You've added an item to the cart! ×

We were recently contacted by interior designer Evelyn May Knight who wanted to share the final project she did before receiving her degree, her dream client & concept: Orange HQ.

Despite not personally being a musician, Evelyn was still captured by the bold aesthetic of Orange when first seeing one played on stage, and after doing some digging about the company’s history, also intrigued by the company’s history and heritage, which is what led her to pick the Orange head office as her dream client and final project.

As you’ve made your way to our website and blog, chances are your interest in Orange is above average and that you might already be familiar with some of the company’s history, but you may have missed that we did a series of drum kits in the 70s.

Orange drums were made in France by Jacques Capelle from around 1971 – 1976. He was a lovely guy, and became a good friend of Cliff Cooper. The earliest kits had the Capelle badging, but it didn’t take long before they were replaced with “Orange London” badges, although every drum kit was made in France.

Jacques made beautiful drum kits in his small facility in France, but his manufacturing techniques were labour intensive and very costly to produce. so Orange stopped importing them around 1976 as they were no longer competitive with the mass production of Premier, Ludwig and the introduction of Pearl, Tama and Yamaha etc in the mid 70s. These kits are very rare, and achieve very high sale prices when people are lucky enough to come across them.

BB King in 1969

In honour of Black History Month, let’s take a moment to remember where guitar music as we know it today came from, the origins of rock, and the early days of blues. Although the industry is changing and becoming more inclusive, mainstream guitar music is very much dominated by white males. But where would rock ‘n’ roll be in 2023 if it weren’t for the Black artists that paved the way? It’s vital to acknowledge not just the important but crucial role their heritage and legacy played in influencing such a wide variety of genres and sounds. 

Lemmy cited Little Richard as the king, which means the road from “Tutti Frutti” to “Motörhead” is surprisingly short. The 1960s were the heyday of British blues, celebrating artists such as Peter Green, Eric Clapton, Free with Paul Kossoff and The Rolling Stones. All were incredible artists worthy of recognition for their work and contributions to music, even decades later, and also artists who owe everything to Black musicians and the early days of the Delta blues. Let’s face it: people singing the blues were feeling pretty blue, sometimes because their baby left them, but also because the artist and their community were oppressed and had to face prejudice, discrimination and racism on a daily basis.

Jimi Hendrix by Michael Ochs

White people embracing Black music was a step in the right direction, as it allowed people to enjoy something simply for what it was, not based on who was doing it. That was a special moment, and a nod to the power and beauty of music in creating a community and building bridges. However, that doesn’t change the fact that ultimately, the blues, which led to rock ‘n’ roll, were created by oppressed people, who, despite everything, managed to find inspiration in the little things of everyday life, and the courage to share their art with the world.

So let’s take a moment to remember where it all came from. If you’re not familiar with the early days of American blues, take a deep dive into the archives and let yourself be amazed. This one’s for Elmore James, Son House and Robert Johnson. For Ma Rainey, Memphis Minnie and Bessie Smith. For everyone that came later, Little Richard, B.B. King, The Supremes and Jimi Hendrix. Stevie Wonder, Betty Davis, 2Pac and Tom Morello.

Rock, and music as we know it today, would be nothing without the Black artists who paved the way.

Over the past month, we’ve been taking care of an original Orange OR120 head from 1974 that was sent in by its owner for a tune-up before being passed down to their son. In the previous entries, we’ve had a look at the unit’s history and legacy, as well as how we’ve fixed it up for use in the modern age. Now, it’s time for the ultimate proof of the pudding — plugging in a guitar. All guitar sound samples in this post were recorded on a PJD Carey guitar with a single-coil pickup at the neck and humbucker pickup at the bridge.

Power chords played clean, all settings at halfway
Arpeggios played clean, all settings at halfway
Dyads played clean, all settings at halfway

NO PRISONERS

The first thing to say about this amp is that it’s LOUD. Like, incredibly loud — louder than any modern Orange amp by quite some margin, to the extent that it is perhaps even less of a mystery now why so many 1960s and 70s rockers are suffering hearing loss in their dotage. We ran it through an Orange PPC412 speaker cabinet at about one-third volume in a space about the size of an average rehearsal room, and it was already dishing out instant bouts of tinnitus, and demanding ear defenders all round. Given that the amp’s sockets allow for the connection of two speaker cabinets, too, the potential of this beast is massive.

