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Back when the gods of rock were bending our minds with new styles and sounds, it was clear that besides their immense talent, analogue amplifier technology played an imperative role. Even though amp design back then was still in its infancy, that classic analogue tone is still highly sought after. So much so that many manufacturers are attempting to recreate those sounds through digital modelling amps.

Arise the first digital amp

You may or may not know this but Orange Amplifiers were at the forefront digital amp design way back in the ’70s. The original OMEC amp was a digitally programmable 150-watt solid-state amp that could store preset sounds. It was so far ahead of the game that it was produced before the development of the CMOS chip!

These days digital amps has come a long way, making it possible to replicate almost any amplifier by modelling analogue circuitry. Yet still, there is still huge demand for true analogue amps, and that’s not to do with black magic, witchcraft or Don Draper-Esq marketing genius. It goes much deeper than that.

The basics of digital vs analogue amplifier design

Analogue amplifiers come in two main forms, tube and solid-state, although sometime they are configured as a hybrid, with a tube pre-amp and a solid-state power stage.

All-tube amplifiers such as our classic AD series use pre-amp tubes to sculpt the tone, and then power amp tubes to smash pure analogue gooeyness out of your speakers.

Solid-state amplifiers like the Orange 4 Stroke bass head or the Crush Pro Series use all analogue components (transistors, resistors and capacitors) in both the pre-amp and power amp circuit. That means you get the warmth people associate with analogue circuitry but reduce the overall size and weight of the amplifier by switching out the tubes for a solid-state power amp circuit.

In contrast, digital amps use digital algorithms to produce the tone at the pre-amp stage and most commonly, solid-state circuitry for the power stage. Some manufacturers offer a tube power stage, but this goes against the core benefit of a digital amp: flexibility.

Orange AD30 “Flagship” Guitar Amp

Flexibility

These days we’re expected to be everything to everyone. It’s part of the immediacy culture. Rather than learning to understand the nuances of tone, we’re now able to flip a switch and change between two completely different sounding amplifiers. One minute you’re playing country blues and the next moment, black metal. Sounds pretty fun? But nothing is clear-cut.

The cost of flexibility is impact.

We’re talking about pure unadulterated grunt that you get from an analogue amp. It’s not just that you can hear it; you can feel an all-analogue amp pushing through your very soul; whole-bodied and direct, accurately representing the true nature of your instrument across the whole frequency spectrum. When you’re hammering it out on an all-valve or solid-state amp on stage it moves you, undulating like sea waves.

Warmth

Unlike an algorithm that digitally recreates a signal, when you drive valves, they compress and produce warmth that has an almost erogenous aspect to it. Solid-state amps are cleverly designed to meet the needs of the most discerning player, creating complex and harmonically rich tones. When people speak of the warmth of analogue, they’re talking about how the sound unfolds and wraps around the music.

Live or in the studio, that full body of sound of analogue gels together the other instruments into a unified whole, sitting just right in the mix. Yet, solo instruments can still be attenuated without feeling harsh or out of place.

In all circumstances, one of the key aspects to a great sounding analogue amp is just that, you need to do very little to get just what you want from it.

Simplicity

Time is money, in the studio, it’s all about the flow and onstage even more so.

Orange Amplifiers are synonymous with simple setup, be that getting a gnarly guitar tone or Venice Beach muscle man bass.

With an analogue amp there’s no shrillness you’d expect from digital, instead they accent the natural harmonics of the top end, thickening the midrange and levelling the boom of the bottom. The devil is in the detailed response to the natural ebb and flow of your instrument.

On the flipside, modelling amps could be seen the epitome of simplicity. Jogging through banks of classic amplifier setups certainly feels like you can conquer anything you can throw at it. But still, recording studios aren’t discarding their banks of ‘go to’ analogue amplifiers in a hurry, especially when it comes to pummeling the overdrive settings or looking for a sweet clean tone.

