NAMM: Orange Tiny Terror 10th Anniversary Edition

Ten years on from its introduction, the Orange Tiny Terror remains one of the most popular small guitar heads around, and is widely regarded as kickstarting the lunchbox amp revolution. To commemorate ten years of Tiny goodness, the Orange Custom Shop has produced 110 limited edition Tiny Terror compact half-stacks.

Codenamed ‘Shiny Terror’, the 10th Anniversary model is a point-to-point hand-wired version of the original, housed in a stunning mirror-effect, polished stainless steel chassis. Each amp head also comes complete with its own open-back speaker cabinet. Finished in British racing green and fitted with a brace of 10” Celestion G10 Gold alnico speakers, the pair dovetail seamlessly to produce the ultimate Terror tone.

Orange's designer, Ade Emsley talks about the 10th Anniversary Edition…

"I like to keep things simple. The Tiny Terror is probably the amp I’m most proud of. The idea was to make a small amp that didn’t sound like a small amp – all valve, tight, punchy, springy – that didn’t have that ‘5 Watt single-ended amp sound’, which definitely sounds like a small amp! The Tiny Terror meant you could take a proper amp in a gigbag on the train or the bus to the show, borrow a 4×12″ cab from another band on the bill and blow everyone away.

I love output valve distortion and, for me, EL84s have the most musical saturation. 15 Watts cranked is the perfect volume to achieve it. The circuit I came up with for the Tiny Terror was designed with that in mind. It’s a unique channel with only three controls – gain, volume and tone – but it gives you everything from clean to pretty ridiculous. The first gang of the gain pot increases the gain of the first stage and the second gang of the pot increases the impedance of the second stage. This results in the signal pushing into the output valves evenly all the way up. It’s a real musician’s amplifier, so when you play softly you get glistening cleans, and when you dig in it crunches up into rich overdrive – all with the touch of your hands.

The 10th Anniversary model is a hand wired version of the standard Terror. The more traditional components add a certain character to the sound. Carbon comp. resistors pass a signal in a certain way and, with a proper hard-wired amp, you’re effectively soldering solid core legs of components together, so the top end is even sweeter and more defined. The construction of this 10th Anniversary edition is actually slightly different from my hard-wired prototypes. The first Tiny Terror I made was on a tag board, whereas the 10th Anniversary model is totally true point-to-point on a strip. It’s much more fiddly and involved this way but you end up with something that looks as smart as it sounds."