Truls Hi my name is Truls Mörck and i’m the bass player of Graveyard.
It’s really hard to pinpoint when it is but when i try something out in the store and it may sound good, but when I take it to the rehearsal space and really like rehearse with it, with the guys in the band. That kind of glue that I can find in the AD200, that makes the whole sound, and gives it that bottom end. It’s not just about how the amp sounds, in itself but its like how it glues together the guitars and the drums and how it mediates, between those two worlds of melody and rhythm.
Without the bass, the drums can’t really speak with the guitarist that well. So i’m like the translator between the two languages, it makes them communicate, makes them sound better hopefully.
I play other instruments as well, I feel like when I grew up I discovered the Grateful Dead very early, the band as a whole and how they seem to have worked together as a collective force, a very democratic and wild freeform group. I guess they call themselves, “good time pirates”, seemed appealing to me and inspired me to make music and write music.
I’m using a pretty classic setup of a Rickenbacker bass, the 4001, then an Orange AD200 and OBC810 cabinet. Then I have an additional bass, 1963 hollow body Epiphone and a Fender Jazz Bass as well, to compliment but it all revolves around the Rickenbacker.
I used to play guitar in this band way back, at that point the bass player Rikard used this AD200 and he used that a lot in the band and it became an important piece of the bands sound. So when I came back into this band as a bass player, we tried out some other stuff but the AD200 always seemed to work best for me.
I must say the former bass player, Rikard,he is like the guy who inspired me most, when we played back in the day together, I was always amazed by his style and good kind of simplicity. Also Phil Lesh from the Grateful Dead is a cool guy, based in improvising, not really a steady form of bass playing but a free form style, which i also enjoy.
So have a new album coming out May 25, its the first album in three years, its been a long time coming but it feels really good. The album in general is a little heavier, harder than the last album, its very dynamic I would say. Like most of our records it has slow parts, like i’ve said before, the heavier parts are a little bit heavier and the slower parts are a little slower, and the mellower parts are mellower. Its a little bit more extreme in that way, in the dynamics. That is how I would describe it, then you just have to listen for yourself and see!
Guitar goddess, Orianthihas 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 OrangeRockerverb 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/
“Teleportation is the theoretical transfer of matter or energy from one point to another without traversing the physical space between them. It is a common subject in science fiction literature, film, video games, and television.”
Hi everyone, and welcome to the OMEC Teleport files,
My name is Danny Gomez and I designed and developed the OMEC Teleport with the Orange Amplification team. Let me tell you a little about myself and the circumstances that “teleported” me to here and now.
First of all, I´m a musician, I´ve been playing the guitar for 25+ years and working professionally the last 20; playing, touring, recording, demoing and producing. In 2014 I became partially deaf (left ear 1Kz -30dB), I couldn’t hear my wife Martha or my son Neio properly. Imagine trying to play with less harmonic content, there are notes that simply weren’t there.
That said, I recovered in a couple of weeks, but they were horrible days and due to the severe treatment and the fact that I hate needles (even being highly tattooed as I am), I hate them and I will faint during blood tests. So, imagine a week of being connected to a machine, trying to recover your hearing… You need to think about anything else, to keep your mind occupied.
The first day was horrible so, on the second day, I decided to win this battle, by both thinking about a way of not fainting during the session and improving my portable playing experience, just in case I couldn’t recover enough to keep playing professionally.
I dictated to Martha, my wife, the full block diagram and schematics of a new product, called the M1N1 (M.artha 1 N.eio 1). My plan being, to create a mini pedal with a retro-futuristic name, M1N1, sounded good enough. I got the file and sent it to one of our regular engineers to prototype.
A portable interface with a buffer and the right impedance to keep the playing experience. There was simply nothing like that around. There were big audio interfaces that sounded good (not very guitar-friendly or too complicated) and small portable toy-like interfaces (not sturdy enough for professional usage).
I needed the best of both worlds; tiny, simple, powerful and really musical (pedal to amp type interaction), something that can work with anything, immediately and with enough power to allow polyphonic MIDI through software (and no MIDI pickup installation).
When I received the first unit (that was a little larger than expected), and tried it, there it was! It sounded good, worked with Mac-PC-IOS-Android, reacted to my volume guitar control and was portable enough to take it with us to our first NAMM as Massive Unity Ltd (our UK based company). There we tried to find some alliances in L.A. to manufacture and distribute. It was a project that big that I couldn´t personally manage, while playing, touring and travelling around the world. We have an analogue pedal line that we can handle, but this was huge (I knew from the first moment).
