What some people don't realize is that tube amps feel dangerous. The menacing thunk when you turn them on and the palpable sense of power as they warm up is part of the appeal. You have this contraption that's almost like a living thing, and that has enough power running through it to kill you. Often times I'm inspired before I even play a note on my tube amps. I'm sitting there waiting the 20 or 30 seconds for it to warm up and kind of anticipating what I'm going to play. The sheer and almost primitive power of these things is part of the creative process. Their physical size and weight asserts their presence and importance. Having to carry it puts it in your brain that this thing is serious. One of the coolest things about Orange is that, because they look so whimsical and childlike, they become all the more intimidating when you realize how powerful and serious they really are.
I love this!!! That describes the "fear" I mentioned in the video to a T!!! It's so true and does have an effect on your playing. Respect the beast!!! :)
Charlie is such a good dude, it was an honor to hang with him at Gear Street a few years ago. Absolute banger of a guy. He does Orange proud because he wants to and believes in Orange, not just because his old man started the company. Nothing but admiration for Charlie!
My neighbor, a few houses over, is a professional guitarist who does recording sessions and openers for larger bands. He's about 65, but he can play anything from country to funk, to just anything. I love watching him play. He has a bunch of tube amps, and wow to hear them is like breathtaking. Im a amateur player and he allowed me to plug my Super Strat into his Marshall and wow. With a distortion pedal and just a hair gain it was amazing. However due to his health and age, he no longer lugs his tube amps around anymore. He picked up this Spark amp and he played through it for me and wow. It wasn't identical, but it was close, plus he no longer has to carry a pedal board, which again is a huge plus for his back. He takes the Spark and tells them to mic and he's done. Now me, I don't have a real tube amp, but I do have a bunch of solid state amps including, an Orange Crush and I love it. I wish I had a bunch of tube amps, but cost and maintainance prevents me from making that jump. I'll eventually pick up a tube amp when I retire and Spark has a great reputation so I'll even get one of those practice amps too. However I'm a bedroom player, and never have had the intentions to play for an audience ever. However, I understand what Orange is doing and they are doing it right. Tubes have been around and will always stay around. Like records, I still buy record, because my recird player has never died, and it is belt driven.
Thanks for sharing your experience. That's the joy of real amps and the conveniences of modelers on display for one player. And that is what is so mazing about being a player today. We have choices. It's not one vs. the other. It's choice. Is till think every player should try both before they make their ultimate decision. That's really my point.
I just wish Orange would re-voice their Crush line of SS amps. The vast majority of us can’t afford an OR30 or Rockerverb and will wind up playing the transistor stuff. The current iterations are super-dark and wooly-sounding with a loose low-end. Just give us a line of Super Crush-ish combos from 12 to 100 watts at varying price points.
They actually have already re-voiced the Crush line once before, the old ones had a more loose and fuzzy distortion from what I've heard. I doubt they'd want to go through the trouble of re-vamping them again to tone-match them to their current offerings when they essentially did that already something like 7.5 years ago! \m/
They're supposed to be voiced after the rockerverb. I'd personally like to see more wattage and larger speakers at each price point as modellers are eating up that market.
I love tube amps, but I'm also thrilled with the progress in solid state. I use both. I just say that if you are going to get a tube amp get a good one with a good warranty and get to know your repair tech before you have to take it in. I also recommend taking in tube amps for services, not just when something goes wrong. If you've never changed tubes, ask the repairman to show you how it's done. I've owned good tube amps and bad ones. It's worth spending the extra money to get a good one. I had a Marshall that fell apart on me and cost more in repairs than it did to buy it. If it didn't sound so good I wouldn't have bothered getting it repaired. I then switched to a Boogie combo that served me extremely well or a decade. In that time, I changed tubes three times. With the Marshall, I could change tubes four times in one year.
@@LonelyRocker The tube amp is the modeling source for all great guitar tones save for the Roland solid state Jazz Chorus. I don't expect that to change anytime soon.
Totally agree with how tube and digital tech shouldn’t be mixed in one amp. Or at the very least set it up so that if the digital aspect fails, the amp will still work in a regular analog manner. I also don’t like the number of amps that are claiming to be “analog modelling”, but are actually utilizing digital aspects to do a lot of that work - Katana, Blues Cube amps, etc.. Also not a fan of hardware digital amps that try to be an all-genres-in-one amp. Fender has the right idea with making digital amps that just do one amp sound, but do it well.