Actual footage from Orange HQ of chief tech Jon playing through the OR120 for the first time

That sheer muscle is perhaps an indication of the era in which the amp was designed and built, before the age of complex, high-powered PA systems in the early 80s but shortly after the arrival of stadium rock and the outdoor music festivals of the early 70s (the original Woodstock was August 1969 and the first Glastonbury June 1970, for example). During that time, bands were largely expected to bring their own noise, and not to expect much in the way of a boost from a PA system. And with that in mind, the OR120 rigged up to a couple of 4×12 speaker cabinets would have no problem in filling huge spaces.

What’s more, with stage monitoring technology still very primitive back in the early 1970s, there was an expectation that you needed to be able to hear your playing directly from your amp on stage, even if it was 50 feet away and there was a rhythm section smashing away in between you and it. The OR120’s power could deliver all that with confidence, and was clearly designed specifically for that.

How the amp achieves this volume is mainly down to the huge 500 V voltage in its circuit, which is far greater than modern amps and will offer miles more clean headroom. Four power valves and a simple pre-amp circuit that doesn’t subtract too much gain from the signal also helps. There are also fewer tone stacks in the OR120 than a lot of its successors in the Orange range, which would account for less gain loss through the signal chain.

The amp’s tone is also an interesting indicator of its age. With all dials set to the middle, it’s remarkably clean and chiming, with plenty of heft and three-dimensionality, if not quite the character of Orange amps of the new millennium.

TONE-SHAPING

However, the unusual F.A.C. control, a six-point notched dial that subtracts increasing amounts of low end from the tone, has a huge impact in shaping the tone, making the sound increasingly brittle and bright as it’s introduced. At its farthest extreme, this sounds piercingly trebly to modern ears, but revisiting the records of the second half of the 60s and early 70s by the likes of the Beatles and the Byrds, for example, reveal this to be the sound of contemporary guitar music, suggesting Orange to be on the cutting edge, as ever.

When the F.A.C. is combined with higher gain and into overdrive territory, however, it adds a definition to the tone that counterbalances the slightly muddiness of the basic overdriven sound, and proves to be an invaluable component of the amp’s tone-shaping toolbox.

Arpeggios with gain and EQ set at halfway, and the F.A.C. set to 1 out of 5
Arpeggios with gain and EQ set at halfway, and the F.A.C. set to 2 out of 5
Arpeggios with gain and EQ set at halfway, and the F.A.C. set to 3 out of 5
Arpeggios with gain and EQ set at halfway, and the F.A.C. set to 4 out of 5
Arpeggios with gain and EQ set at halfway, and the F.A.C. set to 5 out of 5
Chords with gain and EQ set at halfway, and the F.A.C. set to 1 out of 5
Chords with gain and EQ set at halfway, and the F.A.C. set to 2 out of 5
Chords with gain and EQ set at halfway, and the F.A.C. set to 3 out of 5
Chords with gain and EQ set at halfway, and the F.A.C. set to 4 out of 5
Chords with gain and EQ set at halfway, and the F.A.C. set to 5 out of 5

The two-band EQ is also surprisingly powerful, with the range of both knobs allowing considerable variety to the shape of the sound and consequent versatility, presumably another feature included with the idea of helping the guitarist onstage with a noisy band around him. Similarly, the HF. Gain knob has slightly more subtle control, moulding the mid–high tones in much the same way as a modern-day presence control would, but its interaction with the gain knob is still well incorporated.

Arpeggios with gain and EQ set at halfway, the F.A.C. set to zero and the HF. Gain set to a quarter
Arpeggios with gain and EQ set at halfway, the F.A.C. set to zero and the HF. Gain set to a half
Arpeggios with gain and EQ set at halfway, the F.A.C. set to zero and the HF. Gain set to three quarters
Arpeggios with gain and EQ set at halfway, the F.A.C. set to zero and the HF. Gain set to full
Chords with gain and EQ set at halfway, the F.A.C. set to zero and the HF. Gain set to a quarter
Chords with gain and EQ set at halfway, the F.A.C. set to zero and the HF. Gain set to a half
Chords with gain and EQ set at halfway, the F.A.C. set to zero and the HF. Gain set to three quarters

