Orange Micro Terror 20W Hybrid Guitar Amplifier Head

As noted elsewhere, this unit is amazingly tiny: 6 1/2 x 4 1/4 x 3 inches. But man, what a cool little amp! It totally lives up to the hype--and then some. The unit pumps 20 watts, with one 12AX7 tube in the preamp and a solid-state power amp. There are a grand total of 3 (!) controls: volume, tone, and gain. By tweaking these, you can get a fair range of sounds within the spectrum of bluesy British hard rock. For a first road-test, I played a '78 Les Paul Custom, with the amp gain maxed out, volume at 3:00, through a Tube Works 1x12 cab. I found 4 highly serviceable sounds with this set-up by fiddling with the tone control. At 9:00, you can dial in Clapton's classic Cream-era "brown" sound. At 11:00, you're in Brian May territory, a la "We Will Rock You". At 12:00, it's Mick Ronson and "Ziggy Stardust". At 1:00, it starts to get nasty, like Iron Maiden or other '80s British metal.Other observations:With the tone and gain at 12:00, i.e., dialing back the gain, you get a nice clean but crunchy Hubert Sumlin-type tone. Not the bell-like sound of a Fender amp, but that is clearly not what the Orange is designed to produce. It's amazing just how "British" this amp sounds--even compared to a Marshall (I also own a JCM900 4502). Another remarkable thing was the big difference between having only the bridge pickup on vs. both pups: it was massive. With both pups on, the volume was about 50% louder than with just the one, which definitely does not happen with the Marshall.Downsides:No reverb is a bummer--as is the lack of an effects loop.The sound through headphones is kinda crap. This is to be expected, however, since in that situation you're not hearing the speaker's influence on the tone, nor the liveness of the room.As others have noted, the thing is so tiny that one wrong move could knock it over in a heartbeat. However, it seems to be constructed tough enough to handle a few dropkicks.Beware: this is not a shredder's amp. For that, you'd probably want the Orange Dark Terror (at a much higher price point).To sum up:You can definitely practice with a full (loud) band with this sucker, even play small clubs if properly miked. If you want massive, juicy British tones in a small package, this is your buddy. I would've gladly paid twice the $150 it cost me. Color me Orange!

I love this little thing. I even use it at rehearsal an practice some nights. It has great volume. I play in a 6 piece band with a horn section, we pump out some volume and this holds its own! With the 12ax7 in the preamp those warm punchy tones really come alive. The first time I saw it I thought "OMG it's a toy" after playing through it, it's FAR from a toy. I travel a lot playing and this works fantastic for late night practice. I plug my phone into the aux and it blends perfect through the head phones when learning new stuff. It makes learning new songs a breeze. I even use it in the bedroom and it doesn't bother my wife lol. Yes she's a heavy sleeper an the sound of an electric guitar not plugged in doesn't wake her but if I had it plugged into an open amp she wouldn't let me live if I had it turned down to even one lol. Look this thing is a great tool. It has all the warmth, tone, bite, smooth sweet sounds of an amp 10 times the size and price! You know the ole saying, size really doesn't matter? That couldn't apply more than here with this amp. Its a gr8 travel companion in that on the road in hotel rooms every night and I can play all night as loud as I want and not get kicked out. That alone is worth the price!

It's difficult to find much wrong with this amp- especially at this price point. I purchased this amp so I would not have to lug over my expensive Marshall and Fender amps to my friends house to practice. It performs this function very nicely and I combine it with a Marshall 1x12 cabinet (Marshall MX112).As others have noted, it is incredibly small and lightweight. Honestly, I sort of laughed at it when I first received it- until he heard it. The tone is very good an can produce a nice range of clean and distortion sounds. Even more impressive is the volume this little amp can obtain. It's remarkable!This would be a near-perfect practice amp if it had (even a simple) reverb, but of course that would increase the cost, complexity, and perhaps size of the amp. The Aux input is a nice added feature as this comes in handy for practicing songs.Overall, I highly recommend this little amp. It would not be my primary amp to gig with, but then again that's probably not really what this amp is intended to do. It could however function as an emergency backup amp, and is certainly worthy of a practice amp or when jamming with friends.