Orange 40th anniversary OR50

By Eddie Pletka 07/01/11 

Here at Eurotubes we see a ton of Orange gear. Everything from AD30’s to Dual Terrors, Rockerverbs to Vintage OD’s. Orange has come out with some really exciting gear in the last few years but the OR50 is exactly what I’ve been waiting for. I’ve had the amp now for several months and it’s become a permanent addition to my rig. Single channel, no FX loop, plug in and crank it up! Couldn’t be a simpler layout. The controls are as follows: Master Volume, HF Drive, Treble, Mid, Bass, Gain. 

The amp actually has a killer clean tone with a wide range of overdriven sounds from mild to “classic” metal. Sonically speaking the amp definitely falls into the Brit category. Very aggressive upper mid and when pushed the overdriven tone has lots of attitude. The amp also has that massive underlying bass timbre that helped make Orange famous. This head through a matching Orange 4X12 is truly thunderous.

The HF drive is a great feature. It’s similar to a presence control but it also adds a little extra grit when you crank it. This control has enough range to tame any Strat or cut the mud with a down and dirty humbucker.

Functionally speaking, the amp seems to take on a somewhat wooly and not so dynamic feel with the master volume set any less than noon. This amp was not meant to be a bedroom amp or for the faint of heart. It really needs to be cranked to come alive. I think Orange knew this, as they made the master volume defeatable (this function can be activated via a foot switch). This is a pretty handy feature because A; it allows the amp to really rock like it was meant to and B; if you leave the master volume set a little shy of wide open, when you click it out of the circuit it gives you a very useable boost.

Orange made two versions of these heads. They did a very limited (40 pieces I believe) hand wired version and a full production model (both available only in 2008). I had a chance to audition both (very briefly) at the Winter NAMM show. The HW version had a great clean tone and it really captured that perfectly dynamic, moderately broken up clean tone. To be totally honest though, it just didn’t scream like the production version. I suppose this is a good thing though because I really didn’t want to have my heart set on such a rare (i.e. expensive) bird…

Eddie