OVERDRIVE

Another interesting sign of the times, tonally, comes in the form of the OR120’s only modest overdrive capabilities: the amp’s noticeably clean chime only starts to break up as the gain is pushed up beyond about three-quarters, and there’s a lot of “edge-of-breakup” territory where the tone’s fuzz is largely dictated by the player’s technique. Furthermore, the absence of a master volume knob means that you have to be playing through the amp at an exceptionally loud volume before any semblance of break-up or overdrive emerges. Even at full gain, though, it’s a long way from the fully saturated tube screamers of the 1990s and beyond, and retains more of a British punk/Sex Pistols sound, with grit and ferocity, but also quite crisp (although whether the likes of the Steve Jones, who famously stole his early instruments, ever got his mitts on an OR120, is a moot point).

This marks the OR120 as an interesting artefact of rock music history: even in 1974, when this amp was made, three years after Led Zep IV and Paranoid had ushered in the dawn of heavy metal and huge-sounding rock music, guitar tones remained fairly polite, and the appetite for extreme howling overdrive was still clearly in its early infancy. Understanding that somewhat recontextualises those classic albums as real sonic boundary-pushers, and also serves as a reminder that the bloom from crunch into thrash and total saturation would take another few years — and perhaps the introduction of a master volume control. And we’ll have to wait for another Orange relic to arrive on the bench before we dig into that.

Chords played with gain on edge of breakup, flat EQ and HF. Gain and F.A.C. set to 0/5
Arpeggios played with gain on edge of breakup, flat EQ and HF. Gain and F.A.C. set to 0/5
Dyads played with gain on edge of breakup, flat EQ and HF. Gain and F.A.C. set to 0/5
Chords played with gain turned up to full, flat EQ and HF. Gain and F.A.C. set to 0/5
Arpeggios played with gain turned up to full, flat EQ and HF. Gain and F.A.C. set to 0/5
Dyads played with gain turned up to full, flat EQ and HF. Gain and F.A.C. set to 0/5
Everything up full! 🤘

A couple of weeks ago, a fairly special old amp arrived at the Orange workshop — namely an original Orange OR120 from 1974 — in fantastic condition considering its age. The owner explained that it had been in storage for a while and wanted it returned to its former glory, so we were only too happy to oblige. In the previous blog entry, we looked a bit at the OR120’s history and legacy, as well as this particular specimen that’s been sent in. Today, with our head technician Jon having worked his magic on the old thing, we have a look at what needed doing to it and why, and how we got it ready to play again.

WHAT WAS FIXED, AND WHY

What should be said first is how little needed fixing on this 48-year-old amp: the circuitry, transformers and choke have all stood the test of time perfectly, which could be said to be a testament to Orange’s sustainability.

Some parts did need swapping out for new ones, but thankfully these are relatively inexpensive and still easy to come by. Perhaps the most important and easiest change was the valves — both the pre-amp valves (a pair of ECC83s) and the power-amp section (a quartet of EL34s). The pre-amp valves had become “microphonic” over time, meaning that they had grown undesirably hypersensitive to noise, and the power-amp ones are no longer matched, drawing differing amounts of current during use and therefore inhibiting the consistency of the amp’s performance. These valves just needed swapping out of their sockets, and new ones putting in their place.

The old Mullard EL34 valves from 1974

The other main change was to the amp’s electrolytic capacitors. A little like rechargeable batteries, capacitors’ abilities to store electric charge declines unavoidably over time, and 48 years is a good innings for one of these specimens! When they start to lose their efficacy, the sonic effect is a flat, undynamic response from the amp, and an increase in “ripple” — a jagged, distorted sound (and not in a good way), and a constant buzzy hum. Changing over the capacitors required a little more technical skill with a soldering iron and a steady hand, but thankfully our tech Jon was on hand:

Jon swapped over ten capacitors in total: two can capacitors in the first of the filtering stages, two bypass capacitors, two in the bias circuit and four for the remaining filtering stages.

Can capacitors (coloured green) before

Can capacitors (in blue) after
Capacitors in green and blue, before
Capacitors in black, after

The eagle-eyed will spot that it’s not only the colour, but also the size and shape of the new capacitors that differs from those of the 1970s originals. However, in terms of their spec, it’s an exact like-for-like swap; the modern, slimmed-down versions are just a result of technical and manufacturing improvements over the past half-century.