2015 NAMM was great (once I felt confident enough to bring it out of my backpack at meetings) and we even launched the Cort-Manson Matt Bellamy guitar with Hugh Manson himself for several media titles (inc. Premier Guitar and Guitar World). We came back home with a bunch of business cards and some ideas. I immediately started to think about how to do it smaller, more pedalboard-friendly, while on tour (testing it live, well hidden under my monitors) I had the idea; same powerful chip, smaller enclosure. Solved.
2016 NAMM was even better, more demos, more meetings, evolved interface designs (in a 90´s Apple twist, we added iNterface to the project name), Cort, Kz GuitarWorks, Eventide, etc. All of them with the M1N1 iNterface. Some more meetings occurred. Once again I started my quest for the best and the tiniest interface ever !! Got it, same power on a mini pedal enclosure.
The same year, October, our family at Manson Guitar Works invited us to attend their Manson Guitar Show, to unveil and demonstrate their new Manson DR-1 and Cort-Manson MBC-1. The M1N1 iNterface rocked them all, but everyone was looking the guitars hahaha and playing right after legends like Bernie Marsden and Steve Howe never helps !! We joined Manson Guitar Works and Orange Amplification team and some artists for an Indian dinner.
Next year February, once again we traveled with Manson Guitar Works to the Birmingham Guitar Show. What an amazing show, amazing demos and amazing Indian dinner (the poshest Indian dinner ever) with Mansons and Orange´s Rob and James Deacon. During the night we chatted about music, gear and my demos, they seemed interested about the particular usage of their amps (I connected my interface´s outs to both amps effects returns to use them as powered speakers).
They asked me about that interface and my analogue pedal line and we agreed on a meeting at their booth for the next day. We spent an hour or so dissecting my designs and we exchanged our emails to keep in contact soon.
March, we were invited to Borehamwood Orange HQs to meet them all, including legendary Cliff Cooper and Ade Emsley !! We spent a couple of days there and we arrange a licensing contract… Orange Amplifiers would be manufacturing and distribute my interface worldwide !!
We started making some minor technical adjustments together (to work with the biggest boys in the industry, everything has to be highly detailed and it takes time). We decided to launch it as an OMEC product (O.range M.usic E.lectronic C.ompany) the 70s avant-garde division of the brand and John Dines came up with the Teleport name (retro-futuristic again… I loved it, thanks mate !!).
2017 NAMM !! More demos testing prototypes and new alliances (like our IK Multimedia deal that allow us to give you all this amazing Amplitube Custom Shop Orange edition with every Teleport unit purchased).
The Teleport was finished but it needed a route to market. We worked on all things marketing with the Orange amps marketing team, headed up by Charlie Cooper. That, plus the fact I was able to contact some of my idols with Alex Auxier (Artist Relations Manager) to get them on board, was amazing. Then getting their positive impressions about our new Teleport technology, was simply the icing on the cake.
2018 NAMM !! +20 private demos for media, dealers and pre-launch meetings. More supporters, more artists, more alliances, everyone is excited about the new Teleport technology !! Many brands offered their support on this pretty innovative launch: IK, Eventide, Joey Sturgis Tones, Cort, Positive Grid, MoForte, JamOrigin, T-Rex, etc.
Two years we´ve been working on this, absolutely no leaks and every proto better than the previous one, with the UK and overseas teams, testing prototypes on the road and international fairs (once again unlabeled and hidden from the public eye on my pedalboards)
… Now we are ready !! April 26th was the date, the date for launch!
https://orangeamps.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Dani-Gomez_Fly-17_0026.jpeg8531280Danny Gomezhttps://orangeamps.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Orange-Pics-logo-307px-279x103.pngDanny Gomez2018-05-22 14:00:552018-11-29 11:59:24The history of the OMEC Teleport
Grutle I am Grutle Kjellson, singer and bass player of Norwegian heavy metal band Enslaved.
I spent some time finding the right amplification, I tried several brands but I was never satisfied with the way the sound of the bass just didn’t blend in the way I wanted it to blend in. It might sound good individually but it’s supposed to fit in with two guitarists, keyboards, drums and vocals.
When you have five members in a band all playing, it’s of course difficult to separate all of the instruments for a sound man, live and in the studio. It’s crucial to have the right amps, that blends well with one another. Orange is probably the easiest amps to blend with other things, the attack is still intact, the tone is intact, the thickness is intact. Even with loads of other sonic violence surrounding it , like the attack of two heavy metal guitars, or some massive organs and the pounding of heavy metal drums.
