Orange Tiny Terror Head

The Orange Tiny Terror amp head has served me well over the past couple of years and I still like it as much as the day I bought it. It serves well for playing classic rock in a setting that you want to dime out a tube amp and still be able to hear. The Tiny Terror was not my first choice, but at the time my first choice was not available. Though I play many amps including a Fender the original Marshall sound is what I like to play the most.

There is something about a head and cabinet that seems more rock and roll than a combo to me. The Marshall mini stack has always been an attractive home unit, and I have owned four of them, with three being the vintage Lead 12 model. After having tube amps by Marshall and Fender I found that the tube tone kept me coming back to those amps. So a few years ago I decided I wanted the mini stack style but with tubes.

The only problem was that Marshall was not making tube mini stacks at the time, so I was left with a dilemma. I toyed with the idea of building a head myself as there is a great deal of information and parts for doing so. In this process I learned a good deal about how the amp I wanted would have to be built. I knew I wanted the amp to be so I set out to find a head that was 20 watts or less that had 12ax7 preamp tubes and EL84 tubes.

After hours of study on the subject I came across the Orange Tiny Terror and it seemed to continually stick out among the others. I knew of Orange and remembered that Black Sabbath had played their amps back and the day, but kind of thought of them like the Sunn or Hi-Watts from that period. Not that these were bad amps they just weren't Marshalls.

Fortunately, I got over my Marshall fetish because they didn't have a product on the market like it and bought an early Tiny Terror. It was love at first strum as the amp had what I liked better than anything I had had in a Marshall. The tone on the one channel amp has the British tone and does not clean up as that is not what it is designed to do. It is never completely clean but I have played it with low output pickups with the gain down and it is toneful.

The sweet spot of sound for me is with humbuckers, my favorites being my EVH Frankenstein, Duncan 78 E.V.H., Duncan 59' and Dimarzio Tone Zone. These pickups bring out the tube distortion in a very dynamic way, and these combinations have the best tone I have ever produced. The tone is very brown for the Van Halen fans, but the amp can do much more than that.

The features on the amp are simple as there are only volume, tone and gain controls, but I have found my spot for most everything. The only thing I change is the volume and switching from 7 to 15 watts, at 7 watts with the volume at 10 o' clock it is very usable with other people around. With 15 watts and the volume maxed the best sound comes out though. I switch between a set of Marshall Lead 12 cabinets with Celestions and my Peavey 5150 cabinet. The Lead 12 cabinets get the majority of use as they will vibrate the room, but when plugged to the 5150 I can rattle things off the shelves.

To sum it up the Tiny Terror is probably not the last amp I will ever own, but it is the one I will not part with.