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Orange Crush 15R

 

Review of the Orange Crush 15R Practise Amplifier by The Man in the Jar

The diminutive Orange Crush 15R shares the same cool orange and tweed livery as its bigger valve-powered cousins. 

The bold Orange logo on the grille sets the agenda and the black corner protectors and handle set the style.  The control panel is recessed on the top face. The first instinct is to start at the left-hand end. But here we find a tiny red power indicator next to a headphone output. This is where you'd normally find the input jack so take care until you become familiar with the layout that runs from right to left.

So starting at the other end we find a single input followed by the volume control for clean settings. Then there's the overdrive on/off button followed by the overdrive level and master volume. Next along is the three-band eq with High, Mid and Low controls. After that the reverb control brings us back to the headphone output. The amp is a closed back affair with a large metal plate that houses the on/off rocker switch.

With the overdrive off the volume and master volume work together. Best clean sounds are had with the volume on full leaving the actual loudness to be controlled from the master (this gives less background noise than doing it the other way around). With the eq's all on zero the sound was unsurprisingly very muddy. On the other hand, turn them all the way up and you get a lovely, rich clean tone that gave the single-coils I was using heaps of "wacka-wacka" for damped funky rhythm chords. Very impressive. There's plenty of scope here to tweak and scoop in the mid to mid-low reaches of all the eq knobs.

I found the real spring reverb to be useful up to about halfway. After that it got a tad intrusive for my personal tastes. Full-on the reverb becomes a cavernous echoing complete with dripping water effects. Great fun!

Punch in the overdrive and controlling the output becomes a three-way juggle between master, gain and volume. Solid state overdrive is always going to be different from valve overdrive. Most people seem to think that valves have added depth and warmth whilst transistor distortion has a harder more clipped character. Transistors make for a more portable unit and this, after all, is a practise amp pushing its sound through an 8" speaker. Despite those physical limitations I found a good aggressive rock tone with the overdrive level at about one third and the master and volume adjusted to suit the preferred listening level.        

 

Overall impressions of the Orange Crush 15R

For less than £80 this surprisingly loud little 15 watt box does a great job for solo practise and songwriting duties. The clean sound is excellent and you should make a habit of practising clean no matter what type of music you play. That way you learn your part without distortion to cover your fluffs. The overdrive is there for when you need to "heavy-up" the sound and delivers convincingly through good headphones. 

Buy the Orange Crush 15R

Note: As with all amps equipped with headphone sockets, turn the Master Volume to zero before plugging in the 'phones.

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