1974 Orange OR120's

These are my next 2 vintage Orange amps that are available for hire from me. I have 2 almost identical versions of this amp so I won't bore you with the details of both. These early to mid 70's 120's are the big, fat monsters of the family and as far as I'm concerned the last of the great Orange amps. I'm not as big a fan of the OD series that followed. While being very similar, they lacked the touch sensitivity of these earlier ones.


The 2 of these I hire are very similar in tone although one has had a replacement output transformer I put in in 2010 after a "mishap" with a hire. It happens with old amps. My theory is if you don't want it to be damaged, don't use it and if you're not going to use it, sell it to someone who will.


After the OT had a melt down I contacted Patrick at Mercury Magnetics, who I'm a dealer for and got him to send one of their MAT100 OT's over for me to use. These are clones of the early 70's Matamp OT's and like all Mercury stuff, they drop straight in and sound awesome.

I got my original Permeko OT rewound in Melbourne as a spare in case another one of my hire amps goes down. They did a great job and reverse engineered it while we were there so I have the specs for my Lemon amps.


These amps have a similar driver stage and 4 EL34 output valve power stage as the Matamp in my earlier story. They have a much BIGGER tone than the Matamp with slightly less "subtlety" than the Matamp. These are the big bruiser brother of the vintage Orange world and work well for guitar or bass.


Again built on PCB these two amps were not made by Matamp although the basic design is still very much theirs. I'm not even sure which factory these two would have come out of but the build quality is good and they have both been very reliable hirers, which is where you see the reliability of anything.

The thick steel powder coated chassis are still there as is the picture frame head shell made famous by Orange and Matamp.


 


The one with the Mercury output transformer is now in a black head shell that I make for my Lemon and Supertone 100 amps. These amp chassis are identical to original early 70's Orange and Matamp chassis so my picture frame sleeves can be used for vintage Orange amps as well. Since it's the one that gets hired most, I can keep the original shell in good condition.


So, like I've said, these 2 74 OR120's are available for hire in the studio or live with all my other gear inc the 72 OR80 and Matamp GT100 from my previous stories. I also have a 73 and  74 OR120 Combos. One with original Fane speakers. Both of them are mostly original and sound awesome.


I also have a Matamp GT1 and King Street classic that I hire. As I said before, I rate the modern Matamp as highly as the vintage stuff and they are one of the few manufacturers around today that still make these amps "like they used to be"

Here's a story about a repair on an old Orange combo.

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