THE BOOK OF
Premier Guitar brings you
an exclusive excerpt from the
new book on Cliff Cooper and
Orange Amplification’s 40+ years
of innovating and helping to define
the sound of popular music.
Although it arrived on the scene a little later than the other UK-based amp companies often cited as having
“the British sound,” Orange quickly expanded the perception
of that tone and established a reputation for loud, delectably
raunchy amps with equally transfixing cosmetics and eminently
giggable construction. Players as diverse as Jimmy Page, Johnny
Winter, B.B. King, Paul Kossoff, Peter Green, Ike Turner,
and T. Rex’s Marc Bolan were fans of early Orange amps.
Though the company had its ups and downs—includ-
ing a run of extremely reduced production through the
1980s, in addition to a period when Gibson built Oranges
under license—it has experienced something of a renaissance
over the last 13 years since company founder Cliff Cooper
returned to the helm. Highlights of the last decade include
the Rockerverb, AD, and TH series guitar amps, Isobaric
bass cabinets, and the venerable Tiny Terror series—the latter
of which rocked the entire guitar-amp universe and started
the “lunchbox amp” craze of the last few years.