Aggression

While valve and solid-state amps have an artful beauty to their clean tone, it’s when you get down and dirty that digital begins to lose its way. That is unless you’re looking for that specific sound you get from modelling amps; incisor sharp, transparent as Perspex.

Digital amps try to get close to modeling pre-amp circuitry but there’s nothing quite like the throaty roar of analogue. It all comes down to the imperfection of the technology that provides depth that is seemingly impossible to replicate honestly.

At a lower gain stage, the waveform becomes asymmetric, rich in even harmonics. But when you push the amp even further the bottom of the wave flattens, producing a symmetric wave with odd harmonics. It’s those odd harmonics that release the beast from within.

4 Stroke Bass Amplifier

Weight

OK, so all-valve amps aren’t all that portable. Designed for functionality above anything else and are unmatched in pure brute strength and killer tone. Their modern digital counterparts sit on the other side of the fence; form is their strength, portability a supreme asset. At a cost, many professional musicians would agree, that is outweighed by their novelty.

Somewhere in-between sits the solid-state amp, the choice for many touring musicians where portability is a big benefit but without compromising too much on the essence of your sound. Ultimately ringing out true to the nature of your composition.

Authenticity

Fundamentally, above anything else, Orange has been at the forefront of producing innovative amplification since the late sixties, creating what is now recognized as the British sound.

First heralded by legends such Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Wonder, and blown into the stratosphere by Led Zeppelin.

Re-emerging, again and again, Orange Amplifiers has always been there to define the sound of artists such as Oasis in the ’90s and again taking the world by storm along with the Arctic Monkeys in the decades to follow. Orange Amplifiers, seemingly the Swiss army knife of the music industry.

Let’s dive right in and talk about your history with Orange – do your remember your first ever encounter with the brand, whether it was playing it yourself or seeing someone else play one?

Danko: Yeah I totally remember, and the reason is why I play Orange. We went on tour with The Supersuckers, and the only way we could do that was if we could use their gear, and I used Ron’s Orange head, and I remember thinking “Holy fuck, this is just the best head I’ve ever played!”. That’s how I started with Orange, before that I’d seen other use it and I’d always liked it, but I was playing a variety of amps so it wasn’t until playing through Ron’s that Orange was really put on the map for me. When I then got the opportunity to work with Orange myself that just made sense.

You guys are known for touring relentle-
Danko: I mean – yes, yes we do, or at least have done that, and I guess we’ve been on the road a fair bit this year as well even though for me it feels like an off year. We opened up for Skindred in the UK at the start of the year, came back for festivals, made an album, and now we’re here again. The off years are always the year we make the albums, although looking back at it now it doesn’t really take us much off the road at all.

When constantly on the road, how does a day in the life of Danko Jones normally look like?
Danko:
You know, not that exciting to be honest. On a day like today, I pretty much just hang around near the venue. I need sleep for my voice, so that’s about it, lots of down time. The best thing is to not think about it too much, and especially when it comes to playing the show; the moment I start thinking about things, I fuck it up on stage. There’s also this banter between the band and the audience that you just can’t plan, I’ve seen bands do that, script their set – and whenever someone shouts something at them from the crowd, they have no reply and there’s just no way of bouncing back form it. Have the songs rehearsed and that’s it, whatever happens happens. The best thing to do most days is to just go at it with a blank head and brain. So many bands these days have backing tracks and vocals and everything just seems so pre-programmed that there’s little room for spontaneity, and I think the audience picks up on that. I don’t mind if the show goes off the track, cause at least it shows the audience that they’re getting whatever we can serve them on the night, and there is something to be said for that. We go out there pretty low key, play the songs, and see where they take us.

