When you’re shopping for new gear, the go-to tool for gaining knowledge these days is the internet. Either forums, or YouTube videos, or Facebook pages; basically the internet has democratised information in such a way that whatever you’re into, you can find other people with the same interests and build up a picture in your head about a potential purchase before you ever even see (or hear) it in the flesh.
In ye olde pre-internet days, this process was often done via trusted magazines, or word of mouth, or by seeing the item for yourself. Sometimes, you just and to take the plunge and buy the item, and let your opinions form after using it for while.
There are pros and cons to both approaches; sure, it’s nice to use internet research to get you in the right ballpark of what you’re looking for, but sometimes you just can’t beat a bit of first-hand experience.
See, the problem with desk research is that you’re not always getting an unbiased opinion. If someone shells out a stack of money on an amp, for example, then they’re going to be biased towards saying it sounds like the greatest thing they’ve ever heard. There’s no objectivity here. Partly through self-preservation, you’re bound to think your new expensive gizmo is going to be brilliant because you don’t want to countenance the thought that actually it may not be and you’ve wasted your cash.
So we’re promoting a stance of trying things for yourself. Let your own ears be the judge. A compressed YouTube video might give you a flavour of what our amps sound like, but sometimes you just have to experience it. Here’s five things which you’ll need to see or hear for yourself about our gear.

Clean channel
It would be too simplistic to simple say ‘tone’ when talking about things you’ll notice. Every amp has a tone, good or bad, and trying to communicate that through words is difficult. One man’s thrash tone is another man’s razor wire, after all. But it stands to reason that most amps will have a spectrum of sounds, running from clean to dirty.
Looking at an Orange clean tone, you’ll notice a couple of things. ‘Old’ Orange, you may have heard, was famously wooly and mid-rangey. This is why it was so heavily favoured by blues-flavoured artists like Peter Green. He loved the way a riff could be driven through the amp’s clean channel to give it extra bite which was different to what was available at the time.
‘Modern’ Orange is slightly different. The clean tones on certain models, like the Thunder series, are ultra-chimey and replicate your guitar’s natural sound amazingly. From here you can hear the difference between different pickups, woods and playing styles. At low to mid volumes they also offer a virtually distortion-free palette with plenty of headroom, through which pedals excel.
Push the clean volume on, for example, the Rocker series and you start to introduce subtle, harmonic distortion which, in combination with you guitar’s neck pickup, will straight-up make your knees wobble and the hairs on your neck stand up.

Dirty channel

As mentioned previously, there is an entire gamut of tones you can coax from an Orange. Looking at the other extreme to clean, you should really hear for yourself what a full-throttle Orange sounds like in person. On recordings, you’re getting the sound as it is once it’s processed and placed alongside other instruments. But in person, the Orange dirty channel is a thing to behold.

Using the shape control, you can go across everything from almost muffled Sabbath-esque sludge, through to crunchy lo-fi 80s thrash. On the modern Orange amps, there is literally more gain on offer than you could ever realistically need. Try downtuning and playing some Sunn O)) style drones on a Rockerverb if you don’t believe us. Truly biblical.

What’s more important though, is how it’s a quite unique flavour of gain. Every amp can be pushed, and every amp has the spectrum of tones available, but there’s just something about that Orange gain which you really have to hear for yourself.

Full-band mix

This is linked to the previous two points; the sound you get when you add other instruments into the mix. And again, it’s not rocket science, any amp can compete with a drummer if it has enough power. Any amp can be tweaked to accommodate the low-end of a bass. But the fact that Orange Amps have such a unique sound to them means that changing your current amp to one of ours may end up having a quite profound effect on your band’s sound.

Effects loop

We’re not for a second claiming our valve-driven effects loops to the some kind of space-age, proprietary technology. Let’s be honest, vacuum tubes are pretty archaic. But there is definitely something in the way Ade designs the circuitry on our amps. See, the guy’s a mad scientist. He’s spent decades working on, and building, amps, and he knows how to extract every drop of tonal goodness out of our circuits. So while the PCBs, components and schematics might tell one story, one listen with your own ears may tell you something entirely different.

Admiring glances

The final point is a bit superficial, but it’s definitely ‘a thing’. While there was a time when watching a show meant backlines containing lots of black boxes on top of black speaker cabinets, now there’s a definite shift. Festival backlines, in particular, have become awash with Orange amplification, which tells you how respected our gear is.

But choosing to use an Orange amp doesn’t just give you access to amazing, unique sounds. It also marks you out as someone who knows their gear. As someone who obviously knows what good tone is. And as someone who is proud of the fact that their amp isn’t a boring black box.

