To me, you guys are the gold standard in Demos (Anderton's in general, not just you two). You guys are quite good at "selling" a product in an unintentional way (usually by how much time spent playing vs talking and the looks on your faces as you do) but I'm confused... you guys seem like smart guys albeit it in a humorous way, but as far as I can tell this is clearly sold as a power amp in a small portable package. You could have a full amp set up with just a large pedalboard man. Just add speakers and stir. I'm not an biased orange fan boy, but they don't try and sell snake oil with this. They are 100% up front with what this is, and clearly it's made for the pre amp pedals for a wider variety of amp tones but at a fraction of the cost to the consumer like me that can't afford/ justify two or three nice tube amps. That's why I came here, to see it ran simply: guitar to pre amp pedal, this and cab. Why would you not use it the way it was designed? What's next "2020 Gibson les Paul custom is not a very good guitar. Overly bulky to use as a hammer and unusable as a emergency flotation device. 4/10 would not recommended". You took the pedal in the name pedal baby way to literal and missed a golden opportunity to sell this, along with demo some pre amp pedals, in an honest way as you normally do. I'm not sure what the deal was here. Yes it's solid state. Tell the guitarist fans of death, prong and static x how bad solid state is and you'll get the "da fug you say man?" look from them. I would love to see another video with this, and the kraken, diezel, orange, and whatever other pre amp pedals you could find.... just saying.
Orange say this amp is Class A/B. You guys might have mentioned that, unlike many of the really small amps, such as the VOX range, Diago and those from EHX, it does not use an external power supply. Mains power connects through a 3 pin IEC socket on the back of the amp. As far as using it on, or under, an effects pedal board is concerned, with any pedal board mounted amp you have to watch out for the radiated hum/switching noise from the amp power supply which can get induced into the signal chain (wah wah inductors can be a particular problem with picking up radiated hum). Which is why most of the small amps designed to mount on the board have those separate and inconvenient power supplies. Incidentally radiated hum from any guitar amp being picked by your guitars pickups can also be a real pain. Field radiation from guitar amps varies quite a bit but reviewers never mention it.
I'm a valve amp person but I do like this especially from a reliability point of view. In my experience a little compression at the end of the chain brings it closer to the feel of a valve amp... a little squish is always good! It'd be a great option if you want to do a wet/dry set-up with a separate cab though. :)
Its a power amp,meant to be used with preamp pedals or rack preamp units and digital modelers,apologies for pointing the obvious but this thing is what you need if you want light rig,it barks with clarity and precsence,top end and bottom no matter the cab,like a big p.a. poweramp but for guitar,a really should have two of em fearing orange discontinuing it,addictive sound hahaa this thing is a dream
I generally LOVE every video that I see here but this one went way wrong. The pre amps were not dialed in and that was obvious. It was all mids! It was clear that when using the pedals direct to the amp, the pedals were EQ'd as if they were going into an amp with a traditional tone stack. No tweeking was done to the pedals to adjust to quite a different set up. No no no. This made this 100W beast sound like a tin can. Which is not so. The pedal baby rocks!!! Next time, I would learn and experiment with a new ground breaking product before making and posting a video. I have a huge collection of valve amps and love this thing with the sansamp flyrig series. Still, thanks for making the video.
I own the pedal baby 100 and played an Orange Dual Terror for years (which will be sold now). Playing smooth dreamy delay sounds and doomy fuzz sounds with the pedal baby and it is perfect! Honestly this Andertons video is not doing justice to the amp. I am not even using a tube pre amp pedal, just wether overdrive or fuzz with the volume knob on 2am. The whole band liked it!
I think it was the power amp, if you hear when the Capt. plays, the strat sound really mid-focused as well. Probably the "subtle" eq section the amp has doesn't add much bass
It could work with a Multi-Fx pedal - like a Headrush, GT-1000 etc - something with amp simulation and use the Pedal Baby as the power amp - easier than doing the 4 cable method to by-pass an amps pre-amp...
Honestly, the best thing that happened to the world of guitar is the possibility to only take your pedal board + guitar to a gig or rehearsal. The only thing you need is a cabinet or PA systems
It’s safe to say that if you don’t like the sound of the Pedal Baby, you actually don’t like the sound of your pedals. This thing sounds amazing with just a simple MXR micro amp pedal to sweeten up the neutral clean of the amplifier. After that, your pedals will sound the best they possibly can. These two guys didn’t give it enough time, and the “uninspired guy” wasn’t even trying
Next big thing...? Quilter has been dominating this price point for a few years now, its just that major brands such as Boss and Orange are jumping on it now! And at that price Id still have my 101 mini head! Compact and great sounding!
I'd really like it if you guys came back and revisited this using something like the Victory V4 pre-amps or Kingsley Constable. I completely agree this will be the next direction of the industry as you can simply scale up power amps as needed (home vs gig) or swap your pre-amp pedals as needed. A lot of flexibility, not just size/weight/travel.
I can think of a lot of ways to use this amp! 1. It would be awesome to use two of these as stereo amps. You could take your normal amp, take the fx loop out, split the signal, go into stereo effects and into two of these, and use them as a wet/dry/wet setup. I would probably go with this for myself. 2. You could also use a low wattage amplifier that you like, take the fx loop out, split it, and use one of these as a louder power amp, you would keep your tone almost the same, just louder. 3. You can also use two of these as a stereo setup for a nice acoustic guitar rig. 4. You can get something like a small modelling amp like a Helix or Boss GT and just carry that, this amp, and a small 1x12 cabinet with you (if you can find one with a speaker that can handle that much power). I mean, it's a 100 W power amp that is cheap, robust, small-ish, and loud. I think it's great, but that is just my opinion.