You mentioned off years are album years, do you still write when you’re on the road or do you save that for when you’re back at home?
Danko: No, we allow enough time at home to do the writing then. We spent some time this time last year as well as before and after summer digging deep into writing, and with those sort of writing sessions we were able to figure out what we wanted, and pick 11 or 12 favourites to go on the album. Ever since Rich Knox (drums) joined the band, I haven’t felt nervous before any of the releases, more than anything I’ve been excited and impatient for people to hear what we have been working on, which means I’m confident about the songs. This album we’re due to release is another one of those. I’ll admit there’s been some albums previously where I’ve been slightly nervous whether people would like it or not, and whenever I’ve had those sorts of doubts, those are always the albums that have had mixed reviews. I’ve always liked it, but it might not appeal to everyone else. The last two albums we put out, Fire Music (2015) and Wild Cat (2017) I wasn’t even nervous, and the reviews were really good, and our new album is just as good as both of them, if not better.

To dive back into Orange for this last question, what’s your setup for tonight?
Danko: I’ve got a Rockerverb 50 head, and you know what, I’m not a gear head, I’m a creature of habit – whatever I find and like, that’s what I stick with. I can’t give you any specks of what it is I like about the head, it just have to sound like this (makes riff noise), which is a sound I’ve been making since I was seven. If it sounds like that, great. I don’t go searching for new products, and usually if I switch to something else or try something new, that will have to be presented and put in front of me. To me, amps aren’t precious possessions or collectables, they are the tools of my trade, the tools I need to do my job, and I gotta be honest, Orange is the best tools I’ve ever used.

Jonathan Higgs (Vocals and Guitar):

Hi, I’m Jonathan Higgs and i’m the singer and the guitar player in Everything Everything. My current setup is the Rocker 32 combo, it’s a pretty versatile amp. You can use it in the studio and we have done, but it really comes alive on the road, it’s very resilient and it sounds great on stage.

The best thing about the amp if the simplicity, its just basically a big volume knob, it’s just simple; you turn it up and there you are. You can sometimes get bogged down in all sort of settings with amps but this is nice and simple.

Alex Robertshaw (Guitar)

Hi, i’m Alex and I play guitar in the band Everything Everything. So at the moment i’m using the Orange Rockerverb MKIII, I decided to go for the Rockerverb MKIII because it has a very high Wattage and I wanted an amp that was really clean. It’s got loads of headroom, I want an amp with loads of headroom, so I can keep bumping it up and I am not hitting any compressed ceiling.

Jeremy Pritchard (Bass)

So i’m running the AD200 head and the 8×10 cab and the pedal board goes straight into that and it just covers everything you need in terms of frequency response on stage. I’ve always favoured any amplifier with just very high quality but simple components. I’ve always liked the heritage of the brand as well.

The actual look of the cabinet design and the head design is so distinctive, so you always knew if you were watching someone playing Orange. I used to go see bands like SUNN O))) and Sleep, really heavy stoner doom bands and they would always have these very distinctive cabinets and heads on stage. And a lot of those bands that i was really into and still am used Orange.

Plus our mates Foals, who have such a ferious live sound, Walter was always using the 8X10’s and Jimmy’s entire guitar rig is Orange. Even when I was a teenager and seeing Noel Gallagher with that classic Orange look was really memorable.

Glenn Hughes – bassist extraordinaire and singer from a different dimension, a musician who played a vital part in British heavy rock and introduced Deep Purple to funk, briefly fronted Black Sabbath in the 80s, released an album with Pat Thrall, and played with musicians such as Joe Bonamassa, Joey Castillo and Jason Bonham, to mention a few. Most recent, is his “Glenn Hughes plays Deep Purple” adventure, where he’s re-living what he did with MK III and MK IV over two extensive world tours. 

First of all, let me just say I think it is so wonderful that you’re doing this tour, not just for myself, but for a lot of people who maybe got to know Deep Purple through their parents, and also just for long time Purple fans from way back when – it’s a tremendous pleasure and even privilege to be able to hear these songs being brought back to life decades after being written – how has it been playing these shows, and bringing this music to a new generation?

