Shaping the Orange Sound (1969)

How feedback — and feedback — from guitarists like Peter Green and Paul Kossoff led to the circuit redesign that defined the classic Orange sound.

Cliff Cooper, Founder & CEO, remembers: “During 1969, we sampled the sounds used by a number of top guitarists including Peter Green, Marc Bolan and Paul Kossoff, all of whom liked to spend time in the Orange Shop just chatting and playing guitars. We asked these and other professional players to plug into our mixing desk, play around, and find the sound they liked best. From there, we were able to measure the sound characteristics and figure out what changes were needed to the Orange amp circuitry. We’d then send those changes up to Mat in Huddersfield to be incorporated into production. Basically, it was a question of listening to what our customers wanted.”

Understanding Loudness, and Redefining the Orange Sound

“As Orange became more established, we found that a lot of people liked our amps, but not everyone. Quite a few guitarists told us our amps didn’t sound as loud as other brands, Watt for Watt. In our workshop, using signal generators, oscilloscopes and other measuring equipment, we tested an Orange OR120. It gave a true 120 Watts. We then measured a well-known 100-Watt amp from another brand. It output just 96 Watts — and still sounded louder than ours. We couldn’t work out why.

“We also tested the distortion levels. The other amp was noticeably more distorted than ours.

“To get to the bottom of it, I arranged a meeting with a leading ear specialist in Harley Street. He explained that the brain can register distortion as pain, triggering a protective response in the ears. The jagged harmonics produced by distortion make the ear’s conducting bones work harder, and the brain perceives that as extra loudness. The original Orange amps were especially clean-sounding with very little distortion, and that was the problem: the perceived loudness wasn’t there.

“Thanks to that ear specialist, we cracked the mystery. We gave the amp more gain and made some significant changes to the circuitry, not just copying what others had done, but taking a different route. We adjusted the tone stack at the front end and reworked the phase inverter. These changes gave birth to what became known as the Orange sound, first introduced in the Pics-Only amps, the ones with hieroglyphs on the control panels.

“The sound is probably best described as fat and warm: rich in harmonics, with a unique mid-band saturation that also improves sustain. But of course, choice of sound is always a personal thing.”