The Worst Advice We’ve Ever Heard About Using An Orange

We recently posted an article outlining five of the greatest myths we’d heard about us. Ok, one or two of the aforementioned tales may have been fabricated somewhat, but it got us thinking about other such nonsense we’d heard about Orange.

You see, the world of guitars is full of people with very strong opinions about what the ‘right’ way to do something is, or what is the ‘correct way’ to sound. It’s all rather arbitrary, of course, because music differs from, say, sport. In sport, there very definitely is a ‘right’ technique to jumping, sprinting or kicking a ball properly, and if lots of people become good at it there becomes an element of competition. Fine. Great. But music is almost exclusively non-competitive. There is no right or wrong way to do anything. If it sounds good, it works. Simple.

So, with that in mind, we’ve put together a list of some of the worst advice we’ve ever heard about using an Orange.

If you’re using an Orange, you can forget about using pedals

Certain amps in our industry have become known for their suitability as a conduit for your space-age pedal board. Whether it’s because they’re known for sterile cleanliness, and therefore need a shot in the arm, or perhaps it’s down to association or perception (i.e. certain pedal-heavy artists use them) either way it’s bunkum. Any amp can take any pedal. They all have 1/4” jack connectors, don’t they? Granted, if you’re talking about suitability then sure, there are certain pairings which go together better than others. But modern Oranges are versatile and are designed specifically so they do ‘do’ pedals, so to say Orange amps don’t do pedals is quite obviously silly.

You can’t play <insert genre here> with an Orange

Don’t even get us started on this one. Let’s play a game. We’re going to take two different artists and play spot the difference. How about Jim Root and Stevie Wonder? One is a pop legend famous for songs like “I Just Called To Say I Love You” and “Isn’t She Lovely”. The other plays in an 18-legged metal beast which used to suspend its drummer upside down on a giant flaming pentagram. The common thread? Both rely on Orange to power their (admittedly quite different) backlines. So yes, you can play pretty much any genre using an Orange, with the possible exception of Balkan death jungle.

If you want to sound like <insert artist here> you’re going to need an Orange

This is the flipside to the previous point, but rings true with something we’ve said in other articles. Put simply, you’re not going to sound like anyone else, famous or otherwise, simply by buying the same gear as them. Sure, you might get in the same ballpark, but tone is affected by almost infinite micro variations and you can never expect to fully recreate it yourself. From simple things like EQ settings, through to more complex elements like how much a particular cabinet speaker is ‘worn in’, you are on a hiding to nothing by tone-chasing. Aside from anything else, tone comes largely from the player’s fingers. Work on those before you start stressing out about losing an online auction for some 1978 Celestion Greenbacks.

You’re going to need humbuckers with an Orange

Bit daft, this one. Yes, a lot of our amps sound majestic with a pile of gain and, therefore, humbuckers to chew through it like a hungry dog through your new shoes, but have you ever heard the TH30’s clean channel?! If ever an amp channel was designed for the delicate chimes of a good quality single coil it was that one. But, as any experienced guitarist will know, there are almost infinite shades of grey between a dirty tone and a clean one so try experimenting. Different pickups, different settings; somewhere hidden in that frequency spectrum is a sound you can call your own. Go find it, before someone else does.

 

<insert number> watts won’t be loud enough to gig with.

Finally, another old chestnut, to which one simple question can be asked; have you ever heard 15 watts at full pelt? Yes ok, if you’re headlining the O2, then you’d be within your rights to explore something a bit more powerful but for home practice, band rehearsal, pub and club shows etc, 15 watts will likely be more than enough, particularly if those 15 watts are being pushed out through a decent quality 4×12 cabinet. Our Terror series has always punched well above its weight in the size/volume stakes, and shows no signs of letting up yet. If you wanted to be really subversive, you could turn up at a show with a Micro Dark and watch people’s faces when they start melting at the sound of something so small yet so damn loud.