GETTING IT READY TO PLAY AGAIN

Normally, when a vintage amp arrives in the workshop that hasn’t been switched on for several years, it’s good practice to gently reintroduce voltage using a variable transformer (the “variac”) that allows the user to vary the number of volts entering a system. Starting at zero and slowly increasing the number over a number of hours, it ensures that an old system isn’t given too much of a jolt, and subsequently overloaded, on its first resurrection.

When this particular OR120 first arrived, it was clear that enough needed changing that it wasn’t necessary to turn it on before the first fixes: the capacitors were visibly blistered, and the valves were not performing ideally on a valve tester. However, once the unit had been returned to its full working condition, it was crucial to run it through the variac, gently upping the voltage over the course of an afternoon, while keeping an eye on the current it was drawing, before actually putting an electric guitar through it — a treat that will have to wait until next time.

COMING NEXT TIME: How the refurbished OR120 sounds when returned to its former glory, complete with audio samples

Gear moves in and out of the Orange workshop pretty constantly, with fixes, mods and inspections to amps, pedals and prototypes all in a day’s work. Very occasionally, though, something gets sent in that makes us crowd around the workbench — something rare, old, or unusual, or just something we’ve only ever read about before.

One of these occasionallys happened last week: an amp head showed up at Orange HQ wrapped in a home-sewn leather cover with an accompanying note from the original owner. The amp had been kept in storage for a while, the note explained, but now the owner was looking to give it to his son, a promising guitarist. Before he did that, though, he wanted to have the unit looked at by our expert technicians, and so here it was with us.

But this head in question isn’t just any old Orange relic. Removing the cover revealed an early-manufacture OR120, also known as the Orange Graphic 120 — the model that has a decent claim to be the foundation stone of the Orange sound as we now recognise it, well into its sixth decade.

The serial number dated this unit to 1974, barely five years after Orange was founded, and only two after the company began serious mass production with its first factory in Kent. The OR120 was a year-zero moment for Orange: a wholesale rejigging of the existing schematics, from which emerged a new tone that everybody would come to associate with the brand, with a design and sound that would influence the amp world, both Orange’s and other’s, ever since. And here was one of the beauties, right in front of us on the bench!

BEGINNING OF A DESIGN EVOLUTION

The first thing that leaps out about the looks of OR120, when viewed through 2022 eyes, is how much of a snapshot it is of the young Orange in 1974, on the cusp of a breakthrough. Sure, there’s the none-more-70s brass handle bolts and gold trim, both of which would become black in future iterations, but the threshold-of-greatness status is perhaps best observed through the amp’s controls, and specifically how much (and how little) things have changed in the past 48 years: superficially, the layout on the OR120 is much the same as its modern-day successors, but look a little closer, and interesting differences emerge.

There’s a knob marked F.A.C. (supposed to stand for Frequency Attenuator Control, or is that Frequency Adjustment Circuit?), actually a six-point notched dial that subtracts increasing amounts of low end from the tone, and the two treble and bass dials marked just “KHz” and Hz”, respectively. Along with another marked “HF. Drive”, it suggests an amp being labelled up for an end user who already understood scientific terms and was comfortable with undescribed acronyms.

The OR120’s “Echo” effects loop
The OR120’s two-band EQ

Alongside that, though, was one of the first outings of the soon-to-be-famous Orange hieroglyphs, with a charming accidentally reversed bass clef symbol to represent the low end, and the now-familiar clenched-fist symbol to indicate what future amps would simply call “punch”.

The amp also serves as something of a Rosetta Stone for some of the less straightforward icons too. Ever wondered, for example, why twin mountain peaks represents an effects loop? The OR120 might have an answer: the pair of sockets through which the user could connect an external reverb unit was marked “Echo”, illustrated with the classic mountain scene.

Suddenly, sound bouncing off an alpine canyon makes perfect sense. Those pair of sockets would eventually migrate to the back of many an Orange amp, and the “echo” be broadened out to include any manner of external effects units, but the hieroglyph never changed, perhaps because it spoke a language never grounded in words: these symbols seemed to want to reach new players unbothered by scientific jargon, who wanted a universal language of guitar tone — and the circuitry spoke to that, too.

