Orange Amplification owner's club

I don't think I've heard a negative comment on any of the Orange amplifiers, ever. It might be the only brand where this is the case. I've heard people complain about Marshalls, Fenders, MESA/Boogies, etc...... all great amps. But I honestly can't think of anyone I've heard say something bad about Orange amps.

 

So I have a Crush 12, only had it about a month, but I can maybe say something bad about it?

Hard to say. I'm real new to electric guitar, my teacher recommended the Crush 12 and a couple other amps as good starter practice amps.

I like the Crush 12 for some of the rock tones it can do, but it sometimes seems like it's too biased towards that. I find the Crush kind of frustrating for playing chords, it's great for actual rock music that is mostly singe notes or power chords but I feel like it kind of distorts even on "full clean" when I try to do any chord exercises with open chords. This stuff is very frustrating compared to my acoustic.

When I go to lessons I plug into a Yamaha THR10 and it's clean tone when playing chords just seems way way better than my Crush 12, although I get the impression I couldn't get anywhere near the crunch out of the Yamaha that I can get out of my Crush. It's like on the Crush the first strum sounds good and after that all the notes just turn into a muddy mess. Not really a problem with muting between chords or with barre chord progressions, also probably not a problem with selective picking, but some of that stuff is still a ways out for me. Some of what the Crush 12 is doing is probably actually good for me, because it seems like it really penalizes any mistakes I make.

I have tons of hum with my Tele + the Crush 12 as well, still trying to tame that, if I can reduce the hum I'll be able to use more of the range of settings on the Crush and then like it better.

I keep wondering a little too if I should open it up and see if something is loose inside it. A lot of the sound is kind of that paper speaker cone type of distortion maybe.

 

Somehow I missed this thread? I have a Micro Terror, that I can hook up to either a 1x12 Ibanez TSA112C open back cab or a 2x12 Fender Bandmaster closed back cab.

 

Joined the club last Saturday with a Rocker 15

 

@beninma - is that a 6" speaker?

Try turning the Volume knob all the way up and using the Gain knob as your volume. That will give the most clarity and headroom. Also keep the bass down if it gets muddy.

 

Ive had this amp. As stated before turning the volume all the way up, and the gain all the way down will give you a much nicer clean tone that your looking for by using the gain as a volume.

Also, a nice reverb pedal does wonders for that little amplifier!

Have fun!

 

My Blacktop with the 35RT. Crazy awesome noises come from this thing!!!

 

Hi Guys,

Regarding the Crush 12... too bad I didn't see your posts earlier. I have indeed figured out on my own that turning the volume up pretty loud and then just adding in a little bit of gain does work best.

I seem to have a lot of hiss in mine (not 60hz hum) but what seems to work for me with my MIM Tele (stock pickups) is volume around 3 o'clock, gain around 9 o'clock. I have the treble around 12 o'clock, mids around 1 o'clock, and bass maybe 11 o'clock. Seems to work. I do have a reverb which helps.

Pretty happy with it, but also thinking I may get a Rocker 15 to replace it. Got a little money and I really really want to try a tube amp. Gotta stick with the orange color though...

 

Huh.. I went and tried a Rocker 15 today... I brought my crush 12 in with me in case I decided to trade it in. (Which would probably be dumb since it's so cheap.)

I'm amazed at how well the crush actually holds up. The family resemblance is uncanny. There really is a distinct orange sound. The Rocker to me pretty much sounded like a louder higher quality version. Way less hiss and noise.

So I really like the Orange dirty/overdrive sounds.. but upgrading to another Orange amp doesn't make any sense to me at this point I guess.. the clean tone on the Rocker still sounds Orange, I guess what I am realizing is for clean tones I'm interested in something else.

Too bad, cause I think the clean tone I like is the Fender tone. But I don't really like any of the Fender tube amps for home use. The features on the Oranges are so much nicer. I tried a Blues Junior next to the Rocker 15.. I like the clean tone on the Blues Junior more, but it would be near useless at home compared to the Rocker 15 because it basically goes from no sound to "too loud for the house" so quick on the volume dial. Orange is really onto something with the "Bedroom/Headroom" switches as at least for the Rocker it sounded good at every volume level I tried, it's so flexible!

edit: I'd be curious if an amp like the Rocker 15 "breaks in". I have wondered if my Crush 12, did, I've been playing it about an hour every day for about 4 months now.. it was hard to tell if I got used to it, I got the tone dialed in, or if it broke in.

Basically I went to look at it cause I some some youtube reviews where the clean tone sounded really fantastic with a Tele.. the one I tried in the store did not sound like that.

 

I love my Rocker 15, part of it is the versatility.
The bedroom switch is genius.
Well if you think your Crush compares favorably you just saved a lot of money!

 

Not favorably, just similar and good enough. Strong family resemblance. No question the Rocker is better.

