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King Loudness « Not for me. »
Published on 12/13/11 at 00:10The Orange Tiny Terror is a 15 watt tube head that perpetuated the whole "lunch box" amplifier craze. It's been out for a few years now and many amps from companies like VOX, Traynor, Mesa Boogie, H&K, etc have come after. Lots of people like these for the fact they are grab and go amps that forgo tons of versatility for a direct sound in a small package. This amp is 15 watts, switchable down to 7 watts. It's powered by EL84 tubes and is a single channel amplifier with no onboard effects.
UTILIZATION
Dialing in this amp is easy or difficult depending on what you're looking for. I personally found this amp just to sound too loose and fuzzy for what I was looking to do. I understand that's kinda the voice Orange is known for, but still I wasn't much impressed with it. There's very few controls to work with, so if you like the tone of the amp at its core, you really get that sound regardless of where you set your amp controls. However if you're not a fan of the tone of the amp, there isn't much you can do to change it...
SOUNDS
This amp seems to sound closest to how I'd like through a Celestion Greenback loaded cabinet of some repute. The higher wattage speakers I tried with this amp just made it sound a bit too clean for my rock n' roller self (at least for the project I was using it for at the time). However the major issue I had with this amp was that is just seemed to have this fuzzy sort of quality when it was turned up. It wasn't one that I particularly find attractive for standard hard rock tones as it caused the definition of chords to be lost amid the gain/saturation. I had much better luck running the amp fairly clean and using one of my drive pedals to hit it, which keep the amp sounding reasonably smooth with high gain. I could see that loose and saturated vibe working for some people, but it just was not for me.
OVERALL OPINION
All in all I think the Orange Tiny Terror is a mixed bag. On one hand I applaud Orange for getting out there and doing something different that really works well for practice and jamming/transport. However the voicing of it just turned me off too much for my liking. I've had MUCH better luck with the VOX Night Train (great clean sounds and a fantastically thick and clear drive sound that was exactly what I wanted the Tiny Terror to be and more recently the Hughes and Kettner Tubemeiser 18, which is even more versatile and offers a dedicated clean channel as well. The Orange is about $550 new which isn't a bad deal, but in my position, I would just buy either the VOX or H&K unless you're after the particular voicing of the Tiny Terror.
UTILIZATION
Dialing in this amp is easy or difficult depending on what you're looking for. I personally found this amp just to sound too loose and fuzzy for what I was looking to do. I understand that's kinda the voice Orange is known for, but still I wasn't much impressed with it. There's very few controls to work with, so if you like the tone of the amp at its core, you really get that sound regardless of where you set your amp controls. However if you're not a fan of the tone of the amp, there isn't much you can do to change it...
SOUNDS
This amp seems to sound closest to how I'd like through a Celestion Greenback loaded cabinet of some repute. The higher wattage speakers I tried with this amp just made it sound a bit too clean for my rock n' roller self (at least for the project I was using it for at the time). However the major issue I had with this amp was that is just seemed to have this fuzzy sort of quality when it was turned up. It wasn't one that I particularly find attractive for standard hard rock tones as it caused the definition of chords to be lost amid the gain/saturation. I had much better luck running the amp fairly clean and using one of my drive pedals to hit it, which keep the amp sounding reasonably smooth with high gain. I could see that loose and saturated vibe working for some people, but it just was not for me.
OVERALL OPINION
All in all I think the Orange Tiny Terror is a mixed bag. On one hand I applaud Orange for getting out there and doing something different that really works well for practice and jamming/transport. However the voicing of it just turned me off too much for my liking. I've had MUCH better luck with the VOX Night Train (great clean sounds and a fantastically thick and clear drive sound that was exactly what I wanted the Tiny Terror to be and more recently the Hughes and Kettner Tubemeiser 18, which is even more versatile and offers a dedicated clean channel as well. The Orange is about $550 new which isn't a bad deal, but in my position, I would just buy either the VOX or H&K unless you're after the particular voicing of the Tiny Terror.