Glenn: In 2017, I was asked by promoters around the world if I would be interested in doing these legacy shows with what I did with MK III and MK IV. If you know me, you know I have played some songs in my shows previously, as well as other songs from my past bands such as Trapeze. I’ve never done a complete two hour show of this music, which meant I had to go back and dig deep to figure out which songs, arrangements, how I’d play them and if I’d be able to do so with the same angst and energy as I did when I was 23.

When this tour became a reality, I had to get in shape, which I did, and you know, Ella, and you can tell me later after the show, I would not do this, if I could not deliver. This isn’t about some guy walking on, grabbing a guitar and just standing still, this is a man who’s gone into character. When I’m up there, I don’t want to be 23, but I feel effervescent, I feel young, and when I sing those songs, you can’t really tell the difference. I’ve grown my hair, and I’ve got the outfits. Not the original ones, as a lot of them were lost along the way, and some even displayed in the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame. Luckily, I’m friends with some incredible designers, and fashion is something I’ve also always had a keen interest in, which I got from my father. But of course, it’s music that is the centre of my universe, what I live for.

In recent years you’ve also been pretty busy releasing new music, latest being last year’s Black Country Communion’s fourth album BCCIV, have you got anything else lined up either by yourself or with others?
Glenn: The plan for now is to do this for two years, go around the world twice. I’ll be back again here in the  UK next May for more of this, and I’m doing three American tours, one of which I just completed two weeks ago. When the time’s right, I’ll figure out what’s next, but something will come up for me because I’ve sat around for too long – I mean, I have a great home in L.A and a great lifestyle, but I was becoming restless, and people who know me, knows that I am very much a live singer, I’m not someone who can settle for spending all their time in the studio, I need to be performing, live on stage.

Now, let’s get slightly more technical and talk amps, Orange Amps. Obviously, when you’re at this place in your career where you are now, you can pick and choose among all amplification manufacturers around the world, how did you end up using Orange?
Glenn: Let’s just say, before I started using Orange five years ago, I was with other companies. Big ones. As I was walking through NAMM in L.A I was approached by Orange who asked if I wanted to come try out some of their amps, which I had always wanted to do, genuinely. When I got to the stall, there was a P bass in front of me, and and Orange amp with four knobs. “That’s easy for me”, I thought. When I started playing, I was getting this sound that was very, very similar to what I had with Purple in the 70s, and it was something that I wanted to be a part of. That day, I forgot about everything else that wasn’t Orange. I want you to hear the sound I’ve got tonight, it’s such a dynamic sound, a dynamic, and really wild sound, that says Orange, and it says Glenn Hughes. Cliff Cooper, he believes in me as an artist, and he believes that I love his company, which I do.

I can’t speak for Cliff, but I feel like I can safely say on behalf of the company, it is very exciting to have you as one of our artists, someone that has played such a big part in British music history and heavy rock, and I dare say even bringing funk to British hard rock.
Glenn: The funk for me, will come from my love of Motown which I’ve had since I was a youngster. Growing up living in America, and knowing a lot of great black musicians. Then all of a sudden, I find myself being in Deep Purple, as a rock star, and icon, but also remembering that my background is from Detroit. Not only did I change when I joined the band, but the band changed. I came in, and they felt the movement of what I was playing and writing. I didn’t hold them and gunpoint, they went with me, and those pieces of work we did together, are very important to me.

Just before I let you go, back to the technicalities – what’s the set up for this Deep Purple tour?
Glenn: I’ve got a few set ups, maybe two or three, but the ones I’m using right now is two 8×10’s and the AD200. That’s primarily what I use, this is perfect for what I’m doing now, and the 8×10’s been working really well for me.

Yo, its Tyler from Tyler Bryant and the Shakedown and I play Orange Amps.

So I heard the music of Elvis Presley when i was in first grade and that was that pivotal moment where I became obsessed with music. When I was eleven I went into a guitar shop and I heard this guy called Roosevelt Twitty playing and he asked me if I liked the blues and I said “what’s the blues?”. He said; “it’s what I’m playing” and I said; “well then I love the blues!” I ran into him again and again, long story short, I put a dirtbike that I had on layaway and got an electric guitar and it’s been downhill ever since!