I guess the point is that you can research your next amp as much as you want. We get why you’d do it; new amps aren’t cheap, and they have to offer you the sounds that you need for your particular circumstances. What we’re saying is that before you buy anything, go and play through an Orange first. You never know, you might like it.

They say it’s always the quiet ones you should worry about. “There is no more fearsome sight than when a quiet man goes to war” goes the saying. And sure, there is something undeniably scary as watching someone who you were sure wouldn’t say “boo” to a goose actually flipping their lid. But we have a rather different proposal to put forward. Never mess with the loud ones. Particularly the ones with enormous citric stacks of unholy noise in their arsenal. Here’s the reasons why.

People who use Orange amps aren’t bothered about what you think. It’s not, for us, a cool gimmick or a fad. We choose to use Orange amplifiers for the purest reasons possible. Because they sound biblically immense.

Fads…don’t do it guys.

We’ve seen fads come and go. Hell, we’ve created our own fads and watched as others followed. But when they trudge off to the next big evolution in amp technology, Orange people stick to what they know and what they trust.

Trust is a big thing with musical gear. There are those who buy, sell, swap and trade gear to the point of it becoming a hobby in itself. But Orange gear is for the lifers. The players who have that inimitable sound in their heads and won’t stop until they’ve made it their own. People trust Orange to give them a sound quite unlike anything else on the market. Those grizzled mid-range tones, and barking gains. It’s the sound of the player who knows their mind, the player who is completely un-messable-with.

You may also have noticed on our social media channels. Our personality on there reflects the values we preach as a company. We’re a straight up, honest bunch of people. We know what we’re talking about. We stick together. We know each of us has made that life choice to opt for one of the more unique musical equipment brands out there. Mainstream ‘stack them high and sell them cheap’ amps just don’t do it for us. We need something more. Something that attracts those nods of appreciation from others in the know. “Oh, you’re an Orange guy?” Never said without a healthy dose of mutual respect.

We recognise when others do well. The beauty of being a musician is the sheer amount of choice available to us. We know other amplifier brands that make some straight up, 100% incredible gear. We respect them, and we respect your prerogative to play whatever you want. But we also know that what we offer is more than just an amplifier. You want more than the tone you get when you plug in. You want to feel part of something, like you’re the only one capable of extracting your chosen tone from an amp. With an Orange, you get that.

Don’t be this guy!

This may be coming across as a love letter. A well-intentioned paean to what is essentially a multi-national corporation.  And you may be right. Orange exists, like any other private profit-making business, to make money. Maybe we’re not exclusively chasing paper but we’ve all got bills to pay, right? Besides, there are other examples of brands – we won’t go too much into it here – who use cheaper components or blast huge amounts of their budgets on marketing, but Orange doesn’t do that for the simple reason it doesn’t need to. Sure, the business needs to post a profit – we’re not a charity, after all – but the way we choose to go about that is by thinking about our people and the gear they’d want to use. Then, we design it, make it and put it into your hands. Pretty simple really. There’s no over-arching strategy to penetrate specific geographic markets or appeal to under-targeted demographics. We just make great gear and it’s always been a sound enough proposition for us.

I mean, just look at it!

There’s a definite cache to Orange. We know that. We hesitate to the use the word cool because it’s entirely subjective, but there’s definitely something different about us. Maybe it’s the typeface we use on our frontplates. There’s a definite medieval vibe going on there, like the font was lifted straight from the sign above King Arthur’s preferred mead hall. Whatever, it stands out and adds to the image we’ve carefully cultivated for decades now. But an image is paper-thin unless it has the credentials, heritage and reputation to back it up. I think after 40-odd years we’re comfortable enough in our own skin to say we do that.

The point we’re trying to make is that whatever reasons you have for using our gear, whatever caused you to choose us, you’re part of a unique sub-sect of guitar and bass players who won’t settle for conformist, vanilla mediocrity. We’re happy to have you.

When you’ve been around as long as Orange has, you learn a trick or two. You see fads come and go. You watched the tides of tomorrow as they ebb and flow, and you take a certain pride in have stayed the distance.

But with age and experience comes responsibility. And like a wizened old sage, it’s only fair that we get to share some of life’s lessons with you.

If you’re gonna stand out, you better be good!

Go bold or go home

In a musical world awash with different amplifiers, we know how important it is to stand out. Statistics show how approximately 87% of all other amplifiers are black rectangles, so Cliff Cooper decided to make his amps a bit different visually. And tonally. But let’s focus on visually, for now.