UNDER THE HOOD

Inside the OR120, its board and wiring beautifully preserved

We’d all seen pictures of the outside of the OR120 before this example arrived in the workshop. But perhaps the most interesting aspect of having one to investigate in the flesh was popping off the sleeve and seeing the creature’s guts. And what a perfectly clean, immaculately preserved example of an OR120 we had here, with the circuitry and build serving as an absolutely textbook example of how to construct an amp in 1974.

Unfortunately, the valves had had become unmatched over the years, so that they were drawing differing amounts of current to one another — a simple function of old age — and the original Plessey capacitors, proudly stamped with “British Made”, needed replacing. However, what the meticulous attention to detail shows is how these heads were built to last.

“British made” Plessey capacitors

LEGACY

And last they did, with a build quality and sonic popularity to give them decades of acclaim. A 1974 ad in the trade press reveals them to have retailed at £140 (about £1,200 in today’s money), with earnest insistence that “good value and reliability ensure your customers return”.

Indeed, it’s testament to the OR120’s tonal longevity that 23 years after they were first introduced, they had perhaps their most eye-catching role: when Oasis revealed the video accompanying the number-one single D’You Know What I Mean from their third, victory-lap album Be Here Now in July 1997 (still the fastest-selling rock album in British chart history, amazingly), a pair of re-issued OR120s sat proudly on their own Orange double 4×12 stacks behind Noel Gallagher (see the screengrabs from the video, above).

Full of epic rock bombast — helicopters, crowd riots and aerial photography — it was the most expensive music video made by the UK’s last genuinely household-name rock band, and amid all the grey concrete and khaki parkas elsewhere in the video, that pair of bright orange monoliths stand proud. And so they should.

COMING NEXT TIME: What fixes were done to this OR120, and how it sounded when returned to its former glory

Long-time Orange ambassadors Wishbone Ash are celebrating the 50th anniversary of their iconic 1972 album Argus, and are embarking on a five-week UK tour tomorrow to support it, followed by an EU jaunt and US dates early next year. A full list of shows can be found here. In celebration of the anniversary, we spoke to frontman and guitarist Andy Powell about the album that changed the band’s career forever.

What can you tell us about the recording of Argus, and the impact that the album had on the band’s career?

Recording Argus was exciting because we upgraded from 8-track to 16-track. This allowed us to double-track the arranged guitar lines and vocals, which is why they stand out so well. Back in those days there were no effects pedals — reverb effects were achieved by using a plate echo and we tuned and intonated our guitars by ear using a tuning fork! I remember the release well, as the fans and the critics embraced it. Rolling Stone described Argus as an “essentially excellent” album and Sounds crowned it “Album of the Year”. Keep in mind our competition were albums like Deep Purple’s Machine Head and Jethro Tull’s Thick as a Brick. We were all so proud of the recognition at the time…and still to this day. It completely changed the band’s career! It took us into the big league as we started to headline our own tours in the UK. Prior to that, we’d been the opening act for bands like Rory Gallagher’s Taste or Mott the Hoople. Then we went over to the States, and landed the opening slot for the Who on tour. The first show was in front of 35,000 people at the Mississippi River Festival. It blew my mind — the sound system, the sheer number of people, the outdoor stage even had its own air conditioning for the performers. We learned so much from touring at close quarters with that band. That’s also when we first started to ship our Orange backline over to the States. The Orange gear would always impress sound guys due to its power and clarity on the big stages, and much of the guitar sound came from our Orange backline. At one point I was using two 200-watt Orange heads at shows! 

How you feel about the album five decades later?

It’s the gift that keeps on giving — the jewel in the crown of our back catalogue. We’ve made some great records but this one was the perfect album at the perfect time in rock history, and that’s the difference. Albums are kind of like that. They can capture the times that a band is living through, and for us, Argus was exactly this kind of album. The riffs, intros and outros on the album have become timeless. Songs like The King Will Come, Warrior and Blowin’ Free are still received so warmly, 50 years on. I still today enjoy playing my song Leaf and Stream, as well as the anti-war song Throw Down the Sword, one of my finest moments as a soloist on the album. Sometime World is another song with a solo of mine that I’m really proud of. We had no idea that the arranged twin lead guitar harmony sound that we developed would go on to become the inspiration for so many other bands in the rock and metal fields, including Thin Lizzy, Iron Maiden and Opeth. Thin Lizzy’s Scott Gorham shared with me that when Thin Lizzy moved to London and witnessed Wishbone Ash at the Lyceum, bassist Phil Lynott said afterwards that Wishbone had the sound they needed. Iron Maiden bassist Steve Harris even remarked to Guitar World in 2011, “I think if anyone wants to understand Maiden’s early thing, in particular the harmony guitars, all they have to do is listen to Wishbone Ash’s Argus album.”