Well, this amp isn't going to break up, so if your pedals are set to boost heavily, like with the output turned up but the gain set low, it's just going to be a louder sterile tone. That is why the Captain sounds better here, he normally wants a total clean amp where Rob uses them set up edge of breakup. I wish they had spent more time adjusting the pedals than fiddling with pre-amps.
Though I'm sure you can get great tones from the Pedal Baby, I think an amp that emulated the power section of traditional tube amps would be more desirable for most players, with such artifacts as bias and sag, and make them adjustable with switches or pots.
The point of this amp is impedance compatibility with guitar cabinets that are likely to be shared at a venue, which will most likely be 8 or 16 ohms. This amp will produce full power into an 8 ohm cabinet and 75 watts into a 16 ohm cabinet. Class D amps will only produce full power into 4 ohm cabinets.
I appreciate you guys' honesty in this review. I'm glad there's other reactions other than praise for Orange. Yes, they're a good brand, but it's not like they're exempt of the occasional "yeah, ok" product.
You could go back 10-12 years in time, and voila: Crate already did this with the Powerblock. It sold like candy and still was discontinued. Maybe it wasn't reliable, mine sits on my shelf with a probably broken power section that can't be fixed. All it does is shuts down the breaker in my house :D
This just proves that the perception of tone is always in the hand of the user - and how inspired it makes you feel. Recorded I think that it sounded pretty good, put that in a live or studio mix I doubt anyone would know the difference. However if it doesn’t make you feel inspired to play it may have a negative impact on your playing. I semi pro twice per month and tbh this does seem like a very useful product. I could use it for larger gigs like halls where my 40 watt valve combo doesn’t have enough umph. Or a rehearsal space.
Well you've got the Blug Amp1 that has been around for quite some time, and as a pedalboard amplifier it really beats the s*** out of most any other product of that range. 1st, it's built as a PEDAL ... yeah ! You can switch it WITH YOUR FEET. 2nd, it's got most every feature one would expect from any standard modern amp (loop section, 3 stages of gain, etc... etc...). 3rd, although the power section is solid state, it's driven by a tube preamp. And finally it PUNCHES 100 freaking Watts of true loud power (meaning it's deafening loud, if you're not careful). As it is really FLAT, it suits perfectly on a pedalboard which is destined to get inside a flightcase (rigid or not) without issue whatsoever. I'm not sponsored by Blug at all, and that "Blug Amp1" has also a couple of CONS so to speak (just as any other standard amplifier), but it really sounds "VALVEY" (nice natural compression when overdriven, etc..., thanks to the tube preamp which is always active), it's really deafening loud and works perfectly in a stage situation (even a big stage), AND IT SOUNDS REALLY REALLY GOOD, which is the main thing in the end.
The addition of the preamp pedal really helped the tone. I think that's the way to go for these kinds of amps in a box. Plus, you guys didn't really adjust the EQ knobs much, it would've been useful to hear what difference those made.
I think where this would be a killer addition would be for something digital like a helix or a hx stomp. Turn of cab sim, and run it into this and I think you'd have a winning solution.
Really shows how most pedals were made to blend with the amp’s tone, they should have made a clean superloud tube power amp with shit tons of harmonics, THAT would have sounded cool
Plug in a dumble pedal and now you have a dumble amp or plug in a blues breaker pedal and now you have a pushed Marshall amp. That’s the cool thing about these types of products.
In theory that's correct although I'd suspect the live amplifiers vs. the pedal gain structures and this type of power section would feel and sound quite a bit different. Probably shades of similiar, but I'd but there'd be a noticeable difference. Not necessarily good or bad, just differences.
Full credit to you gents for working very hard to try to make this thing sound good. It did not. Interesting concept tho and maybe you should do a challenge/revisit of it: "Can anyone get a great tone out of this?"
What about through a multi effect pedal board that has amp models with pre amps like the Boss gt-100 or other higher end ones like. Helix etc..into this power amp?? Would not that be more the idea for this?
I'm kind of disappointed with this video and especially the comments section; like, this amp is specifically meant to do a certain job, and then they just... didn't use it like that. I could see this being a fab amp, but when it's specifically designed to amplify the sound of your pedals without putting in any of its own sound, and then you complain about the sound... Like buds, if it sounds like shit, that's because your pedals by themselves sound like shit. This thing begs for an amp modeling pedal in front of it, you can't just treat it like a normal tube amp lads. And for everyone in the comments saying "just get a tube amp/Katana/etc!!!", that's not the point. As for the price, or whether it's better to get a class D power amp instead, that's up to the buyer. It'd just be nice if the buyer was given the proper information instead of an alienating review because you didn't bother to find out how it works.
i have that marshall mini double stack in the background and with all the controls turned all the way up with a strat i can get a petty cool sound out of it.
Lots of people missing the point, this is designed almost entirely for touring and playing gigs; helluva lot easier to travel and show up at venues with one of these and a preamp pedal emulating a $3000 amp than it is to travel with a $3000 amp.
Sounds like my Yamaha G-100 212 II 100 watt solid state amp I bought in 1979. By itself it sounds anemic,... but in a stereo configuration with a good all Class 'A' tube amp and the right blend of the two it can sound magically delicious.