Blues lead me to guys like Johnny Winter and Jimi Hendrix, which lead me to the Black Crowes and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. So the blues led me to Rock n Roll which inspired me to get out of high school when I was seventeen and move to Nashville. There I started focusing on songwriting and forming a band, and I ended up with a band called the Shakedown. That’s kind of how it all played out.

I was actually riding around Nashville, with Graham Whitford who is also in the Shakedown and he said i’m going to stop into the Orange amps office and try some amps. So I said I will go with you and plugged into a Rockerverb. I wanted something I could get a lot of sustain out of and I tried the Rockerverb and got one, I loved it so much. I just use one channel on the Rockerverb, the clean channel and I drive it hard and I use the attenuator to set the volume and its as simple as that. I just love how much sustain I can get out of that amp. I just happened to rolling around with Graham in Nashville and played one and here we are.

So I always want an amp that has a good clean channel but also sounds big, if I don’t have a pedal on. But I don’t want an amp that is so distorted that I can’t have some control at my pedal board. So it’s this fine balance of an amp that’s big and full and that’s almost on the edge of being crunchy but still clean and precise. I like to hear, it’s hard to explain, I want the amp to sound glassy, like I want to hear the tubes and feel that play between the guitar and the amp.

 

 

Hey this is Graham Whitford with Tyler Bryant and the Shakedown.

I just kind of naturally started picking up the guitar, I don’t know what exactly it was but I just started looking at them and I kind of went that thing looks kind of cool, maybe I should play that. I started picking it up and just naturally started practicing all the time. Any time there is a guitar in the room or a drum set for that matter, I still have the horrible “Oh god, I need to play that right now!” It’s like I’m an addict or something!

Well Orange I actually started playing pretty recently, within the last year. I plugged into the Dual Dark 50 and I was blown away by how good it sounded. It had this really beautiful mid range, punchy, fat sound to it.

I just love the sound of tube saturation and a little bit of gain but not too much gain, just enough. I’ve always been fascinated by that bell tone that you get, Orange does that great. They are workhorses, they are really sturdy, we haven’t had any problems with them breaking down, that happens on the road when you are moving around so much.

I would say tone, first and foremost but also reliability, cuz they are really reliable, they are built like tanks. They sound really good, i’ve always heard about Orange over the years but never got a chance to really check one out and especially check one out in a live setting. They just sound really good and they look cool!

I’m Noah Denney bass player and singer of all the high parts in Tyler Bryant and the Shakedown.

It was about a year ago we did Ramblin’ Man Fair, for that particular festival they had Orange amps available, I had a pair of Orange AD200 and a pair of 8×10’s. I had actually never played them before and I said I would love to try those out. I loved them! It was awesome, I plugged them in and turned them on, I didn’t have to fiddle with any of the EQ it just sounded good right off the bat. It was kind of like  “Man this is like how easy I wish every bass amp would be”, I just plugged it in and sounded great, I didn’t have to do anything.

I’d say probably a tie between reliability and tone are what’s most important to me. In order to stay up there with the two guitar players in the band,  I’ve got to ride the amps pretty hard. I need something that can take a beating, I’ve pretty much destroyed lots and lots of amplifiers over the past six or seven years. I have never had a single problem with the Orange, another reason I love it they are built like tanks. They can take everything I throw at it and like I said that tone, it’s there I didn’t even have to look for it, I turned it on and it sounded great.

Its really cool to have the support of Orange amps, with everybody that’s made their name playing with those right behind them. I never really expected it to be something that happened to me, its an honour to have such a renowned brand be into what we are doing and supporting us. We are very grateful of that.

