You Little Gem

Well, it would appear that I'm only two weeks into my blog and I'm already behind on my blogging. Anyone who knows me would simply shrug and say that it's a typical sign of my laziness and well, I'd agree!

Truth is I've been genuinely busy of late partly doing the rock and roll thing and going on a small tour with my band and also spending what feels like an eternity installing the epic amount of music software I've amassed over the last few years onto my new laptop.

While scrabbling for a story to satisfy my guitar itch it became clear that I should pay homage to the glorious orange box that exudes the sweet sweet sound of ROCK whenever I connect my guitar to it, my lovely Orange Rocker 30 combo.

Now you might read this and think I'm stupid and well, you'd be right but I don't always use my own amp at gigs despite me spending more money than is sensible on it in the first place. You see I live in London and I don't drive and I've lost count of the times I've borrowed another bands amp because it's been more convinient and above all cheaper than getting a cab. I remember wincing at the sound of my Big Muff through a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe, being electrocuted by a battered old Line 6 Flextone 2 and having my ear drums shredded by the machete like treble of a Marshall JCM900. This tour was different, we had a VAN and everything, and at every gig I played I made a point of proudly carrying my rocker 30 inside each venue.

One of the first things I learnt as a guitarist is just how important a decent amp is and when it was time to choose mine I set myself the following criteria; it had to be loud, compact, produce that sweet bell like valve tone, be as basic as possible and love to be driven with pedals in a similar way Michael Vaughan might cover drive a cricket ball to the long boundary. (Sport pun there, apologies.)

The rocker 30 is as simple as it is brilliant, although you can switch between a 'natural' and 'dirty' channels it really is just a one channel amp. Running at 30 watts in class 'A' (this means that when its been switched on for a while you can cook your breakfast on it) the natural channel provides you with nothing but a volume knob and bypasses the pre amp stage completely running your signal directly into it's pair of (I prefer electro harmonix) EL-34 power valves. This allows you to go from a ringing clean sound to classic valve break up easily but it provides a surprisingly useful amount of clean headroom even for a 30 watt amp! The Dirty channel is where things get interesting and is the channel I use. Engaging this channel switches in a set of 12AX7 pre amp valves and allows you to control the input gain as well as the output volume which, combined with a very musical 3 band EQ allows you to easily dial in your desired sound with no fuss whatsoever. I like to set the gain to around 11 o'clock just before the signal starts to break up, just high enough to add a little grit to beef up the clean sound, I then leave the bass and the mids flat adding just enough treble to help cut through the mix.

I remember the first time I tried one of these amps and it literally sang to me and I knew it was the amp for me. In fact all of the Orange Rockerverb series comes highly recommended, forget any preconceptions you may have about how Orange amps sound because the higher wattage amps have gain for decades that will impress even those of us who sit in very dark rooms and have unfeasibly long beards.

I just wish people would stop telling me to turn it down...