I must compliment the Capt. on his snazzy OG Vans. This to me looks more like a stab at the S'more Duncan Powerstage 170, which are pretty killer IMO. The 700 stereo one is a potential game changer. I wish Orange had went stereo with this. Two of these and an OMEC Teleport could potentially be ludicrous speed however. Have a dual amp BiasFX rig pushing air through two cabs? Yarp. Could be neat. The old Orang-ish color AVID Elevenrack (they've practically been giving away now. lol!) would look LiVe iN YoRe eYeS cute next to this, and a TigerShark (yes the cartoon) striped Charvel superstrat SSH. I personally dig solid state sound as medium, not as an alternative, but I have started to dig it more lately. It has advantages, but it's all about the pre. If you have a favorite "amp in a can" analog pedal that boosts realistically? Straight analog pre-amps like AMT or TECH21NYC? The Fly Rig & this? It would probably cook with gas! Catlinbread are one of my favs, because their "amps in a can" do 9 & 18 volt headroom. MOORE digital pre's stomps, or the newer big Pro stomp? Yarp. Even a cheap single channel interface, the pedal baby, and a cab? BiasFx? Yarp. For the money though? IMO? Save and go stereo. Dual amp FTW. My gripe: It's mono. The stereo SD Powerstage is almost twice this price
I have a Quilter Toneblock 201. Does all this does, and more, and is so effing loud I can gig on bass through it and my Helix LT. I also have an frfr speaker so can play guitar or bass with 1 rig.
Not to brag but I am valve at my tone heart loving my Mesa /Boogie 295 poweramp with 12 tubes. A mix of 4 EL34, 4 6L6 and 4 12ax7. Just got it for my Mesa/Boogie Quad preamp with 8 12ax7 tubes. It might be old 1990 and heavy but the tones!
I’ve been looking at these intently the past couple weeks. Very tempted to use it for a live rig with just a boss ds2 fed into it as I’ll only be doing rhythm, and if I need cleans the solid state output amp should be enough. Can’t beat a lightweight and robust system for gigging
Definitely a great back-up amp if you gigging and probably sounds brilliant with a 'perfect' digital/pedal in front of it like a BOSS GT1000000 or whatever or a Kemper as you say. Glad you tested that out :)
the milkman has a reverb, tremolo and a valve preamp as well as a solid state power amp. once you've bought this, a decent reverb, tremolo and preamp you might as well have bought the milkman. if thats the market this is aimed at they've missed the mark by a long way
Yeah as an additional amp in various situations itd be cool. A stereo version would be even cooler. You could use something like a Torpedo captor and leave the dry sound as the amp and then run the captor line out into stereo gear and then through a stereo power amp for W/D/W. Or you could use something like a Mooer Preamp Live and stereo pedals.
@@jamieevans7054 I gigged mine for years, I'd still be using it today if it didn't get stolen at a show. Those things are amazing as pedal platforms. Now I'm using a Crown poweramp to fill the same role in my setup.
I've never seen two people try so hard not to crap all over a product with their review. I hope Orange paid them well to maintain such restraint on reviewing how much they really hate this thing.
Bluguitar Amp1was one of the first pedalboard amps. There are more: quilter, mooer, seymour duncan, ehx, dv mark, hotone etc. Milkman in 2018 while other products are here many years earlier.
I've never heard either of these guys sound this bad. It's like the tones I was getting from my original Peavey crap solid state amp I got back in 1982. I think the speaker was like 8".
you could use a Joyo Bantamp, since you don't need to hook it up to a cab. run it through the fx send of the joyo, and that way you replace the 20w class D solidstate poweramp with this 100w class AB
You can get a used 100 watt solid state power amp rack unit for like 100 bucks...and itll probably sound the same as this although this has a better form factor
This has a tube transformer. A 100W tube transformer can sell for over $100, which adds more to this. This may seem overpriced, but it behaves a lot like a genuine tube power amp. This is actually quite good for the price
Andertons Music Co I'm not a huge PRS guy but I'd love to see Core vs S2 vs SE. I prefer the SE like over the rest, well, the more recent year SE's anyway. So I'd love to see something like that
Basically it takes the amp out of the equation and makes it all about your pedals. It's like plugging your pedal board directly into your fx return... Which there's been some videos about not too long ago.
I think now it's called Magnum. BTW, TPS did one about these kind of gear. They had the SD Power Stage and the Magnum. And maybe another one that I don't remember.
I think Orange Amps was kinda hoping you would buy the Pedal Baby and also their Orange Bax Bangeetar Preamp/EQ pedal. If your a Orange fan just buy the Orange Crush Pro 120 head if you can not afford their tube heads.
I said a while back to the Marshall guys that the first brand that makes a 50/100 watt head that fits on a pedalboard will start a trend ,then the blu amp thing came out not sure how good it is tbh
I've been using BIAS HEAD with ICEPOWER(Bang&Olufsen) 700AS1 which I knew when I opened it and looked inside. Kemper and seymour duncan PowerStage700 use the same kind of class D component (probably totally the same thing). Now I'm thinking of using Quad Cortex, and need some powerful power amplifier, reminds me of this product. It's not so expensive, and I guess it's worth trying.
So I feel like this was designed to have a pod or a vox or marshall pedal right before the amp. I think even a pocket pod with a well engineered tone and the speaker emulation turned off might sound good with it even. I would likely also try it with a Tech 21 British or a leeds pedal.
@@sonofboar13 In Rabea's video reviewing the Kraken pedal somebody in commented he was using the Kraken with the SD and he was very happy with the combination. 170 watts seems a lot of headroom to me but SD has a more powerful (and more expensive) one. BTW, TPS featured the SD 170 in one episode.
@@ontheroad579 It's 170 into 4 ohms, far less if you have an 8 or (as in my case) 16 ohm cab. However, looking at the wattage of an amp is not recommended as an accurate way of determining its volume/headroom. For example, in the vid, the Captain reckons the 100w Orange is slightly louder the 600w powered Kemper. If you've ever put a 30w class A or A/B valve amp up against a 100w class D, you'll know what I mean.