 

Guitar goddess, Orianthi has become Orange Amplification’s latest Ambassador. The multi-talented guitarist, singer and songwriter has performed with King of Pop Michael Jackson, toured with rock godfather Alice Cooper, played lead guitar for Carrie Underwood, exchanged solos with legend Carlos Santana as well as having a successful solo career.

More recently, Orianthi has joined forces with Grammy Award winner and Songwriting Hall of Fame inductee Richie Sambora to form the band RSO. This month they have released their first album Radio Free America. It is the perfect platform to showcase their considerable skills as songwriters, vocalists and guitarists, setting the bar high for all future male-female guitar and vocal collaborations.

Orianthi is the rock star with everything, guitar skills superb vocals, rock star looks and now an Orange Ambassador! She loves the Orange Rockerverb Mark 3 with its 4 x 12 cab and says

The first time I plugged into The Rockerverb Mark 3 I felt a instant connection ..the tone I had been looking for , very responsive and powerful at a low volume and when cranked up it never loses clarity…this amp is the lion of amps in the rock jungle, check it out’.

The versatile, dependable and uniquely voiced Rockerverb Mark 3 is the perfect complement for Orianthi’s distinctive style and electrifying playing with its clean sound and a meld of classic and modern tones from Brit-rock to R&B. To find out more about the Rockerverb and all of the amps in the Orange range please go to https://orangeamps.com/products/

 

 

Hey guys, what’s up I’m Scott Middleton and I play in Cancer Bats. So we just dropped an album called The Spark That Moves. It’s our 6th studio album. We kinda did a surprise thing – right now we’re celebrating our 10 year anniversary of our 2nd album Hail Destroyer which has been really cool and everyone’s been really excited. While the focus has been on that, we’ve been secretly making a new record and we just dropped that the day of our first show for the 10th anniversary as just kinda like, to give back to all our fans that have supported us through the years. It’s like, “hey it’s for you guys” it’s not about hype, we worked really hard on these songs and we hope everyone really enjoys this just as much as our past stuff – the reception has been amazing and all the reviews that have been coming in have been way better than what we could have hoped for.

It’s exciting to celebrate the old Cancer Bats and user in the new era of the band. I think our band, when we first stared out was was a bit, um, a bit more simplistic in terms of arrangements and idea’s I think. Things were a little bit faster, a little bit knarlier – we were pushing different styles for the bands and trying to be creative. It’s like how do you make a heavy interesting for 2018? Because so much of it has been done before. Yeah, we’ll always have classic elements of rock, punk and metal in our band but we’re always going to try and thing forward and see where we can push boundaries forward too.

The Bag Bangeetar is a pedal that I got a couple months before we actually went into to record and I mean, that pedal blew me away the second I tried it. I threw it in front of my little crapp practise amp that I’ve had since I was 15 – this terrible thing, but it’s something that I’ve used to write riffs on when I was home. I just plugged it in and it just sounded like a monster stack – it was crazy. Just the flexibility of the EQ – the Baxandall EQ… it just has a crazy amount of range and it’s all about sounding good. Because there’s a parametric mid-range band, i’m able to take out of any nasty frequencies that a certain guitar pickup might push through too much and I can take that out or I can add stuff that’s missing. The other thing that I notice is that the pots on it are the highest quality – it’s all de-tended to it’s easily recallable so if there’s a setting you just take a photo or write it down and it’s easy to go back and find that place again. As I experimented and wrote a bunch of song idea’s with the pedal, I had to bring it with me to write the new album. The Orange sound is becoming an important part of Cancer Bats in the new direction that we’ve been going in. I bought that pedal with me and I was able to just plug it into the effects return of a loud amp and there it was. There was the sound. When we track the guitars, we do yto9u know passive left and right, and we stereo pan them and entirely one side is the Bax Bangeetar and into an amp  that is cranked up and it sounded amazing. It was like ‘holy shit, this is just what we’ve been looking for’!