It's like it's gone backwards or upside down. Amps influenced modelers and now modelers are influencing "some" amps! Amps should be amps and modelers should be modelers...none of this cross pollination! ;)
I picked up guitar in retirement. I haven't ever used a "real" tube amp. The closest thing I have to a real amp is an Orange Crush 35RT. It's really appealing to get a Tonex One for $179 and have all the amps. Many people just don't have thousands to spend on an amp. I would love to try a tube amp someday to see what I'm missing out on.
What you are doing is awesome!! the fact you picked up a guitar is amazing and the most important thing. Enjoy the tech. It unlocks things no one had years ago. But do commit to trying a real amp some time when you can crank it up. It's an experience like no other!!! Enjoy the ride!!!!
great video Dan, it's quite a lengthy topic for sure, for what it's worth: I grew up playing and gigging amps and 4x12s, tried all sorts of various amps and cabs in the chase for tone, and have fond memories of some favourites I had over the years (Hiwatt custom 100, Blackstar artisan , an 80s JCM800 , a Mesa Lonestar and more recently a VHT Deliverance) the price of entry was one thing however, buying a tube amp or say a decent cab was a bit of an investment, and quite a big thing, changing amps with the band was always quite a big deal, for better or worse results 😄, i spent way too long playing through v30 4x12s and t75 marshall cabs only to find out that a 4x12 with Greenbacks was ideal for me with the band(s) i was in (mathy/post rock style music), something these days would be quickly done by just trying out different speaker types/IRs with plugins/modeller fast forward to now, i'm happily playing through a Fractal FM3 rig with IEMs with my band which i can tweak the signal chain right down to the last detail. All that time spent playing around with tube amps/cabs/speakers has paid off with more modern tech as I have more of an idea what i'm looking for and can dial in said details it is however a much different experience compared to a loud blaring amp on stage/rehearsal, there is an interaction between guitar + speaker with proper volume and noise/feedback, something that is very much apparent with amp+cab rigs, and that's something that is worth experiencing compared to the somewhat sanitised/clinical noise gated ;) nature of plugins and modellers i'm not bashing one over the other, just an observation and to the final point, I've been working as a promoter for the last 15 or so years, you see a lot less amps/cabs on stage depending on the sorts of music/events, and i get it, not only from a practical standpoint, but also logistics, price of transportation etc.. depending on the style of music the lack of stage volume can play a part, but that's another rabbit hole of a subject ;) ultimately it's down to being tools of the trade, what gets the job done in the best way, and if something might be a slight tonal compromise but is 34% better overall, that's what you're probably going to choose to your point about software recording/mixing plugins, that has enabled a lot of us to be able to record/mix at home, for example how much better are the hardware counterparts? i'd love to experience/hear the effect of a real LA-2a , or Distressor on stuff i mix, but i don't have 2-3k+ to spare.. however i can afford a 100 euro plugin, the same discussions that are had about modelling/plugins vs tube amps can be had in that domain as well lengthy answer 😄 but felt like sharing my thoughts, i'd love to attend gearstreet some day and have these sorts of discussions, i guess i'll reach out to Henning at some point
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!! The key takeaway here is there are choices for every type of player and that is the awesome part of this. It should never be one vs the other. However, the guitar/amp relationship is such an important part of the experience and every serious player should find at least "some" time for it. I get the conveniences and even the cost. It's a great thing. BUT NOT at the expense of the real amp....those must remain!!!!!!!!
@@LonelyRocker totally agree, options should always be there and that guitar /amp volume interaction and experience is something really special i don't see one replacing the other, as an example just as CDs never completely replaced vinyl, if anything vinyl is almost more popular now, just different tools for the job
Very enjoyable video this one. My voyage was mostly digital. Up till 2014 when I had a year off for health reasons I’d no real way to deal with amps except for going into shops and then boy did I ever hit every single shop I could find!! Maybe 70 guitars that year and in the end in a shop the experience was mostly terrifying as I knew I had to be careful!! In the end I’d take my tiny little iPad rig and 40w iloud around and just ask if I could try guitars with that as this is what I actually knew and they’d all be like sure 👍. That little iOS rig turned a scary amount of heads as few could believe at the time the tones coming out of essentially a courier bag sat on the floor. It was Orange amp models I was using at the time, I was fixated on them with nothing but that and a compressor - had no clue what all the other pedals did outside a cursory understanding of electronics. I’ve had this same convo many a time in the last decade and I gotta say, watching you and Colin whom I’ve followed for the last 5 years, this video is maybe a tipping point. If there’s one thing I’d like to see, it’d be more Orange pedals. Weight is a key factor for many, as is volume. Keep up the innovation Charlie.