I am wondering how the TC Electronic BAM200 would do as a pedal amp. I know it was intended for totally different purposes, but it might work very well. I especially like that it the power supply is built in.
Crate did a similar amp years ago called the Power Block. You could get them for $99 and they sounded amazing. They looked like a pill sort of and they were better IMO.
I have one, and it's a different proposition. The Crate has full EQ and a gain control. It's very difficult to get a pure "clean" sound out of the CPB, but it is an amazing little beast, and you could probably use it in a similar way by just plugging in to the FX return.
Blindfold - Helix vs. Kemper vs. Headrush vs. axe fx vs. real amp rig. Dial in a similar chain for each one and dial them in. Give rob and lee (or Pete or rabea or whomever else you may choose) a guitar and let them pick which ones they think sound the best. I’ve always wanted a REAL modeling vs real challenge. Thanks from the states, guys! This would help a bunch because I can’t decide between headrush or helix lt.
It is class C that is small. The design has been around along time but was complex to make but it is very efficient. My guess is some one has put a lot of the difficult bits on a chip or two so everyone has jumped on it. The idea is ok...but you must invest in a good preamp to get a good clean tone. A good OD will probably sound very acceptable with it.
Excellent video as usual even if this product seemed un-inspiring! Would love to see you guys do your take on speaker upgrades to: Katana, superchamp x2, blues jr...etc!
Mhm, I think this would be a good thing for powering cabs on stage when you work with a direct solution for FoH like a Helix Stuff, Headrush Stuff, Boss GT-1000, etc.
I think Orange chose classAB because of the way the speakers effect the reactance and and NFB. I'm guessing at least the bassES knob uses a circuit that interacts with speaker damping and NFB.
![The Best Guitar Amp In The World [And Tips On Using Pedals With It]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/6j0hOIu6LeM/mqdefault.jpg)
![The Best Guitar Amp In The World [And Tips On Using Pedals With It]](/img/tr.png)
The sound from the room always sounds better to me than the mic'd sound. Maybe you guys could blend in more room.
It's time WE ALL ACKNOWLEDGE: the Crate Power Block was SO ahead of it's time...
I know this was a year ago but no.
To me, you guys are the gold standard in Demos (Anderton's in general, not just you two). You guys are quite good at "selling" a product in an unintentional way (usually by how much time spent playing vs talking and the looks on your faces as you do) but I'm confused... you guys seem like smart guys albeit it in a humorous way, but as far as I can tell this is clearly sold as a power amp in a small portable package. You could have a full amp set up with just a large pedalboard man. Just add speakers and stir. I'm not an biased orange fan boy, but they don't try and sell snake oil with this. They are 100% up front with what this is, and clearly it's made for the pre amp pedals for a wider variety of amp tones but at a fraction of the cost to the consumer like me that can't afford/ justify two or three nice tube amps. That's why I came here, to see it ran simply: guitar to pre amp pedal, this and cab. Why would you not use it the way it was designed? What's next "2020 Gibson les Paul custom is not a very good guitar. Overly bulky to use as a hammer and unusable as a emergency flotation device. 4/10 would not recommended". You took the pedal in the name pedal baby way to literal and missed a golden opportunity to sell this, along with demo some pre amp pedals, in an honest way as you normally do. I'm not sure what the deal was here. Yes it's solid state. Tell the guitarist fans of death, prong and static x how bad solid state is and you'll get the "da fug you say man?" look from them. I would love to see another video with this, and the kraken, diezel, orange, and whatever other pre amp pedals you could find.... just saying.
use the Pedal Baby as a pedal board. Velcro your pedals on top
Johnny Megabyte Studios that’s what I’m thinking
Johnny Megabyte Studios I was thinking the same! I dig this amp
only problem with that is if it'll fit in the bag, i use pedal train which comes with a nice suit case-looking bag and i doubt it'd fit in after that
You need a preamp.
I read that it gets pretty hot though. Could melt the adhesive.
Orange say this amp is Class A/B. You guys might have mentioned that, unlike many of the really small amps, such as the VOX range, Diago and those from EHX, it does not use an external power supply. Mains power connects through a 3 pin IEC socket on the back of the amp. As far as using it on, or under, an effects pedal board is concerned, with any pedal board mounted amp you have to watch out for the radiated hum/switching noise from the amp power supply which can get induced into the signal chain (wah wah inductors can be a particular problem with picking up radiated hum). Which is why most of the small amps designed to mount on the board have those separate and inconvenient power supplies. Incidentally radiated hum from any guitar amp being picked by your guitars pickups can also be a real pain. Field radiation from guitar amps varies quite a bit but reviewers never mention it.
I'm a valve amp person but I do like this especially from a reliability point of view. In my experience a little compression at the end of the chain brings it closer to the feel of a valve amp... a little squish is always good! It'd be a great option if you want to do a wet/dry set-up with a separate cab though. :)
5:36 .. the FX loop is in front of the power amp, rob ;)
So the chain would be prefx pedals -> preamp Pedal -> postfx pedals -> poweramp.
Its a power amp,meant to be used with preamp pedals or rack preamp units and digital modelers,apologies for pointing the obvious but this thing is what you need if you want light rig,it barks with clarity and precsence,top end and bottom no matter the cab,like a big p.a. poweramp but for guitar,a really should have two of em fearing orange discontinuing it,addictive sound hahaa this thing is a dream
I generally LOVE every video that I see here but this one went way wrong. The pre amps were not dialed in and that was obvious. It was all mids! It was clear that when using the pedals direct to the amp, the pedals were EQ'd as if they were going into an amp with a traditional tone stack. No tweeking was done to the pedals to adjust to quite a different set up. No no no. This made this 100W beast sound like a tin can. Which is not so. The pedal baby rocks!!! Next time, I would learn and experiment with a new ground breaking product before making and posting a video. I have a huge collection of valve amps and love this thing with the sansamp flyrig series. Still, thanks for making the video.
