The Wombats have been using Orange amps pretty much since they first started as a band. So before their headline show at Wembley arena Jamie, ‘Murph’s’ guitar tech took some time out to run us through his rig. The three Dual Terrors are the rock of the rig and a Tiny Terror is used as a different flavour

Hi i’m Jamie Matthew Murphy’s guitar tech with the Wombats and this is his rig.

So we have got all these guitars here, we have got ‘Blue Bob’ which is his main guitar, a paisley telecaster from 96′ I believe. It’s the one he uses the most, on most tunes, it is in standard tuning. Then we have a spare which is a brown tele, we have got a strat he uses on three or four tunes as well. A black and a white jazzmaster and a Fender Coronado too.

These are all going through a Sennheiser wireless system which are then combined in a Radial JX44 combiner, I have a remote down here which I can easily switch them when we are doing guitar changes. Then it goes through a G2 gig rig pedal board, now all this is midi automated as I think there is only two or three songs without a click track, so every song with a click track ‘Murph’ doesn’t have to touch his pedal board other than to turn tuner on or off but that’s it really, it’s all pretty automated. We shall move on to the amps.

We have amp one and amp two which are both Dual Terrors, amp three which is a Tiny Terror. Amp one and amp two both go to 2×12 cabinets, amp one the sounds on both channels are very similar, i’d say it’s a clean sound with a bit of bite and then when he hits his footswitch to change his channels it gets a bit louder and a bit more of a gravely version of the first one. But there is not very much difference with that and amp two, the clean channel is all down so there is no signal passing through it until he hits the switch and then you get a really gainy, driven sound. Amp three goes through a 1×10 and that is a purely uneffected signal, so it bypasses all the pedals straight to the back of the amp and it just gives Pete at the Front of house or monitors something to get some clarity if the other two are raging.

I’ve personally always loved Orange amps because there is not twenty knobs on them, you haven’t got bass, treble and middle control for tone. It’s very, very simple you’ve got six knobs, three for each channel and you get everything you need out of them, you don’t any more. They are perfect for what you do.

If we go to America or fly gig they lugged about in a backpack and can literally hand carry them onto a plane, they can take a knocking about, there is not really any signal you can put through that it doesn’t sing, it doesn’t sound as it should. They are not venue specific, for instance we played Birmingham academy last night and we are doing Wembley arena tonight, you don’t struggle with volume or with control with the amp. They have got more than enough punch for Wembley arena.

You get that classic british sound don’t you, that classic british rock sound from all valve analogue amps. It’s the simplicity that makes them, that’s what makes the tone so good I think. There is very little taken away from it by adding more, there is not much there but what’s there is perfect for a classic British rock sound.