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Orange Acoustic Pre – Your Tone, Your Way

Orange Acoustic Pre

Faith.

Confidence in trust.

A pledge to the prophets of tone, made at the altar of our craft where rites are read from the runes of bass, middle and treble. A place where magicians dance between dark tones of hallowed wood and the breath of expression. The resonance of two materials, alchemy forged on an anvil of skin and bone.

Zac Ford endorses the Orange Acoustic Pre
“I’ve used the Rockerverb for various bands and styles for years, its been my swiss army knife. I always wanted to incorporate the Orange sound into my acoustic tone too and the Acoustic Pre does exactly that!” – Zak Ford

Songwriting is a spiritual matter. This is especially true when producing music on an acoustic instrument where nuances of tone really do help to create something far more personal. Stripped back to its bare essentials; the tonewood, the ores, alloys or gut, the person making the connection. Yet translating that personal feeling live or digitally can prove to be illusive, especially when time constraints are put into play.

The Orange Acoustic Pre is our answer to the working musician’s prayer.

1. Honest Reproduction

The Orange Acoustic Pre faithfully represents the vibe you felt that very first time you penned your own personal masterpiece. A true analogue unit that can be as versatile as you want it to be. Simmering with rich harmonics, providing the warmth and natural compression previously reserved for the higher echelon of audiophiles.

These days there’s plenty of excellent software plugins that replicate analogue circuitry, but there’s something about the body of true analogue equipment that feels honest.

Acoustic instruments can be unforgiving and so being able to dial your tone at the onset means you can capture the feeling right there and then. This matters because some of those first takes are the real gems; they ooze with passion and intent.

What the Orange Acoustic Pre does really well is the giving you a range of different flavours at your fingertips. It’s like the tapas of preamps, limited to what you need, but complementary to one another.

There are two channels. The first features an ECC83/12AX7 valve which gives two gain stages in one envelope. It’s designed to offer a wider frequency range than you’d expect from a regular guitar amp accenting those subtle nuances that embody the essence of an acoustic instrument. Of course, it wouldn’t be Orange without some heat, allowing fingerstyle players the luxury of added presence in the upper midrange.

The second channel takes a different approach, and in that is the genius of the design. An analogue solid-state channel provides a softer touch and incorporates XLR as well as ¼” input. For the home studio owner, these two channels can be blended right in the box, removing the need to manage multiple channels in your DAW. If you prefer, then both channels can be taken as mono feeds giving you total control over the sweet purity of analogue circuitry.

Pete Thorn discussing the feast of tonal options available with the Orange Acoustic Pre

2. Pain-Free Performance

Stage sharing is a common thing, right? But while amplified bands are already in the tonal sweet zone, acoustic musicians are at the whim of the gods.

Onstage, the hope of good room acoustics and well rung out monitors are often met by shortcomings. Then there’s the front of house sound. In most instances, a half decent DI and some nice digital effects may warm up your tone. Personality, honed from years of crafting can be lost as subtleties become vague, thin and sterile. As a performer, that’s often met with a humbling exit from the stage without the radiance of a newly informed expecting mother.

If there were another option, you’d take it.

What the Orange Acoustic Pre does is remove the roll of the dice; fate no longer rests in the hands of Lady Luck. The onboard stereo reverb adds depth and ambience, guaranteed in your foldback mix, dialled in how you want it to sound. And if your beloved is a temperamental beast there are switches to quickly resolve feedback and phasing problems.

Feature overview of the Orange Acoustic Pre

3. Achieve the Flawless Victory

Solo acoustic performers (or at least small groups of musicians) have an almost perfect promotional vehicle through radio, but we all know the scenario. Time is scarce, you start overthinking; small things appear BIGGER, you then realise you made a fundamental mistake.

Against the highly compressed radio friendlies that run around the clock, a live performance is immediate. Once it’s captured it’s out there.

The beauty of the Orange Acoustic Pre is not only can you sculpt your tone away from the pressure cooker, but with two separate FX loops you can build on your tone. One channel can feature more expressive outboard FX, the other, pure analogue tone blended to perfection.

There’s no need for you to make the sacrifice.