I own the pedal baby 100 and played an Orange Dual Terror for years (which will be sold now). Playing smooth dreamy delay sounds and doomy fuzz sounds with the pedal baby and it is perfect! Honestly this Andertons video is not doing justice to the amp. I am not even using a tube pre amp pedal, just wether overdrive or fuzz with the volume knob on 2am. The whole band liked it!
So you don´t use a preamp? I think the purpose of the pedal baby is to use it directly from the pedals to the amp
Nice of Rob to roll out of bed and straight to the video room to do reviews for us.
I was going to say "at least there's no hat", but . . . nope. There it is.
They were suffering after the Christmas party - explained in another video
@@Willieswheels Doesn't prevent you from showering though
Nice of Rob to make videos for your free consumption even when he doesn't feel like it.
Give him a break, he hadn't had his morning cup of gain yet.
i feel like something on robs board was killing a ton of low end from his tone
I think it was the power amp, if you hear when the Capt. plays, the strat sound really mid-focused as well. Probably the "subtle" eq section the amp has doesn't add much bass
That would be surprising as it's an oramge. Probably just the settings.
because drive pedals often aren't preamp pedals. You shouldn't use a drive pedal as a preamp.
@@ayeapprove some work as preamps and some dont.
@@C4CH3S EVH 5150 overdrive works really well yeah
It could work with a Multi-Fx pedal - like a Headrush, GT-1000 etc - something with amp simulation and use the Pedal Baby as the power amp - easier than doing the 4 cable method to by-pass an amps pre-amp...
Are you sure?
Honestly, the best thing that happened to the world of guitar is the possibility to only take your pedal board + guitar to a gig or rehearsal.
The only thing you need is a cabinet or PA systems
4 cable method puts the preamp in line.
Uhhhh, 4 cable method uses the amps preamp.
@@swaggerchegger98 oh yeah, my Zoom G5n rocks when I need a fast rig for a small gig. Modern amp modelling is a wonder of our time.
i think it's meant to be a loudenser
i really appreciate that you acknowledge that y'all aren't the market for this
I want to thank you folks for doing the reviews. Your review directly influenced me buying 4 guitars.
I think the editor who edits these videos never gets the credit he deserves.
It’s safe to say that if you don’t like the sound of the Pedal Baby, you actually don’t like the sound of your pedals. This thing sounds amazing with just a simple MXR micro amp pedal to sweeten up the neutral clean of the amplifier. After that, your pedals will sound the best they possibly can. These two guys didn’t give it enough time, and the “uninspired guy” wasn’t even trying
I highly doubt that this amp sounds that bad. Something funky going on with this demo...
Next big thing...? Quilter has been dominating this price point for a few years now, its just that major brands such as Boss and Orange are jumping on it now! And at that price Id still have my 101 mini head! Compact and great sounding!
Quilter doesn't seem to have great distribution or marketing team though.
OnTheRoad - they have a lot of very happy customers though. And that is starting to be heard..
OnTheRoad that is true! JayLeonardJay sold me on the concept, but they are getting traction these days which I love to see!
Killer on bass as with guitar as seen on fluff's video,obvious but in case not mentioned,cheers
I'd really like it if you guys came back and revisited this using something like the Victory V4 pre-amps or Kingsley Constable. I completely agree this will be the next direction of the industry as you can simply scale up power amps as needed (home vs gig) or swap your pre-amp pedals as needed. A lot of flexibility, not just size/weight/travel.
I can think of a lot of ways to use this amp!
1. It would be awesome to use two of these as stereo amps. You could take your normal amp, take the fx loop out, split the signal, go into stereo effects and into two of these, and use them as a wet/dry/wet setup. I would probably go with this for myself.
2. You could also use a low wattage amplifier that you like, take the fx loop out, split it, and use one of these as a louder power amp, you would keep your tone almost the same, just louder.
3. You can also use two of these as a stereo setup for a nice acoustic guitar rig.
4. You can get something like a small modelling amp like a Helix or Boss GT and just carry that, this amp, and a small 1x12 cabinet with you (if you can find one with a speaker that can handle that much power).
I mean, it's a 100 W power amp that is cheap, robust, small-ish, and loud. I think it's great, but that is just my opinion.
I appreciate the honesty. I look forward to the follow up with the Orange representative.
Well, this amp isn't going to break up, so if your pedals are set to boost heavily, like with the output turned up but the gain set low, it's just going to be a louder sterile tone. That is why the Captain sounds better here, he normally wants a total clean amp where Rob uses them set up edge of breakup. I wish they had spent more time adjusting the pedals than fiddling with pre-amps.
Though I'm sure you can get great tones from the Pedal Baby, I think an amp that emulated the power section of traditional tube amps would be more desirable for most players, with such artifacts as bias and sag, and make them adjustable with switches or pots.
The point of this amp is impedance compatibility with guitar cabinets that are likely to be shared at a venue, which will most likely be 8 or 16 ohms. This amp will produce full power into an 8 ohm cabinet and 75 watts into a 16 ohm cabinet. Class D amps will only produce full power into 4 ohm cabinets.
Lee trying to say Milkman at 1:29 is gold. Rob is struggling to keep it together
I own the Milkman "The Amp" and it is absolutely glorious.
I see this as a great backup to your tube amp. I have had power tubes go on me a few time and then your dead in the water. This is a gig saver
I appreciate you guys' honesty in this review. I'm glad there's other reactions other than praise for Orange. Yes, they're a good brand, but it's not like they're exempt of the occasional "yeah, ok" product.
