I’ve been wanting and Orange for a long time, and the OR15 has become one of my favorite amps to test out guitars since they are so commonly found in Guitar Centers and the like. I’ve read the OR15’s single channel is derived from the Rockerverb, so that amp made my list. However, I’ve also been interested in the AD30HTC, Thunderverb, Rocker 30, and OR50/80/100/120’s for various reasons. I have played the AD30 extensively and found it to be great at the classic rock mid-gain crunch tones, and it’s very bright and cutting - a bit different from the 70s darker Orange tones. I really couldn’t figure out the exact differences between the Thunderverb, Rocker, Rockerverb, and OR50’s so I would be happy to get any of those models and start collecting a few of them to compare to each other.
This Thunderverb popped up for a reasonable price, though I wish it had the Orange colored headshell instead of black. Cosmetics take a back seat for me though, especially for amps, so I placed the order.
It’s a great amp and I’ve learned a lot about Oranges in the process. This one has 3 gain stages on either channel, so it can be dialed to be two clean channels, or two overdriven channels in any combination you please. I am loving this for classic rock covers, and it doesn’t really get all that high gain - certainly not as much gain as the OR15’s I’ve played. It really needs a boost to get into metal territory, even classic metal.
The amp is dark, but has a very meaty midrange. A brighter boost like my Boss SD-1 really wakes this up and unlike some of my other amps, adding this boost also adds a lot of treble detail to the tone and helps give it more presence. This is awesome to me as it’ll do the more polite classic tones but just kick on the boost and suddenly I’m in 80s metal territory, or even modern metal tones if I want to go there, especially with Channel B’s shape feature which is essentially a V shaped EQ anywhere above about 11 O’clock.