I think Orange is perfect for, not necessarily for blasting black metal or death metal but if you add a little dynamic and groove into the mix, then Orange is definitely the real deal. Everything from pop/rock and all the way up to extreme metal, as long as you are using the dynamics of the music and don’t just go full throttle, if you go full throttle then it doesn’t matter what you play.
My live set up at the moment is an AD200 B amp head and an OBC410 cabinet, which is more than enough. On this tour the hire company only had an 810, and i’m standing right infront of that! It’s pretty massive, it really works! I would prefer on the smaller stages a 410.
I’m really happy with the gear, I have done a few tours with Orange and they are real workhouses. There is never any problems with amps or cabinets, we always have two amp heads, one spare and never have I had to use the spare one. It’s really reliable and they sound the same and great every night.
It feels great to be on the Orange roster, I could never picture being on the same roster as Geddy Lee 15 years ago or any of the other great musicians. It is full of really great and cool musicians and it’s an honour to be onboard.
From an Artist Relations perspective, the AD200B bass amp is one of the best weapons in my arsenal. It’s an amp with extremely pure bass tone, lots of clarity no matter how you’ve set the knobs, and it’s overdrive is a perfect blend of classic and modern. I’ve had hundreds of artists make the switch from “the other standard bass amp company that which will remain unnamed” onto the AD200B.
Artists love it because it’s produced to the same standard as most vintage tube bass amps. They also tend to make the switch when their classic bass amps are ready to come off the road to become studio-only pieces.
Here’s the backstory on a handful of Orange Ambassadors that use the AD200B (which we commonly refer to as just the “AD200”):
This might be hard to believe, but Slipknot is actually responsible for Geddy Lee playing the AD200.
Rush and Slipknot were recording next to each other in a Nashville studio. On a whim, Geddy heard the bass tone coming out of Slipknot’s studio and peeked his head in to find out what was making that glorious sound. Martin, Jim Root’s tech at the time, told him it was the AD200.
It took us about NEGATIVE FIVE MINUTES to decide Geddy could make or break Orange bass amps. Once we got that now-iconic photo of him chilling on top of his AD200’s we started buying up a ton of full page ads in guitar magazines. It was basically an entire year of promoting Geddy. The result? A nearly 100% increase in bass sales (and they’ve been growing every year since then).
Geddy used the AD200 for ¼ of his onstage bass tone. He turned the gain and the treble all the way up and everything else down as far as it could go. So basically the AD200 was his overdrive tone. However, the bass tone on Rush’s 2012 album Clockwork Angels is FULL of AD200 (check it out).
I was at Winter NAMM in 2011 when suddenly I got pulled into our demo room by an extremely excited Cliff Cooper (Orange’s Founder and CEO). He told me Glenn Hughes had stopped by and asked to try the AD200. We stuffed ourselves into that demo room like sardines. Glenn plugged in, played for 10 seconds, and then stopped and looked at all of us. His face had an expression of disbelief.
“This is the tone I’ve been trying to find for decades…this is my sound.”
Since then Glenn has been using the AD200 at 99% of his shows without fail. When I can’t find backline for him in some random city in, say, Africa, he makes sure I know how sad it makes him. He recently switched from playing through a combination of OBC115 and OBC410 speakers, to a pyramid-looking set up featuring (3) OBC810 cabs turned sideways.
Everyone knows that Tom is constantly switching up his rig, but for the past 7 years Orange has become a staple of Tom’s tone. Tom plays 12 string bass guitars (which he’s famous for doing) and his rig is a mash-up of bass and guitar amps.
The first Orange amp he added to the mix was the AD200. Then he started throwing in Orange guitar amps, specifically the now-discontinued AD50 hand-wired, the AD30, and more recently the Custom Shop 50 hand-wired. For about a year his rig was entirely Orange, but in true Tom fashion he’s started to put some Fender back into it. Honestly, as long as Tom Petersson of motherfreaking Cheap Trick has Orange on his stage I’ll be OK with whatever it is!
I’m putting Jason Narducy, one of my favorite people in the world, right below Tom Petersson because Tom is the reason Jason picked up a bass. I’ll just let Jason tell you what he thinks about the AD200:
“The first time I played an AD200 was in a rehearsal space in LA in 2006. It was the first practice with Bob Pollard’s new band and we had to learn 357 songs or something like that. We also taught our livers what 357 beers felt like. Despite the beer and avalanche of songs, I knew right away that the Orange AD200 was special.