I mostly play amp modelers because I prefer low volumes nowadays. I had a lot of fun as a kid playing in super loud rock bands but now paying the price for all that hearing damage. I do have an Orange tube amp and cab I'll play sometimes just to get away from screens.
I think that's a great reason to play modelers...you could also get a load box for your amp and play that tube amp at comfortable volumes....You could also run a tube amp through a a load box into a modeler for a killer hybrid setup. I have videos on my channel about that :)
I record so I use the modeler as the interface and run the DI of the raw amp into a loop in the modeler and add my cab ir there. I monitor everything through my studio monitors. Browse my channel, you’ll see the video I did recently.
Really blows my mind that there are kids who’ve never cranked the shit out of a tube amp and haven’t wanted to. I love the digital because when I was a kid I’d just have to play unplugged at night and now I can get great quiet tones. But I loooooooooove my tube amps.
Lonely Rocker is stuck in his own head. You can hear it in soke of his word choices like when he talks about certain components "polluting" an amp. All of this stuff is just tools for a job. They enable me to get the job done in a variety of excellent sounding ways.
Clearly you haven't watched my channel before. I've used that exact terminology many times and I have numerous modelers in my studio that I consider great "tools" to get the job done. And I have made many videos about them. That doesn't minimize my joy for real amps but I have embraced both platforms with a big smile on my face...
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What some people don't realize is that tube amps feel dangerous. The menacing thunk when you turn them on and the palpable sense of power as they warm up is part of the appeal. You have this contraption that's almost like a living thing, and that has enough power running through it to kill you. Often times I'm inspired before I even play a note on my tube amps. I'm sitting there waiting the 20 or 30 seconds for it to warm up and kind of anticipating what I'm going to play. The sheer and almost primitive power of these things is part of the creative process. Their physical size and weight asserts their presence and importance. Having to carry it puts it in your brain that this thing is serious. One of the coolest things about Orange is that, because they look so whimsical and childlike, they become all the more intimidating when you realize how powerful and serious they really are.
I love this!!! That describes the "fear" I mentioned in the video to a T!!! It's so true and does have an effect on your playing. Respect the beast!!! :)
Charlie is such a good dude, it was an honor to hang with him at Gear Street a few years ago. Absolute banger of a guy. He does Orange proud because he wants to and believes in Orange, not just because his old man started the company. Nothing but admiration for Charlie!
I felt the same way. He was so pleasant to hang out with. Glad I got to know him...
From everything I've seen his dad is an uncommonly pleasant guy as well.
My neighbor, a few houses over, is a professional guitarist who does recording sessions and openers for larger bands. He's about 65, but he can play anything from country to funk, to just anything. I love watching him play. He has a bunch of tube amps, and wow to hear them is like breathtaking. Im a amateur player and he allowed me to plug my Super Strat into his Marshall and wow. With a distortion pedal and just a hair gain it was amazing. However due to his health and age, he no longer lugs his tube amps around anymore. He picked up this Spark amp and he played through it for me and wow. It wasn't identical, but it was close, plus he no longer has to carry a pedal board, which again is a huge plus for his back. He takes the Spark and tells them to mic and he's done. Now me, I don't have a real tube amp, but I do have a bunch of solid state amps including, an Orange Crush and I love it. I wish I had a bunch of tube amps, but cost and maintainance prevents me from making that jump. I'll eventually pick up a tube amp when I retire and Spark has a great reputation so I'll even get one of those practice amps too. However I'm a bedroom player, and never have had the intentions to play for an audience ever. However, I understand what Orange is doing and they are doing it right. Tubes have been around and will always stay around. Like records, I still buy record, because my recird player has never died, and it is belt driven.
Thanks for sharing your experience. That's the joy of real amps and the conveniences of modelers on display for one player. And that is what is so mazing about being a player today. We have choices. It's not one vs. the other. It's choice. Is till think every player should try both before they make their ultimate decision. That's really my point.
Like you perfectly said it. It is always the player, not the marshall stacks or any guitars. 🤘🏽🤘🏽
I got into Orange amps through their Amplitube expansion. I now own 5 Orange amps.
Awesome! Proof positive that an introduction through digital can be a positive thing for the amp companies. Enjoy those beauties!!
I just wish Orange would re-voice their Crush line of SS amps. The vast majority of us can’t afford an OR30 or Rockerverb and will wind up playing the transistor stuff. The current iterations are super-dark and wooly-sounding with a loose low-end. Just give us a line of Super Crush-ish combos from 12 to 100 watts at varying price points.
They seem content with the Crush but if enough people ask, you never know what they might do.
