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Post by newey on Sept 13, 2012 23:28:37 GMT -5
Some of you may recall my 15" cab project:  I was looking for a tube amp head to sit on top of this; all I've been doing with it is using it with my EH .22 Caliber "amp-in-a-pedal". Which sounds pretty OK as is, but I wanted more. So I looked at a lot of tube amp heads but didn't want to spend the money it would take. Today, I pulled the trigger on this piece: Orange Micro TerrorNot a "real" tube amp as it is a hybrid design. But it's only 1.5 bills, so we'll see how it sounds. Clips to follow once I get it.  |
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Post by long813 on Sept 14, 2012 0:12:53 GMT -5
Cool that you're testing this as I am looking for a new amp and Orange is in my sights. I was looking towards the Crush series as it's a combo and a lot lower volume than my current 50W tube (needs to be sold!).
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Post by asmith on Sept 14, 2012 7:43:07 GMT -5
Newey... you didn't tell me you had a lap-steel... *blushes like a Southern Belle*
Looking forward to this. I loved the sound of the Tiny Terror.
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Post by JohnH on Sept 15, 2012 1:12:37 GMT -5
It'll be interesting to see if it can catch the big Orange sound - and I expect it will do a good job. And with 20W, it has a bit of power behind it to drive that 15"
This week, I spent 20 minutes in a music shop jamming on a standard Strat through an Orange Rockerverb 2x12 combo. It had one of the juiciest overdrive sounds I have every heard.
J
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Post by long813 on Sept 15, 2012 17:21:21 GMT -5
It'll be interesting to see if it can catch the big Orange sound - and I expect it will do a good job. And with 20W, it has a bit of power behind it to drive that 15" This week, I spent 20 minutes in a music shop jamming on a standard Strat through an Orange Rockerverb 2x12 combo. It had one of the juiciest overdrive sounds I have every heard. J In my search for an Orange amp to suit my needs, I've read only good things about the Rocker series! I'm happy to see Orange in Canada for a competitive price. |
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Post by newey on Sept 17, 2012 21:47:54 GMT -5
Well, I have one, but I certainly never said I could play one. That's become a longer-term project . . .  Anyway, I got the Micro Terror today, and no time for a full report with sound samples, just some preliminary impressions. I was only able to spend a few minutes with it, making sure it worked. So, a full report to follow. First off, it is truly micro. The photos on the web make it look like a smaller version of the Tiny Terror, and it is- just much smaller. And it weighs nothing! This will need to be used with a pedal board, or wireless, or something to restrain the cable- if you just plug into the amp, it'll end up getting yanked off the top of your cabinet for sure. But it would be great for travel, it's a small footprint for a suitcase and with a 6" speaker cab it could be great as a travel set up. The power supply comes with all the needed adapters for worldwide use as well. The back panel has one speaker out, stated to be for 4Ω to 16Ω as well as the input for the power supply. On the front, we have an input jack, a headphone jack, On/off toggle with an LED indicator, and Vol, Tone and Gain pots. Pretty straightforward, basic stuff. So, I plugged in my Tele and plugged the 15" cab at the other end, and fired it up. Again, these are preliminary thoughts only, I'm going to have to play with this unit a lot more to make any firm judgements like "Do I like it?" First, I used the Tele initially since it's unshielded. with stock Tele SCs, so it makes a bit of noise, not an undue amount, but I wanted to get a sense for how quiet the amp is. Prior to getting this, I had been using my Electro-Harmonix .22 Caliber "amp in a pedal" through the 15" cab- and later, I want to A/B both of these through the cab. Initially, the Micro Terror is not silent, but a good bit quieter than the EH unit using the same guitar. I started out with the gain knob at "0", tone set to about "6", and volume cranked WFO, to get a sense of the clean sound available. And, it has a decent clean sound, but with no power to speak of. With gain on 0, it's not much louder than conversational volume. Moving the gain knob up to about 2.5 gave a considerable volume increase, with only a slight increase in distortion- not a super-clean sound but useable. But I wasn't hearing any tube warmth to the tone, it sounded pretty much like a solid-state unit. Increasing the gain brought along lots of sustain, and a good bit of distortion, not a bad sound but not really my cup of tea- again, I wasn't hearing overdriven tube sounds so much as just SS distortion. This thing is really all about the gain knob- all the action is in the upper reaches of gain, which quickly becomes pretty crunchy. So, at least at first blush, I was a bit unimpressed. I was hoping that the hybrid design would bring a bit of tube sound to the agenda for not a lot of money, and it doesn't seem to have that. But there's still a bit of exploration to be done here, and I'll reserve judgment until I've played with it more. The tone control seems quite useable, and there may be some sweet spots playing with all three controls. I want to try this through a different cabinet, as the 15" isn't particularly efficient, and this little guy may be having trouble driving it. Also, try it with other guitars, etc. I'll do all that, and post some clips, when I get the time. |
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Post by long813 on Sept 18, 2012 0:21:27 GMT -5
Interesting review so far...it really puts it out of the list for me!
The clean/overdrive issue I've read about quite a bit with Orange actually. Not sure if it's just a few models - I would hate to see it be that way for their entire line up.
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Post by sumgai on Sept 18, 2012 0:41:24 GMT -5
The clean/overdrive issue I've read about quite a bit with Orange actually. One does have to remember that Orange has never stood for "clean" in any way, shape or form.  IOW, if it ain't distorted, it ain't Orange! ;D HTH sumgai |
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Post by long813 on Sept 18, 2012 0:43:46 GMT -5
The clean/overdrive issue I've read about quite a bit with Orange actually. One does have to remember that Orange has never stood for "clean" in any way, shape or form. IOW, if it ain't distorted, it ain't Orange! ;D HTH sumgai Ah, some reviews I've read said they had some nice cleans. Guess I should be looking elsewhere then  |
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Post by JohnH on Sept 18, 2012 4:20:59 GMT -5
While you check it out, have a try with the old-school technique of setting the amp for some gain, then dialing back to clean using the guitar volume. The oranges I tried worked nicely like that.
