And so on.īut it would be a very boring world if we all wanted the same things out of our rigs, and an even more boring one with absolutely no big, slightly impractical tube amps. If you’re not fussy about stage volume, a Line 6 HX Stomp will fit in a gigbag. If you’re not fussy about tubes, Orange’s own Super Crush 100 combo is 14 kilos lighter than this one, and still damn loud. But in 2023, the spectrum of ‘lightweight’ amp solutions is wonderfully broad. So, it’s lighter, you can use it at bedroom volume… is this the hyper-practical amp solution we’ve all been waiting for? Not exactly – even with the lighter speakers and slimmer construction, it’s ultimately still a tube combo 30 times the weight of your average floor modeller. In a live setting, you can also use a footswitch to disable it for a linear bump in volume if you don’t feel like channel-switching. Thankfully, the on-board attenuator makes achieving a non-deafening volume easy: it’s placed between the power amp and the speakers in the signal chain, meaning you can get some lovely power-tube saturation without being blasted across the room like Marty McFly. Anyone who says you need 100 watts to gig, by the way, is lying to you: the sound engineer will be giving you dirty looks by about four on the master volume, and at full whack you’ll be easily heard over a space shuttle launching. In fact, construction across the board is top-notch: despite lightness being the name of the game here, nothing feels ‘cheap’.Īnd in terms of decibels-per-dollar it’s easy to see where the money’s gone: when cranked, the Rockerverb 50 gets unbelievably loud, its perceived volume helped by Orange’s classic midrange-forward voicing. The potentiometers all have a notched, heavy-duty feel to them, which is a nice touch especially given this amp is no small chunk of change. ![]() The buffered effects loop sounds great, and the large spring reverb tank offers some lengthy, bright drippiness. The controls are all very responsive: the bass, middle and treble knobs all drastically affect their respective bands, and the dirty channel’s gain control takes a lengthy trip all the way from pushed-clean to full-bore saturation. So at its core it’s still a Rockerverb, and it’s hard to make a Rockerverb sound bad. This isn’t too surprising: other than the tweaked construction, the actual circuitry of the amp remains unchanged since MkIII of the Rockerverb was introduced in 2015. But the recognisably unrestrained and throaty drive sounds you’d associate with an Orange are a breeze to coax out of the amp, as are some well-rounded, articulate clean tones. ![]() But plugging in and turning up, it’s evident Neodymium speakers are every bit as capable of delivering the signature Rockerverb roar as V30s, albeit with a noticeably altered midrange character. You might assume that if the amp is less heavy, so are the sounds. ![]() But is separating an Orange amplifier from its beloved Celestion Vintage 30s a good idea? Six of the seven kilograms the amp has shed come from the change in speakers, with that last kilo coming from slightly slimmer Baltic birch plywood walls. Seven kilos is certainly noticeable, but the whole thing is still over 30: not exactly featherlight, but still easier to lug up the venue’s stairs than the average 4×12 cabinet. ‘Lightweight’, when it comes to an amp like this, is a relative term.
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