You could go back 10-12 years in time, and voila: Crate already did this with the Powerblock. It sold like candy and still was discontinued. Maybe it wasn't reliable, mine sits on my shelf with a probably broken power section that can't be fixed. All it does is shuts down the breaker in my house :D
This just proves that the perception of tone is always in the hand of the user - and how inspired it makes you feel. Recorded I think that it sounded pretty good, put that in a live or studio mix I doubt anyone would know the difference. However if it doesn’t make you feel inspired to play it may have a negative impact on your playing. I semi pro twice per month and tbh this does seem like a very useful product. I could use it for larger gigs like halls where my 40 watt valve combo doesn’t have enough umph. Or a rehearsal space.
Well you've got the Blug Amp1 that has been around for quite some time, and as a pedalboard amplifier it really beats the s*** out of most any other product of that range.
1st, it's built as a PEDAL ... yeah ! You can switch it WITH YOUR FEET. 2nd, it's got most every feature one would expect from any standard modern amp (loop section, 3 stages of gain, etc... etc...). 3rd, although the power section is solid state, it's driven by a tube preamp. And finally it PUNCHES 100 freaking Watts of true loud power (meaning it's deafening loud, if you're not careful).
As it is really FLAT, it suits perfectly on a pedalboard which is destined to get inside a flightcase (rigid or not) without issue whatsoever.
I'm not sponsored by Blug at all, and that "Blug Amp1" has also a couple of CONS so to speak (just as any other standard amplifier), but it really sounds "VALVEY" (nice natural compression when overdriven, etc..., thanks to the tube preamp which is always active), it's really deafening loud and works perfectly in a stage situation (even a big stage), AND IT SOUNDS REALLY REALLY GOOD, which is the main thing in the end.
The addition of the preamp pedal really helped the tone. I think that's the way to go for these kinds of amps in a box. Plus, you guys didn't really adjust the EQ knobs much, it would've been useful to hear what difference those made.
I am reminded of Billy Howerdel's rig from APC, where the goal was to create a "naked amp", as to let his rack gear presets shine.
I too love that valvey valve sound
I think where this would be a killer addition would be for something digital like a helix or a hx stomp. Turn of cab sim, and run it into this and I think you'd have a winning solution.
Really shows how most pedals were made to blend with the amp’s tone, they should have made a clean superloud tube power amp with shit tons of harmonics, THAT would have sounded cool
Shades of the fabled original Mesa Boogie Cab Clone video.
Plug in a dumble pedal and now you have a dumble amp or plug in a blues breaker pedal and now you have a pushed Marshall amp. That’s the cool thing about these types of products.
In theory that's correct although I'd suspect the live amplifiers vs. the pedal gain structures and this type of power section would feel and sound quite a bit different. Probably shades of similiar, but I'd but there'd be a noticeable difference. Not necessarily good or bad, just differences.
Full credit to you gents for working very hard to try to make this thing sound good. It did not. Interesting concept tho and maybe you should do a challenge/revisit of it: "Can anyone get a great tone out of this?"
What about through a multi effect pedal board that has amp models with pre amps like the Boss gt-100 or other higher end ones like. Helix etc..into this power amp?? Would not that be more the idea for this?
I'm kind of disappointed with this video and especially the comments section; like, this amp is specifically meant to do a certain job, and then they just... didn't use it like that. I could see this being a fab amp, but when it's specifically designed to amplify the sound of your pedals without putting in any of its own sound, and then you complain about the sound... Like buds, if it sounds like shit, that's because your pedals by themselves sound like shit. This thing begs for an amp modeling pedal in front of it, you can't just treat it like a normal tube amp lads.
And for everyone in the comments saying "just get a tube amp/Katana/etc!!!", that's not the point. As for the price, or whether it's better to get a class D power amp instead, that's up to the buyer. It'd just be nice if the buyer was given the proper information instead of an alienating review because you didn't bother to find out how it works.
i have that marshall mini double stack in the background and with all the controls turned all the way up with a strat i can get a petty cool sound out of it.
Lots of people missing the point, this is designed almost entirely for touring and playing gigs; helluva lot easier to travel and show up at venues with one of these and a preamp pedal emulating a $3000 amp than it is to travel with a $3000 amp.
Sounds like my Yamaha G-100 212 II 100 watt solid state amp I bought in 1979. By itself it sounds anemic,... but in a stereo configuration with a good all Class 'A' tube amp and the right blend of the two it can sound magically delicious.
I have the same amp and can't really get a good sound or of it. What's the best way to use it?
I must compliment the Capt. on his snazzy OG Vans.
This to me looks more like a stab at the S'more Duncan Powerstage 170, which are pretty killer IMO. The 700 stereo one is a potential game changer. I wish Orange had went stereo with this. Two of these and an OMEC Teleport could potentially be ludicrous speed however. Have a dual amp BiasFX rig pushing air through two cabs?
Yarp.
Could be neat.
The old Orang-ish color AVID Elevenrack (they've practically been giving away now. lol!) would look LiVe iN YoRe eYeS cute next to this, and a TigerShark (yes the cartoon) striped Charvel superstrat SSH.
I personally dig solid state sound as medium, not as an alternative, but I have started to dig it more lately. It has advantages, but it's all about the pre.
If you have a favorite "amp in a can" analog pedal that boosts realistically? Straight analog pre-amps like AMT or TECH21NYC? The Fly Rig & this?
It would probably cook with gas!
Catlinbread are one of my favs, because their "amps in a can" do 9 & 18 volt headroom.
MOORE digital pre's stomps, or the newer big Pro stomp?
Yarp.