I noticed the amp was orange just like the manufacturer’s name. They nailed that. But more importantly, it had the best tone for my P-bass. There were no hollowed out frequencies that you get with the common rented bass rig. The AD200 has presence and muscle. It is my favorite thing besides beer. And my family, I guess.”
If you’ve been following Orange closely over the past decade you know that there’s a super insane French-Canadian dude named SEF from the band Your Favorite Enemies who has done product reviews for us. SEF is like the human version of candy-flipping. However, we also have been working with the band’s bassist, Ben Lemelin, for the same period of time, and he’s just as good at doing killer demos.
Ben loves the AD200 for its super pure bass tone and for its ability to get wildly overdriven when necessary.
https://orangeamps.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/geddy-lee.jpg28302439alexhttps://orangeamps.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Orange-Pics-logo-307px-279x103.pngalex2018-05-10 15:10:362019-07-01 14:51:00AD200B Bass Amp and the Artists Who Love It
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.
https://orangeamps.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Youtube-Thumbnails-Cancer-Bats.jpg17242584Charliehttps://orangeamps.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Orange-Pics-logo-307px-279x103.pngCharlie2018-05-02 13:02:452018-12-14 13:08:39Interview – Scott from Cancer Bats
As far as current music goes, not many bands, most likely none, can compare to Earthless. Their musical craftsmanship is out of this world, and they’ve created an explosion of emerging psych bands coming out of San Diego and the surrounding areas. But then again, when Isaiah Mitchell used to be the local Encinitas guitar teacher, what else can you expect? Having obsessed over Earthless since I first came across them years ago in my bedroom back at my mum’s in Norway, they’ve always seemed like these unattainable gods from sunny California, so when I recently was told Isaiah would be playing Orange during their next UK and European tour… Ahh, yes, I was so stoked. About freakin’ time, he’s only the Hendrix of our generation.
You’ve been pretty busy touring lately as well as just releasing your latest record ‘Black Heaven’ on Nuclear Blast Records, which is an amazing record, but also pretty different from your earlier stuff. Isaiah: It’s super different, we didn’t expect it to be exactly the way it was when it came out, but we’re all happy with the end result. We knew we were gonna do at least one song with vocals, but we didn’t expect it to be four songs, that kind of just happened. Those were the strongest songs, so by natural selection they ended up on the album.
You’ve obviously been singing in Golden Void for years, and I also heard rumours about a band from way back called ‘Juan Peso’ where you also used to sing? Isaiah: Oh wow, yeah that’s from when I was about 19, and you have to do a lot of digging to find any of that online. You might get lucky on youtube but that’ll be it. I’ve always sung in bands, but for Earthless we just didn’t want to do it, it wasn’t our thing. It’s been fun not doing it, but it’s also been fun throwing it in there, do something different.
Last time I saw you guys in California you were using an old Orange cab, and tonight you’ve got a full Orange backline! Care to run us through the two? Isaiah: I got that 4×12 cab when I was 17 or 18 from a music shop in Encinitas called ‘Moonlight Music’, I used to work at this shop and my boss Russell had two brand new Orange 4×12, I think both early 90s, maybe even late 80s cabs in the garage of his house. We didn’t have any other 4×12’s in the shop, so he told me I should get one of them, and I was just shocked when I saw them, they were so – Orange! At that point in my life I’d never seen an Orange in the flesh before, I was just a kid and they weren’t very common in the US at the time, my only ever encounter at that point was this old Black Sabbath video with Paul Shaffer in the background, and Sabbath playing ‘Iron Man’. Sabbath were using Orange amps there instead of their usual Laney amps, and they just stuck right out due to the bright colour!
I ended up taking the cab of his hands, and putting it up against any other cabs like old Marshalls or whatever, my Orange would just always sound better. Maybe it’s because the walls on the Orange are so thick compared to others, especially Marshalls’ who’s really thin, I don’t know, but there’s just no competition in any other amps, the Orange would just always do it better. For this UK and European tour, I’ve also got two Orange heads, a Rockerverb MK II and a Rockerverb MK II and they’ve been treating me well. Our sound guy’s really into Orange as well so he’s happy – we’re all happy!
