channel switching and rev. Acutally it sounded pretty good.. does renegade have more gain??

At the time I only had my Boss Metal Core pedal.
But as I said, there was something wrong with the amp and it did NOT like the pedal at all.
From day 1 there was something not right with the higher gain channel. It could never get any real gain like some youtube video's I heard. It wasn't a pre tube either because, when I had the gain fully on, if I moved the treble even one notch past 12 o'clock the amp would get super shrill and ultra trebley. It sounded awful.
Plus, when the gain was at full tilt the tone got squished/compressed in a very bad way.
It got worse and worse. First few times I used it it wasn't that bad, but became really bad.

I too have a Strat, a Strat Plus Deluxe, and the Rebel is great for single coil guitars, one of the best imo.

I noticed similar problem... my tone on OCD was all the way to left... no more than 9 oclock..

 

[C1-ocaster]

yes.. I was one of the lucky one to get the Rebel 30 combo for 399.. I went back and even more banged up ones were selling for 599.

C1-ocaster: So what kind of OD/DS pedal have you tried? right now I have OCD and EP Booster.. I do like EP booster for giving more level..but not too much gain. Yesterday. I had my Drive channel at 12 oclock Gain.. a tad on the EL84 side with my Eric Johnson Strat.. I got great crunch rhythm tone..and also cleans up when guitar volume is pulled back.. I just had to kick my EP and neck pickup for smooth lead.

Cleans are clean...and takes the modulation pedal good. except through my EIM it had that shrill bite. especial on in between PU selector.....postion 2 and 4 in 5 position Strat. I plan to pull out my RAT. I really loved the RAT in front of my Marshall HAZE..OD Channel..

I had to be very compact for Sat gig.. and I ended up not using the pedal at all... just channel switching and rev. Acutally it sounded pretty good.. does renegade have more gain??

At the time I only had my Boss Metal Core pedal.
But as I said, there was something wrong with the amp and it did NOT like the pedal at all.
From day 1 there was something not right with the higher gain channel. It could never get any real gain like some youtube video's I heard. It wasn't a pre tube either because, when I had the gain fully on, if I moved the treble even one notch past 12 o'clock the amp would get super shrill and ultra trebley. It sounded awful.
Plus, when the gain was at full tilt the tone got squished/compressed in a very bad way.
It got worse and worse. First few times I used it it wasn't that bad, but became really bad.

I too have a Strat, a Strat Plus Deluxe, and the Rebel is great for single coil guitars, one of the best imo.

I noticed similar problem... my tone on OCD was all the way to left... no more than 9 oclock..

Yeah, I don't think the high gain channel likes pedals.
When I ran the pedal through the clean channel it was great.
I wanted the high channel to work because of the added mid eq.
You have to be really careful to balance the amps gain with the pedal as it's easy to overdrive the input and the sound will get muddy and very compressed.

Maybe try a lower gain pre tube on the hot channel, then try the pedal.

 

[gjohung]

I needed a tone akin to rectifier for this particular song that we had. The EP SP combination on OD channel. I needed more drive.. I finally gave up. and brought my Marshall Haze. The PRS Custom 22 / Marshall combination was perfect. I was on Marshall's clean channel with Line 6 M13... Metal Zone Modeling and Tube Driver (Chandler Tube Driver)... Used mild drive with Tube Screamer for ballad bluesy songs. Wow.. I fell back in love with Marshall..

I temporary packed Egnator Rebel Home..

 

[Bluesplayer]

Egnator has a Recall on all the Power Transformers on that Model. I have had it with egnator, they suck, I removed my Tranformer an am having one made by Mercury magnetics, they will carry them soon, they are using mine to build Upgraded transformers.

 

[gjohung]

Been re-testing Rebel at home. More of testing the Silent Mode. I do think Mic-ed amp sound best.

I ran M13 on front to FX loop. Had OD channel with drive on 9am. Trying to get as clean tone on OD Channel. Seems to be working good. But still I wanted to use Rebel overdrive.

Kind of being Sac Religious but I felt L6 XTLive sounded better through the mixer.

 

[gjohung]

After months of using the Rebel as practice amp I brought Rebel 30 to gig - My Mesa MK 3 needs some service. intermittent cut off noise etc.. New Tube. I wanted to come up with different approach and putting everything in front. Nothing on FX loop to eliminate noise problem. My goto pedal OCD does not work for me.. it makes it too fuzzy and thin.. on both Clean and Dirty.. Although I used exclusively Clean channel and use pedal to drive and modulation and delay..

This time I am giving the dirty channel a second chance. with Channel Switching and Rev. (BTW... the eganator footswitch died on me) using Boss switch TRS - 2 X mono cable.

I was paranoid to try delay on front of the amp on the OD channel. Usually it makes it muddy. But with Tube Screamer (the real one not M13 modeling) and EP & SP on front it sounded pretty good.. It still does have that slight ice pick sound.. I am still experimenting ..

OCD no go with Rebel for me... ghj