Orange Dual Terror - Gig Report

No sooner than the Orange Dual Terror had landed in our warehouse, it was whisked off smartly by our very own Digital Village neo-punkists, Hans Briikx, to be shown off to their admiring fans at the Bull and Gate in Kentish Town. This is a great room to play, there are no reflective surfaces causing unwanted frequencies to bounce around, therefore everything can be heard clearly, an ideal situation to evaluate a piece of gear.

Mike Fletcher, Hans Briikx guitar player and DV store manager, told me afterwards that the Dual Terror was a real surprise and delight.  He said it had more than enough volume - in fact he was asked to turn it down by the sound engineer - and was similar in performance to the Orange Rockerverb 50. On stage it was ‘clear, defined and punchy’, and had natural give when ‘digging in’, which is guitarist speak for playing hard, usually with a heavy pick. This really gives the amp a workout, and will tell whether it will respond to the natural dynamics of your playing style. In fact he let slip that, because it sounds like a more expensive amp, one will definitely be added to his already burgeoning collection. His actual quote was, ” The Dual Terror has surprised me so much, I’m forced to open my wallet!”.

Standing in the audience, I was also suitably impressed. Ed Jack, songwriter, lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist, was using a Tiny Terror and like Mike, it was going through a 2×12 speaker set up so not only was I able to audibly assess  the Dual Terror, but directly compare the two. The Dual Terror has a channel simply called ‘Fat’, and this happens to be a brilliant and perfect description of how this amp sounds. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard guitar amps sounding thin and trebly, maybe even deliberately in an effort to ‘cut through’, and where there’s simply far too much distortion which ultimately makes for an indistinct mess.

The Orange simply doesn’t have the mega-gain which causes this over saturation, and is all the better for it. That’s not to say it doesn’t deliver in the overdrive stakes, there’s plenty on offer, and what the Terror does brilliantly is deliver classic British rock guitar tones at controllable volume levels that makes it an ideal solution for small to medium size gigs and recording. The two channels can be switched too, with the Orange FS-1 single footswitch.

Obviously, the ideal place to assess an amp is on a gig, and the Bull and Gate was the ideal place, both from Mike’s position on stage actually playing through it, and from my vantage point in the audience listening to it. From both standpoints, the Orange Dual Terror made for a highly enjoyable night.