There’s a lot of emerging psych bands coming out of San Diego at the moment with you guys being one of the first ones on the scene more than a decade ago, and Radio Moscow and Sacri Monti bassist Anthony Meier even described you as ‘the godfathers of San Diego’ last time I spoke to him, singing your praises, as most people do – it must be crazy though to have had that sort of effect on your hometown and the place you’re from, leading the way for all these other bands and artists. Obviously, they’ve all had Earthless to look up to, who was it that stood out to you when you guys first got together and formed Earthless? Isaiah: First of all, I love Dukke (Anthony), he’s just great! We’ve toured with Radio Moscow and it’s always a good time with those guys. To answer your question; Definitely Jimi Hendrix, Cream and all the other great British blues guys who played loud amps. Blue Cheer, a bunch of German kraut bands as well as Japanese bands. When I was a kid growing up I didn’t know of any current bands that were doing that whole Cream style of playing where you’ve got half stacks or full stacks, I had never seen that before in my time. Then I met Mike and we started playing together in Lions of Judah which kinda made my dream come true as he was into all of those things as well. Then one day, someone sat me down and made me check out Nebula’s ‘To the Center’ album and I saw the picture on the back where they were just using all this old, rad gear, and I just had no idea that kinda stuff still existed. All that stuff was influential to me, and still is. I’m also really stoked about the whole emerging San Diego psych thing, it’s a really cool thing to be a part of, especially when you have all these rad bands citing us as influences, it’s an honour.
As I finish typing, I schedule this post for posting 19th of April at 2pm, knowing very well that mere two hours later I’ll be attending the first of three Earthless shows at this years Roadburn festival, and my endorphin level is through the roof just thinking about it.
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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).
https://orangeamps.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/PHOTO-CREDIT_LLFOXPHOTOS_KENROSE_HEROJR-e1522334595140.jpg24003000alexhttps://orangeamps.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Orange-Pics-logo-307px-279x103.pngalex2018-03-29 14:30:072019-07-01 14:51:30Ken Rose of Hero JR: Crush Mini, Fur Coat Fuzz, and Getaway Driver
Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your band Fizzy Blood? Have you been a member since day one? I’m Ciaran Scanlon and I’m the bass player in a rock band called Fizzy Blood. I joined Fizzy Blood back in 2015 a few months after they had come out of the studio recording ‘Feast’. Our drummer Jake and I had been playing in bands together for years, and at the time we were both living together in Leeds, studying at the Leeds College of Music. When Fizzy needed a bassist, I joined them for a few rehearsals and we’ve been playing together ever since. As well as ‘Feast’, we’ve also released ‘Summer of Luv’, plus we’ve just come out of the studio recording our 3rd EP, which we did with the wonderful Alex Newport. This will be released in the next few months so keep an eye out!
You’ve got some impressive shows behind you with your three years in the band, what would you say has been the highlight for you? For me, it has to be playing overseas. We performed over in South Korea for ‘Zandari Fest’ and Austin Texas for ‘SXSW’, which were both pretty surreal experiences. In the UK, this headline tour we’ve just done is definitely a highlight as well. The gigs we played in Leeds, London and Birmingham were really exceptional and the crowds were so energetic and responsive. It was a really unique moment for the band.
How old were you when you got into playing, and what led you towards playing the bass? I have been playing bass since I was about fourteen years old, so for about eight years now. I first started when I was in secondary school when a few friends of mine were learning instruments. I used to turn up to the practice room, hang out, and try to get involved any way I could, and with bass being the one instrument none of my friends played I thought ‘why not give that a go?!’. Later I got a bass for Christmas, and the rest is, as you say, history. My dad was really into the bass as well, just as much as I was, so he got me lessons to help develop my learning of the instrument. A few years later I decided to pursue it further and study music at university, which is where I eventually ended up joining the band.
What kind of music did you listen to yourself growing up? Growing up in an Irish household in Birmingham, I was exposed to lots of talented Irish music and musicians. My parents were very much into the Manchester music scene, so bands like The Smith, Oasis, Joy Division and The Stone Roses were always played on repeat.
Can you give us a lowdown on your history and experience with Orange?
When I first started playing I had an Orange combo practice amp, which was one of the first pieces of equipment I ever owned. The Orange amps I have used over the years range from everything from practice combo amps to a Terror Bass and an AD200. I’ve always been a fan of Orange, especially with Fleetwood Mac’s John McVie being a part of the Orange family and roster. From the moment I first played Orange I’ve been sticking to them due to their top quality sound and pristine production, and I’ve been really lucky to use Orange amps across a wide range of tours in the UK with Fizzy Blood.