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Post by ashcatlt on Sept 18, 2012 11:53:43 GMT -5
It's funny. Tubes aren't really necessarily as "warm" as people seem to think. Believe it or not, these things were not actually designed to be driven in their non-linear region, nor to change the frequency response of signals run through them. The slew-rate of most pre-amp tubes is actually pretty competitive with modern opamps. The "warmth" that people are looking for usually comes from a transformer on one or both sides of the tube stage, and/or the complex interaction of tube, transformer, and an inductive load. An overdriven 12AX7 all by itself sounds pretty nasty!
I really like the "Orange sound" for crunch-to-crush type sounds. At least, I like PodFarm's "Citrus" model for that sort of thing. I would actually like to have something like an Orange version of my Vox AC4 - a very low wattage amp that can get close to the sound of it's big brothers. But all the small ones they put out are either all solid state, or hybrids like this. At that point its all emulation, and I already have that.
newey I hope you can find some way to use thing, or at least hopefully they've got a decent return policy.
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Post by sumgai on Sept 18, 2012 20:14:50 GMT -5
One does have to remember that Orange has never stood for "clean" in any way, shape or form.
IOW, if it ain't distorted, it ain't Orange! ;D
Ah, some reviews I've read said they had some nice cleans. Guess I should be looking elsewhere then Well, one should also bear in mind that I'm not just from the old school, I am the old school!  ;D But like everything else in life, the definition of clean is a moving target. As I've gotten older (and all the while steadfastly refusing to grow up!), I've learned that one man's 'clean' is another man's 'dirty', and there'll never be anyway to get the two to agree. Words to live by. Today's Lessons Of Life was brought to you by Marketing Feldergarb, the singularly best way to impress people, whether they needed it or not! sumgai |
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Post by long813 on Sept 18, 2012 20:42:52 GMT -5
Ah, some reviews I've read said they had some nice cleans. Guess I should be looking elsewhere then Well, one should also bear in mind that I'm not just from the old school, I am the old school! ;D But like everything else in life, the definition of clean is a moving target. As I've gotten older (and all the while steadfastly refusing to grow up!), I've learned that one man's 'clean' is another man's 'dirty', and there'll never be anyway to get the two to agree. Words to live by. Today's Lessons Of Life was brought to you by Marketing Feldergarb, the singularly best way to impress people, whether they needed it or not! sumgai Bahah, true. As you say one mans clean is another mans dirty, besides the sexual innuendo (yeah, I went there) ... it's very applicable to my views on clean vs most reviews. I do realize that a metal heads clean is probably not the same as my acoustic cleans ... only one way to find out, right? EDIT: Also, I went to a local guitar store today and tried one of these out. I wasn't that impressed, but it was probably due to my lack of understanding with how the controls really work. The thing is tiny though! Just a tad heavier than a lunch box. |
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Post by newey on Sept 19, 2012 21:10:32 GMT -5
So, I spent a bit more time playing with this thing tonight, and I'm warming up to it a bit more. Ultimately, I'm not sure it's really what I want, so if I learned anything it's that I'll probably have to spend a good deal more to get what I want. But I found a few sweet(er) spots. With the gain set at "6", the tone at 5 and the vol at 5, it sings nicely, sort of an '80s hair-rock tone. And, as John suggested, a knock back on the guitar's volume knob does clean it up a bit. Gain at "4", others at 5 gives a decent clean sound, not crystal clean but nice. Overall, it's very rock-ish, you won't be hearing any C & W twang out of this amp. My best results with it came from a guitar equipped with two humbuckers, it seemed to be more responsive to playing dynamics than with SC-equipped guitars. Perhaps not coincidentally, it sounds best with my orange guitar- the Electric Pumpkin.  Note the guitar picks for scale there.  And a straight-on head shot. |
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Post by newey on Sept 23, 2012 21:23:44 GMT -5
Still playing further with this. There are some good tones to be had in the middle ranges on the controls, but it's all very SS sounding, at least to my ears.
I'll probably continue to experiment with this unit, but ultimately it's likely going to the consignment store, as my search for something with better cleans continues . . .
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Post by long813 on Oct 27, 2012 14:23:43 GMT -5
Still playing further with this. There are some good tones to be had in the middle ranges on the controls, but it's all very SS sounding, at least to my ears. I'll probably continue to experiment with this unit, but ultimately it's likely going to the consignment store, as my search for something with better cleans continues . . . Any updates on this? I guess the compressed sound is coming from the fact that it is only 'tube' in the preamp section? I always had my doubts on how good hybrid amps would be. In my mind I always grouped them into the SS class. |
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Post by newey on Oct 27, 2012 14:52:42 GMT -5
As did I- and I still would so classify them after my experiences with this.
I'm playing with this quite a bit, but ultimately I think I'll probably trade it in and get a small-wattage tube head. This just doesn't do the clean sound well enough for my tastes.
For $150, it's not a bad little head for those who like their gain without blowing out the windows.
I've been too busy to do any sound clips, and I still mean to try this through my 10" cab.
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Post by newey on Jun 29, 2013 18:05:38 GMT -5
Ah, well, I apologize for no sound clips of this thing. But today I swapped it for this:  An Epiphone Les Paul Junior. It certainly can't stay the way it is, now, can it? Let the games begin!  |
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Post by ux4484 on Jun 29, 2013 23:36:21 GMT -5
Newey, I think maybe you should have tried a Fender Gretta, much more tube-y and deliciously clean to twangy.
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;D