See, Cliff could have made the amps red, or blue, or white, or any other standard, typical colour really. But he plumped for the colour Orange. Not orange-y red or ‘burnt sun’. Nope. Full-on, proper lurid Orange. And it totally worked, like it still does now. Thus, a legend was born.

And, like with footballers (soccer players) who wear fluorescent boots (cleats), it was imperative to the fledgling brand’s credibility to back up their bold looks with an even bolder sound, or risk looking a bit daft. Safe to say, the famous Orange sound did that, and then some. So don’t worry about not fitting in. It’s far more dangerous in the long run, and boring, to fit in.

The drawing board is your friend

Another very important lesson is to respect the forces of magic. By magic, we mean genius. And by genius, we mean anything that lets your talent shine through. You can’t expect greatness to be available on tap. Magic comes when magic’s ready, folks.

Orange’s amps don’t just rush from conception to production. Time, effort, expertise and passion means every amp Orange produces goes through countless different iterations before they deem it ready. So respect the fact that in life, you’re gonna have to work at making things perfect.

Never go back – unless it is worth going back for

Conventional wisdom tells you that if something reaches the end of its natural lifecycle, then it’s time to say goodbye. And, for most things, that usually means the end. Onwards to pastures new, right? Well, not always.

10 years ago, Orange launched the Rocker 30 amplifier. Available in a combo or as a head, the R30 captured the imagination of a whole new generation of players, who could finally experience that full Orange valve sound at a price and size that made it more accessible.

As new models and ranges came (and went…more on that in a minute) the Rocker was eventually shelved. But that classic little amp became something of a cult favourite on forums and practice rooms everywhere and, after a while, Orange deemed it necessary to bring back the old boy in the shape of the new Rocker 15 and Rocker 32 amps.

Of course, in the spirit of innovation, it’s had a few tweaks to bring it up to date, but that famous, chewy gain and versatile clean tone have stood the test of time and are now set to enjoy a new lease of life.

Know when to stop

On the other hand, however, it’s just as important to know when to stop. Everybody in the guitar world knew, and loved, the Terror series of amps. It’s not often you can say something genuinely changed the landscape, but these tiny, lunchbox amps really did usher in a new type of amplifier.

But sometimes, if you love something, you have to let it go. And so, after a decade at the top, the Tiny Terror has been put out to pasture. Good job Orange replaced it with something worthy in the reborn Rocker series…

Choose your friends

You can tell a lot about an amplifier brand by the artists they choose as their signature players. Orange has long shied away from signing up large numbers of players to front the brand, instead taking the decision to let it stand up for itself. No amount of celebrity endorsement will give a bad product credibility, so when Orange did eventually sign up Jim Root, it sent a real statement.

Yes, ok, Jim was playing in one of the biggest metal bands of all time so it’s not like they had some random chap from a Ukrainian techno-folk outfit working with them, but it was quite a radical departure from what you’d arguably say was a typical Orange user.

In the end, it proved a masterstroke. A signature Jim Root Terror amp took the already filthy Dark Terror and gave it a frankly obscene gain boost, ticking the boxes of so many rock and metal players and putting that famous Orange sound in the hands and fingers of an entirely new audience.

Play to your strengths

The guitar world has often been slow to take up new technology. Look at the fact guitarists still favour the humble vacuum tube above anything when it comes to amplification. And while some amp brands look to innovate and stick all manner of tech into their gear, Orange has always steadfastly remained true to what it is; a British amplification manufacturer of distinction.

Orange knows it can’t win in a race to fit the craziest, most outlandish technology into its gear. And, honestly, it’s fine with that. It knows the limitations of what it has to work with, and uses all its experience and know-how to eke out every last drop of harmonic goodness from those tubes. So instead of worrying about what you can’t do, make the most of everything you can do. You might be surprised how far it can take you.

Know your value

The final entry in this list concerns value. As you know, the value of anything can be attributed to what a particular person is willing to pay for it. To mis(quote) a famous old advert, sometimes something is ‘reassuringly’ expensive. You know if it costs more than something which appears (on paper, at least) to have the same features, then there must be a reason for that.

Orange has an amazing range of amps, designed specifically for players starting out on their journey. The Crush range gives learner guitarists chance to access that classic Orange vibe at a cost which won’t eat into their food & rent budget.

At the other end of the scale, however, are some fantastically well built, glorious sounding amps from Orange which may well start causing your wallet to wince. But ask anyone who has one of these amps if they think it was worth the investment – because that’s what it is – and we can almost guarantee the answer will be positive. A top-end Orange amp is a proper, bona fide piece of kit from a company that puts its heart and soul into making the best examples of guitar amplification in the business. And you can’t put a price on that.