Even a cheap single channel interface, the pedal baby, and a cab?
BiasFx?
Yarp.
For the money though?
IMO?
Save and go stereo.
Dual amp FTW.
My gripe:
It's mono.
The stereo SD Powerstage is almost twice this price
For 299 i would go for a Quilter.
I would buy some cocaine with that money
Boggesh Zahim
well get a Quilter for 199 and you still have 100 left for Coca Cola...
I have a Quilter Toneblock 201. Does all this does, and more, and is so effing loud I can gig on bass through it and my Helix LT. I also have an frfr speaker so can play guitar or bass with 1 rig.
Ditto :) love my 101 mini head!
Quilter is absolutely the standard to beat in this field imo.
Not to brag but I am valve at my tone heart loving my Mesa /Boogie 295 poweramp with 12 tubes. A mix of 4 EL34, 4 6L6 and 4 12ax7. Just got it for my Mesa/Boogie Quad preamp with 8 12ax7 tubes. It might be old 1990 and heavy but the tones!
I think a Fryette Power Station for a bit more dough might be a better choice and more flexible. Love mine.
I’ve been looking at these intently the past couple weeks. Very tempted to use it for a live rig with just a boss ds2 fed into it as I’ll only be doing rhythm, and if I need cleans the solid state output amp should be enough. Can’t beat a lightweight and robust system for gigging
Dod you do it??
What's it like
Never ended up grabbing one tbh
I can see this being for someone who has a micro terror and either a 2x12 or 4x12, and wants to go louder. Only if the micro terror has a preamp out.
Definitely a great back-up amp if you gigging and probably sounds brilliant with a 'perfect' digital/pedal in front of it like a BOSS GT1000000 or whatever or a Kemper as you say. Glad you tested that out :)
I love how you never read the manuals of products, and you just start guessing everything 😆
Class A/B actually puts out the power it says at 8 and 16 ohms (100watts at 8ohm and 70watts for 16ohm) Class D only puts out actual power at 4ohms
blugutar did that 4 years ago with amp1. great 100w amp
4 years later and we're still waiting for some more class A/B options. Maybe even a 50-60 watt option from Orange themselves.
the milkman has a reverb, tremolo and a valve preamp as well as a solid state power amp. once you've bought this, a decent reverb, tremolo and preamp you might as well have bought the milkman. if thats the market this is aimed at they've missed the mark by a long way
Use it as a second amp in a wet dry rig.
Cawfee Dawg I am inclined to agree mr dawg
Yeah as an additional amp in various situations itd be cool. A stereo version would be even cooler. You could use something like a Torpedo captor and leave the dry sound as the amp and then run the captor line out into stereo gear and then through a stereo power amp for W/D/W. Or you could use something like a Mooer Preamp Live and stereo pedals.
So It's a Crate Powerblock just 10 years later?
Still got mine...and have gigged it
@@jamieevans7054 I gigged mine for years, I'd still be using it today if it didn't get stolen at a show. Those things are amazing as pedal platforms. Now I'm using a Crown poweramp to fill the same role in my setup.
Your video is bad and you should feel bad!...unless of course your video is good, then carry on. What happened to those amps?
@@JohnWDGTandTele Not sure, but I think Crate went out of business not too long after those came out, but I could be wrong.
Maybe a comparison between this and the Mooer Tube Engine or Baby Bomb
This amp is made with modelers in mind. Fractal, Helix, Kemper, Boss etc...
Victory needs to make a valve version of this
I've never seen two people try so hard not to crap all over a product with their review. I hope Orange paid them well to maintain such restraint on reviewing how much they really hate this thing.
Bluguitar Amp1was one of the first pedalboard amps. There are more: quilter, mooer, seymour duncan, ehx, dv mark, hotone etc. Milkman in 2018 while other products are here many years earlier.
I've never heard either of these guys sound this bad. It's like the tones I was getting from my original Peavey crap solid state amp I got back in 1982. I think the speaker was like 8".
you could use a Joyo Bantamp, since you don't need to hook it up to a cab.
run it through the fx send of the joyo, and that way you replace the 20w class D solidstate poweramp with this 100w class AB
wtf...300 bucks for a solid state power stage. That's WAY overpiced
You can get a used 100 watt solid state power amp rack unit for like 100 bucks...and itll probably sound the same as this although this has a better form factor
Yep. You can find a used SS Power Amp, 400-500 watts for 100-150 bucks.
This has a tube transformer. A 100W tube transformer can sell for over $100, which adds more to this. This may seem overpriced, but it behaves a lot like a genuine tube power amp. This is actually quite good for the price
I'd pay $300 if it had tubes 🤷🏻♂️
@@lospadrinosofficial find me a good tube amp for $300 😂😂😂 especially for orange
please do more blindfold test vids
What blindfold videos would you like to see? Guitars, amps, pedals? Comment below with your ideas!
Andertons Music Co I'm not a huge PRS guy but I'd love to see Core vs S2 vs SE. I prefer the SE like over the rest, well, the more recent year SE's anyway. So I'd love to see something like that
Andertons Music Co More price is right videos!! Or blindfold Rabea Pete or Captain Lee!!
@@andertons blindfold guitar guess the price range
Amps? Maybe guess the watts? Headroom? I dunno haha
Basically it takes the amp out of the equation and makes it all about your pedals. It's like plugging your pedal board directly into your fx return... Which there's been some videos about not too long ago.
Are the EXH Caliber pedal format power amps still available? Would love to see/hear a shoot-out type comparison between these and similar products.
Chris Drake they are
I think now it's called Magnum. BTW, TPS did one about these kind of gear. They had the SD Power Stage and the Magnum. And maybe another one that I don't remember.