 

New Orange Rocker 32 owner. Here's a picture of the amp & board # 2. Sounds great. I'll post more after I break the speakers in. Liking the stereo loop.

 

My Orange Rocker 30 has been my favorite amp I've ever owned. The gain is absolutely incredible. While I like the new Rocker 32 and Rocker 15, these older Rocker 30's are still among the best sounding amps I've ever played.

 

Heh.. made the mistake of going back in when I had my guitar with me.. yep, walked out with the Rocker 15. I felt like I got a pretty decent deal on the trade they gave me $60 for my Crush 12 and then 10% off the Rocker 15. When I had gone in before they told me $30 for the Crush so $60 seemed fine.. not sure what happened there.

This thing is fantastic once I got it home. When I first flipped it on and tried the dirty channel it was pretty noisy, which it wasn't at all when I tried it at the store. Turned out it was my looper + one-spot. Moving the looper to it's own power brick fixed that. Funny.. the Crush 12 made those noises even with no pedals at all.

I totally love both channels. Just great sound, and I can dial up a ton of crunch on the dirty channel with barely any hiss coming out of the amp. Played way too late last night and went to bed with a huge grin on my face. It's just a gigantic step up in terms of how great it sounds and feels.

Only thing.. I doubt I'm going to get to flip the switch in the back to "headroom" very often at home.

 

Curious if anyone can answer some of tech stuff for me.. not that any of this is a short term concern but now that I have the Rocker 15 I started reading some of the tube amp stuff out on the web. It seems like 95%+ of it is about Fenders, so I'm curious about Orange..

Do the tubes actually need to be replaced before the thing stops working? It looks like the Rockers/Tiny terrors have a fixed bias and if I just bought the right replacement kit from Orange (when it is actually available) I'd be able to just put them in when needed?

How hard is it to change them? Looking at the pictures i can find and peering through the cooling vent it looks like you pop off the back cover and the preamp tubes and FX tubes are right there, and the power tubes are just hidden below shields. Looks like Orange has hidden away all the capacitors. Are they a push pull socket or a threaded socket like a light bulb?

I am pretty technically inclined, and I'm not a stranger to a soldering iron, so I'd like to think if/when I need to I could do this myself. However I have also shocked myself discharging a capacitor into myself in the past.. so I have a decent fear of messing with something with monster capacitors like an amp.

I would have 0 desire to ever open it up or do anything to it until it needed maintenance. But if changing the tubes is easy that'd sure save a lot of time and money versus getting a tech to do it.

 

Do you have any reason to swap the tubes? Are we talking power tubes or preamp tubes? Preamp tubes I wouldn't worry too much about adjusting the bias, that's mostly for messing with the power section. I personally don't really thinking proactively changing preamp tubes will save anything other than a bit weight in your wallet. I normally only change them if they're microphonic or dead.

 

No reason at all for now. I doubt I will go down any rabbit holes of changing them for the hell of it. I mean for future maintenance if the amp starts acting up.

I've just seen various things saying after 1 year, 2 years, whatever, the power tubes will start to degrade and they should be replaced before they blow, cause if they blow it blows the fuse and you have to change that too, and at that point you do want a tech to look at the amp.

If the answer is "Oranges take forever to need maintenance" that's fine too. I will be in no way stressing the amp as I'm just using it for practice for the near term.. probably average 1 hour per day, and I'm not able to crank it.

Oranges official stance seems to be "take it to an authorized dealer for anything", but it sounds like in general lots of people replace tubes themselves if they are going.

 

From what I read on the web, nothing official from Orange though that might come in a while since they have the info for older amps on the web,
The rocker 15 is cathode biased or whatever , meaning you just drop in new tubes.
But don't trust me on that and from I have seen it might require a screwdriver to change them

 

Gone fully overboard on Orange amps this year. I once just had the Micro Terror and an organ speaker I painted, well, orange...have since added a Rocker 32, OR15, PPC212C cab, Tiny Terror Combo, and now a TH30 (last two were $400 off new--had to jump). Been selling and trading amps and guitars I liked just to get these, and have had no regrets so far. I traded a Deluxe Reverb modded with an Allen TO26 OT and a mid pot toward the TH30, and I am not even missing it, because I can get a very similar tone out of the TH30's clean channel.

Tube changes on the heads are not bad. Rocker 32 access is easy--six screws and the back piece with the chassis connected comes off; flip it over and all the tubes are right there (however, each pair of then EL84s has a cage around it held in with eight screws). I would imagine the Rocker 15 has similar construction, minus a pair of power tubes. Tiny Terror Combo might be the worst tube change ever--I believe there are 16 screws holding the chassis in, then six or eight more to remove a cage.

The four amps other than the Micro Terror have EL84 power tubes and are cathode-biased.

Oh, and I went so overboard that I also picked up a Duo-Sonic in capri orange.