The other thing that I’ve been doing lately – I don’t know if everyone knows about it – but I’ve been producing a lot of records at my studio at home. What I found was super great with that pedal is that I can use it as a way to have guitarists track live in a room with a drummer. So when we’re tracking drums, I don’t have to have an amp that’s cranked up that bleeding into the drum microphones. It was a Cab Sim out which sounds awesome and gives the guitarists the a comfortable and accurate tone that’s inspiring. One of the drawbacks to headphones is how do you give the guitarist enough gain and tone so when he’s playing alongside a drummer, he’s giving it his all, and that in turn inspires the drummer to hit even harder. That’s been an indispensable studio tool. I had a band come in with the OR120 and you know, it was crazy how close I was able to dial in the Bax Bangeetar pedal to sound like a real Orange Amp – that’s the real difference with so many other distortion pedals out there… we’ve all used them and tried them! This pedal, really feels and sounds like a real amp.

As a pre-amp pedal, it’s inspiring to play, so when I’m trying to convince other guitar players to try something they’re like “you want me to plug into a pedal? Shouldn’t I be using a guitar amp or something?” and they’re like “oh, no, that’s good!”.

For me it’s been a revolutionary tool for studio work. I can plug in and go direct, that’s one thing, but I can plug into any amplifier and get that Orange sound that I’m looking for which is really cool.

If you think about the Bax Bangeetar in terms of a traditional pre-amp… what I would normally do is, run any other pedal I’m using before it. So I’d put my wahs, compression, any boost or fuzz – I’d run that into the Bax Bangeetar and I’d run any modulation or delay effects, post that pedal so it all kinda ties and again, because it has such an amp-like feel, I don’t need to think too much. It just compliments it really well. That pedal itself is a game machine. It’s not meant for clean tones really, you’re either putting it into a lcean amp or the effects return and turning it into a monster sound – and that’s what I love about it and what I’m always looking for. There’s so many amps out there with a million differnt knobs and six different channels and everyones trying to add extra features and such, but this is just everything you need, it is the high-gain channel that you want. That’s the difference for me. The simplicity with the pots, being easy to recall in a live setting, it’s flexible in it’s EQ – it can work with so many different amps, guitars and pedals… that’s why it’s kind of become the secret weapon for me.


To learn about the Bax Bangeetar click here

 

Orange Ambassador Ken Rose of the band Hero Jr is currently touring with John 5. Check this page for daily content from Ken featuring the Crush Mini combo, Getaway Driver Overdrive pedal, and Fur Coat Octave Fuzz pedal

Content brought to you in partnership with zZounds


April 10th, 2018 – San Jose, California, USA

Let it be known that Ken Rose of Hero Jr is literally one of the best undiscovered guitarists out there. This solo from “Oceans Dead” proves it.


April 8th, 2018 – Fullerton, California, USA

Wanna take the Crush Mini into full-blown nastiness? Put a Getaway Driver overdrive pedal in front of it!


April 3rd, 2018 – Tucson, Arizona, USA

Here’s everyone’s response when they first see Ken solo: “Why haven’t I heard of this guy before?” The Fur Coat Octave Fuzz pedal is a great way to boost into a lead.


April 2nd, 2018 – El Paso, Texas, USA

The Crush Mini is an awesome practice amp for hotel jams. But plug into the speaker out on the back and you can easily power a 212, or even 412, speaker cab.


April 1st, 2018 – Albuquerque, NM, USA

In case you didn’t know, Ken Rose is a ridiculously good guitarist. That is all.


March 31st, 2018 – Dallas, Texas, USA

Today we have a full song from Hero Jr. playing “Jump Ship” in Dallas. You can hear a ton of “flare” coming out of Ken’s OR50, even from the opposite side of the stage.


March 30th, 2018 – Houston, Texas, USA

Thankfully Ken wasn’t in the shower for this video. Here he is warming up with his Getaway Driver through a Crush Mini.


March 29th, 2018 – Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Today Ken decided to practice his amp on the toilet. Hopefully he doesn’t “stink it up” (sorry).