They actually have already re-voiced the Crush line once before, the old ones had a more loose and fuzzy distortion from what I've heard. I doubt they'd want to go through the trouble of re-vamping them again to tone-match them to their current offerings when they essentially did that already something like 7.5 years ago! \m/
@@SerpentsBane1995 They should do another revision, those amps still don’t sound very good.
They're supposed to be voiced after the rockerverb. I'd personally like to see more wattage and larger speakers at each price point as modellers are eating up that market.
I love tube amps, but I'm also thrilled with the progress in solid state. I use both. I just say that if you are going to get a tube amp get a good one with a good warranty and get to know your repair tech before you have to take it in. I also recommend taking in tube amps for services, not just when something goes wrong. If you've never changed tubes, ask the repairman to show you how it's done. I've owned good tube amps and bad ones. It's worth spending the extra money to get a good one. I had a Marshall that fell apart on me and cost more in repairs than it did to buy it. If it didn't sound so good I wouldn't have bothered getting it repaired. I then switched to a Boogie combo that served me extremely well or a decade. In that time, I changed tubes three times. With the Marshall, I could change tubes four times in one year.
Great advice and insight! Choice is a great thing and I embrace everything that sounds good. But a tube amp needs to remain in the formula!!
@@LonelyRocker The tube amp is the modeling source for all great guitar tones save for the Roland solid state Jazz Chorus. I don't expect that to change anytime soon.
Totally agree with how tube and digital tech shouldn’t be mixed in one amp. Or at the very least set it up so that if the digital aspect fails, the amp will still work in a regular analog manner. I also don’t like the number of amps that are claiming to be “analog modelling”, but are actually utilizing digital aspects to do a lot of that work - Katana, Blues Cube amps, etc.. Also not a fan of hardware digital amps that try to be an all-genres-in-one amp. Fender has the right idea with making digital amps that just do one amp sound, but do it well.
It's like it's gone backwards or upside down. Amps influenced modelers and now modelers are influencing "some" amps! Amps should be amps and modelers should be modelers...none of this cross pollination! ;)
Really enjoyed that man!
Thanks so much! this was a lot of fun!! :)
Now i have even more respect for the orange amp brand :D
edit: the clean sound at around 16:00 sounds amazing
Thanks so much. I agree. I love that a legendary brand knows its place well. Cheers!
I picked up guitar in retirement. I haven't ever used a "real" tube amp. The closest thing I have to a real amp is an Orange Crush 35RT. It's really appealing to get a Tonex One for $179 and have all the amps. Many people just don't have thousands to spend on an amp. I would love to try a tube amp someday to see what I'm missing out on.
What you are doing is awesome!! the fact you picked up a guitar is amazing and the most important thing. Enjoy the tech. It unlocks things no one had years ago. But do commit to trying a real amp some time when you can crank it up. It's an experience like no other!!! Enjoy the ride!!!!
Go to a rental rehearsal space for an hour. They always have some loud amp you can turn up way too loud without anyone caring. Easy, cheap, very cool.
Good advice!!
Get a used ac15 for $500.
Great video. Very interesting conversation. Really enjoyed this.🎸🤘🏻
Thanks so much! Glad you enjoyed it!!
great video Dan, it's quite a lengthy topic for sure, for what it's worth:
I grew up playing and gigging amps and 4x12s, tried all sorts of various amps and cabs in the chase for tone, and have fond memories of some favourites I had over the years (Hiwatt custom 100, Blackstar artisan , an 80s JCM800 , a Mesa Lonestar and more recently a VHT Deliverance)
the price of entry was one thing however, buying a tube amp or say a decent cab was a bit of an investment, and quite a big thing, changing amps with the band was always quite a big deal, for better or worse results 😄, i spent way too long playing through v30 4x12s and t75 marshall cabs only to find out that a 4x12 with Greenbacks was ideal for me with the band(s) i was in (mathy/post rock style music), something these days would be quickly done by just trying out different speaker types/IRs with plugins/modeller
fast forward to now, i'm happily playing through a Fractal FM3 rig with IEMs with my band which i can tweak the signal chain right down to the last detail. All that time spent playing around with tube amps/cabs/speakers has paid off with more modern tech as I have more of an idea what i'm looking for and can dial in said details
it is however a much different experience compared to a loud blaring amp on stage/rehearsal, there is an interaction between guitar + speaker with proper volume and noise/feedback, something that is very much apparent with amp+cab rigs, and that's something that is worth experiencing compared to the somewhat sanitised/clinical noise gated ;) nature of plugins and modellers
i'm not bashing one over the other, just an observation
and to the final point, I've been working as a promoter for the last 15 or so years, you see a lot less amps/cabs on stage depending on the sorts of music/events, and i get it, not only from a practical standpoint, but also logistics, price of transportation etc.. depending on the style of music the lack of stage volume can play a part, but that's another rabbit hole of a subject ;)
ultimately it's down to being tools of the trade, what gets the job done in the best way, and if something might be a slight tonal compromise but is 34% better overall, that's what you're probably going to choose
to your point about software recording/mixing plugins, that has enabled a lot of us to be able to record/mix at home, for example how much better are the hardware counterparts?