I agree, it truly is the gift that keeps on giving and it’s really stood the test of time. How does it feel being able to share it with newer generations, and seeing such a wide variety of ages at your shows?

I love it when I look into the crowd and see mothers and fathers with their kids at shows. That wouldn’t have been the case back in the day of course when a good 80% of our audience would have been young lads, but now it shows that our music can stand the test of time and be universally appealing, and of course so many girls love playing rock too these days. I love that. Seeing and hearing these crowds join in on the rousing chorus of Warrior confirms to me that our music can fire up the imaginations of new generations of fans. Recently, young wounded vets have come up to me after shows and told me how Warrior kept them focused during their fight. That’s very humbling, and reaffirms the power of the music and lyrics. “A slave I couldn’t be”, especially, rings true with the struggle in the Ukraine and I can bet, without a shadow of a doubt, having played there a few times, that there are still actual young warriors who turn to this piece of music for their strength. 

Check out the interview our Marketing Director Charlie Cooper did with The Guitar Channel:

“It was during 42 Gear Street that I had the pleasure to meet Charlie Cooper, son of Clifford Cooper, the founder in 1968 of the legendary British amp brand Orange Amps (orangeamps.com). A great opportunity to learn more about this iconic manufacturer that supplies Jimmy Page, for example.”

Orange Amplification joins the nation in mourning  the sad loss of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth Il and we offer our sincere condolences to the Royal Family at this time.

Receiving the Queen’s Award in 2006, 2009 & 2012 was and will always be a great honour for us.

We celebrate her unprecedented devotion to duty and her dedication to a life of public service and a unifying presence for us all.

Sincerely.

Cliff Cooper and all at Orange.

The colourful history of Orange Amplification is celebrated in three new videos featuring legendary front of house sound engineer Colin Norfield, renowned sound engineer John ‘JJ’ James and respected cabinet designer Mick Dines.

In the 70’s Orange Amplification created Orange Hire to provide the PA and backline for the big outdoor festivals such as Reading and the Isle of White. Bass player Colin Norfield was the perfect man to manage this enterprise. From this he went on to become one of the iconic pro-audio specialists of our time. The list of prestigious tours he has worked on include Diana Ross, Toto, Iron Maiden, Pink Floyd, Zucchero and his relationship with David Gilmour has lasted more than five decades.

A mainly self-taught tinkerer and rule breaker, John ‘JJ’ James was responsible for designing most of the company’s products through to 1979 including the innovative ‘Pics Only’ amp synonymous with the brand. When the Bexley Heath factory closed in 1979, James began working with Brain Hatt, chief engineer at Orange Studios before going on to spend more than forty years ‘stage left’ for world class gigs including Eric Clapton, Queen + Adam Lambert, Joe Satriani, Robbie Williams and many more.

Mick Dines, worked with Orange Amplification from 1968 to the present day and was the General Manager of Orange Amplification during the 70’s. He used his experience as a touring bass player to make the company’s cabinets solid and robust. He also introduced the characteristic ‘Basketweave’ front, the material which helped define the distinctive ‘Orange ‘ tone. Dines’ knowledge of the bass guitar was instrumental in the company’s move into the bass amp market with the introduction of the fabled 2×15” Reflector Cabinet using the most up to date parabola design featuring two massive 15” back to back speakers to maximise volume.

The entertaining and informative videos explore a time when these experts in their field were ‘just doing stuff’ that ‘nobody had thought of’ and ‘we made it kinda work’ .To view the Colin Norfield video please go to https://youtu.be/Srvoi9hfp8g, the John ‘JJ’ James video https://youtu.be/Fmp6ctbBy9o and the Mick Dines video https://youtu.be/ahlJ9Teedbw. To find out more about Orange Amplification history please go to https://orangeamps.com/history/