So you’ve played the Terror bass and you’ve given the AD200 a go, what’s your current set up for this most recent UK tour?
For this as well as the last few Fizzy Blood tours I’ve been using the Orange 4 Stroke 500, it’s got everything I want and I’ve had such a great time playing it. I dont rely on too many pedals either, and my small pedal board consists of a tuner running to a Sansamp into a pedal called a ‘Steel Leather’, which is essentially a treble boost that emulates a pick sound as I play with my fingers. It’s been nice using the 4 Stroke as I normally use my Sansamp to control my tone, as the 4 Stroke has allowed me so much more creative freedom.
If you could go back in time and give your ten-year-old self some words of wisdom, what would it be?
Save up all your pocket money and get yourself an orange amp. You won’t regret it.
Thanks so much for taking the time to this interview, and congratulations on your latest record ‘Alamort’ which is out today! Dan: Yeah thanks! It’s out today, and it’s really exciting. This is album number four, as well as having released two EPs. I initially started it as a solo project seven years ago, then after awhile it kind of just went out of hand, and here we are now! Ryan: Myself and Marcus have been in the band for about a year, and we have both been apart of this album and writing process. This is the first album with this line up.
Dan: It’s a real departure from what the band has done before, as it used to have quite a lot of folky elements. We’re now playing more melodic punk taking inspiration from the 90s emo genre. It’s kind of more of the music I’ve always wanted to be making, so when these guys joined that just all fell into place and happened naturally. Marcus: like Dan says, we’ve gone more full electric, with more pedals and force and all that, more noise.
Now, Norwich might not be the centre of the universe, and most people might not be that familiar with the Norwich music scene. Can you guys give us the lay of the land? Dan: The Norwich music scene is really healthy, one of the reasons I move to Norwich was actually due to the booming Punk scene. All the bands kind of support each other, and that is how we all met, on that scene. That is how Ryan and I met about four years ago. Ryan: I do sound engineering as well and made a fair bit of people through that, that is also how I met Dan, as I did a few shows for him.
So Marcus, how did you end up in the band? Marcus: I am kind of the outsider of the group as I initially joined the band as a fan. I was already aware of what they were doing and knew the band quite well. So when I saw there was an opening I just thought to myself ‘fuck it, I’m going to give it ago’. It’s been nice since the lineup had already changed and the band was changing, I got to come in and bring my own opinions and put my own sound on it, I also got to add my personality and stamp on some of the older songs. No one is precious about anything so if any of us comes up with a new idea and it doesn’t go down well with the whole band we won’t do it. Everything we do, we do together.
Now, the reason were all here – Orange amps. Can you tell us a bit about your history and experience with the brand? Dan: I used to guitar tech a lot for various bands, some of which would use Orange, and I was just baffled by the fact that you could get such clarity and crunch at the same time, you can’t seem to do that with many other amps. I was playing Marshalls for years, but it wasn’t until I first plugged it into an Orange I finally found my sound. Marcus: I play a Dual Terror, and I was first introduced to Orange by a friend who had a Tiny Terror, and I just loved how you could get that big sound something so small, it’s had this amazing huge sound and it would just really fill a room. Before I started playing guitar in this band, I originally played bass, and I didn’t have any money to buy any pedals, so I had to learn to compensate for that by using my hands and away I would use the settings on my amp. I got that overdriven sound without having to use any pedals, and if they wanted to make it even more overdriven I could just play harder, mechanically. I like how transparent the sound is, and the amps are incredibly responsive to what you’re doing. So yeah, I guess it is just the evolution of not being able to buy any pedals and learning how to work around it and using my amp to compensate. Even today, I still only use three pedals when we play live, as the amp pretty much sorts me out with the sound I want and require, with most of my sound coming strictly from the amp itself. Gain, volume, tone – nothing fancy, just plug and play! Ryan: My first encounter with Orange was similar to Dan’s, doing shows, working as a sound engineer and seeing bands coming in with different gear all the time. I played bass for years, but had never managed to find that had that was quite right. One day, I was working with a band who’s bassist was using a Bass Terror, he played a 68’ Fender Precision bass through it, and the tone was just unbelievable. Straight after that, I went out and bought to my own which lasted me five years, until this Christmas I decided to put my big boy pants on and get the OB1-500. All I want from my amp when playing the bass its power and clarity, and it is true what everyone is saying, you really can just plug and play.