Caliber is the 22 watt pedal, Magnum is the 44 watt pedal
I'm glad Rob found the 'Milkabuhguh' at 1:30 as funny as i did
Running a Kingsley tube preamp into this would be godly.
I think Orange Amps was kinda hoping you would buy the Pedal Baby and also their Orange Bax Bangeetar Preamp/EQ pedal. If your a Orange fan just buy the Orange Crush Pro 120 head if you can not afford their tube heads.
Woah... Vita Coco.... That stuff is awesome. Here in the Philippines it's sold in supermarkets and 7/11.... Noice!
You guys should get your hands on some Quilter stuff! Would love to see that on this show!
I said a while back to the Marshall guys that the first brand that makes a 50/100 watt head that fits on a pedalboard will start a trend ,then the blu amp thing came out not sure how good it is tbh
So we've reaches DLC state even in music gears, when they literally disassemble an amp and sell you the parts
Power amps, like the Mesa Boogie 2:90 and the Marshall 9200, have been around for years.
Nice joke though.
Nice joke, but in case you're serious power amps have existed for decades
Very nice sound in the video mics and what not.
I think I'd get the Laney IRT SLS 300w head, i think it's smaller too?
I've been using BIAS HEAD with ICEPOWER(Bang&Olufsen) 700AS1 which I knew when I opened it and looked inside.
Kemper and seymour duncan PowerStage700 use the same kind of class D component (probably totally the same thing).
Now I'm thinking of using Quad Cortex, and need some powerful power amplifier, reminds me of this product.
It's not so expensive, and I guess it's worth trying.
what about testing it against the little Seymour Duncan power amp behind you on the shelf?
So I feel like this was designed to have a pod or a vox or marshall pedal right before the amp. I think even a pocket pod with a well engineered tone and the speaker emulation turned off might sound good with it even. I would likely also try it with a Tech 21 British or a leeds pedal.
Talked to Orange. You need a preamp for this contraption. They should call it a Preamp Baby.
What's the point? You could buy a good affordable 00amp with a decent clean and fx loop and use your pedalboard as well.
Class T is another super efficient class of solid state amp . I wonder if Ade is playing with them at all?
My understanding is that Class T was basically Tripath's name for class D. T for Tripath.
you are correct its the Tripath IC chip used
Do a Blindfold Challenge with this, comparing it to the other mini-amps and maybe some super clean amps, like a Studio-amp or something
So this is a competitor to the Seymour Duncan powerstage ?
Thought the same. SD looks better to me.
OnTheRoad I’m leaning towards a powerstage but I’ve heard complaints about breaking up at higher volumes
@@sonofboar13 In Rabea's video reviewing the Kraken pedal somebody in commented he was using the Kraken with the SD and he was very happy with the combination. 170 watts seems a lot of headroom to me but SD has a more powerful (and more expensive) one. BTW, TPS featured the SD 170 in one episode.
@@ontheroad579 It's 170 into 4 ohms, far less if you have an 8 or (as in my case) 16 ohm cab. However, looking at the wattage of an amp is not recommended as an accurate way of determining its volume/headroom. For example, in the vid, the Captain reckons the 100w Orange is slightly louder the 600w powered Kemper. If you've ever put a 30w class A or A/B valve amp up against a 100w class D, you'll know what I mean.
@@sentientfootwear You're probably right. I'm just considering that 170 > 45 of the small Quilter and the EHX Magnum. No real hands on experience.
I am wondering how the TC Electronic BAM200 would do as a pedal amp. I know it was intended for totally different purposes, but it might work very well. I especially like that it the power supply is built in.
I think it’s a very nice product for multi-effect device users.
Crate did a similar amp years ago called the Power Block. You could get them for $99 and they sounded amazing. They looked like a pill sort of and they were better IMO.
I wish they still made those
I have one, and it's a different proposition. The Crate has full EQ and a gain control. It's very difficult to get a pure "clean" sound out of the CPB, but it is an amazing little beast, and you could probably use it in a similar way by just plugging in to the FX return.
Chris Warburton use the cd input on the powerblock that bypasses the preamp/speaker modeling ideal for amp modeling , helix etc
Blindfold - Helix vs. Kemper vs. Headrush vs. axe fx vs. real amp rig. Dial in a similar chain for each one and dial them in. Give rob and lee (or Pete or rabea or whomever else you may choose) a guitar and let them pick which ones they think sound the best. I’ve always wanted a REAL modeling vs real challenge. Thanks from the states, guys! This would help a bunch because I can’t decide between headrush or helix lt.
looking forward to the new dorje music Rob!
It is class C that is small. The design has been around along time but was complex to make but it is very efficient. My guess is some one has put a lot of the difficult bits on a chip or two so everyone has jumped on it. The idea is ok...but you must invest in a good preamp to get a good clean tone. A good OD will probably sound very acceptable with it.
oops meant class D
Maybe try a graphic eq pedal into the front end? That doesn't seem too far fetched right?
Excellent video as usual even if this product seemed un-inspiring! Would love to see you guys do your take on speaker upgrades to: Katana, superchamp x2, blues jr...etc!
Mhm, I think this would be a good thing for powering cabs on stage when you work with a direct solution for FoH like a Helix Stuff, Headrush Stuff, Boss GT-1000, etc.
Umm..gentlemen: Crate Powerblock (2005), Electro-Harmonix .22 Caliber (2009), Electro-Harmonix .44 Magnum (2012), Quilter ToneBlock 200 (2014)
Quilter all the way!
I think Orange chose classAB because of the way the speakers effect the reactance and and NFB. I'm guessing at least the bassES knob uses a circuit that interacts with speaker damping and NFB.