i'd love to experience/hear the effect of a real LA-2a , or Distressor on stuff i mix, but i don't have 2-3k+ to spare.. however i can afford a 100 euro plugin, the same discussions that are had about modelling/plugins vs tube amps can be had in that domain as well
lengthy answer 😄 but felt like sharing my thoughts, i'd love to attend gearstreet some day and have these sorts of discussions, i guess i'll reach out to Henning at some point
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!! The key takeaway here is there are choices for every type of player and that is the awesome part of this. It should never be one vs the other. However, the guitar/amp relationship is such an important part of the experience and every serious player should find at least "some" time for it. I get the conveniences and even the cost. It's a great thing. BUT NOT at the expense of the real amp....those must remain!!!!!!!!
@@LonelyRocker totally agree, options should always be there and that guitar /amp volume interaction and experience is something really special
i don't see one replacing the other, as an example just as CDs never completely replaced vinyl, if anything vinyl is almost more popular now, just different tools for the job
Very enjoyable video this one. My voyage was mostly digital. Up till 2014 when I had a year off for health reasons I’d no real way to deal with amps except for going into shops and then boy did I ever hit every single shop I could find!! Maybe 70 guitars that year and in the end in a shop the experience was mostly terrifying as I knew I had to be careful!! In the end I’d take my tiny little iPad rig and 40w iloud around and just ask if I could try guitars with that as this is what I actually knew and they’d all be like sure 👍.
That little iOS rig turned a scary amount of heads as few could believe at the time the tones coming out of essentially a courier bag sat on the floor.
It was Orange amp models I was using at the time, I was fixated on them with nothing but that and a compressor - had no clue what all the other pedals did outside a cursory understanding of electronics.
I’ve had this same convo many a time in the last decade and I gotta say, watching you and Colin whom I’ve followed for the last 5 years, this video is maybe a tipping point.
If there’s one thing I’d like to see, it’d be more Orange pedals. Weight is a key factor for many, as is volume. Keep up the innovation Charlie.
Thanks! And thanks for sharing your journey!
This is a video!
indeed!
@@EytschPi42 Coming from the master himself that means a lot! Thank you! 😎🤘🏽🎸
That’s indeed a nice video😉
Thank you kind stranger! :)
I mostly play amp modelers because I prefer low volumes nowadays. I had a lot of fun as a kid playing in super loud rock bands but now paying the price for all that hearing damage. I do have an Orange tube amp and cab I'll play sometimes just to get away from screens.
I think that's a great reason to play modelers...you could also get a load box for your amp and play that tube amp at comfortable volumes....You could also run a tube amp through a a load box into a modeler for a killer hybrid setup. I have videos on my channel about that :)
@@LonelyRocker I should try that! Do you run back into monitors then?
I record so I use the modeler as the interface and run the DI of the raw amp into a loop in the modeler and add my cab ir there. I monitor everything through my studio monitors. Browse my channel, you’ll see the video I did recently.
Really blows my mind that there are kids who’ve never cranked the shit out of a tube amp and haven’t wanted to. I love the digital because when I was a kid I’d just have to play unplugged at night and now I can get great quiet tones. But I loooooooooove my tube amps.
Want to add an orange to my collection
That’s the best attitude! There is room for both!
That Oriverb tho!
I know!! 😎🤟🏼🎸
Most places today want a quiet stage with in ear mixes. So guitarist are asked to play direct
Times have really changed! That’s a shame. That’s not what live music is supposed to be like.
Heavy metal is supposed to be heavy. That's what Orange Amps do best...I have no time for computers-aided-bull-sh!t...🤘🤘🤘
Amen!
🤟🏼✨️Fella!
Rock on! :)
Lonely Rocker is stuck in his own head. You can hear it in soke of his word choices like when he talks about certain components "polluting" an amp. All of this stuff is just tools for a job. They enable me to get the job done in a variety of excellent sounding ways.
Clearly you haven't watched my channel before. I've used that exact terminology many times and I have numerous modelers in my studio that I consider great "tools" to get the job done. And I have made many videos about them. That doesn't minimize my joy for real amps but I have embraced both platforms with a big smile on my face...
😂
🤣