Orange CR120 with a bass???

[Elvis Valentine]

Howdy folks, I was just wondering if anyone had tried one of these with a bass through a bass cab?
I'm just interested.
Or conversely I suppose has anyone tried an OB1 with a guitar, I'm sure that would sound fine.

[johnnysomersett]

No. But my OR120 sounds fantastic through a bass cab (or any cab, in fact)

[Elvis Valentine]

Yeah cheers Johnny, I have Tried a few Oranges with guitar and bass the Thunderverb 200 was amazing for both I thought, but that's a like over a grand and a half.
I was hoping maybe this would be a cheaper possibility, I mean I know it's only 100 watts which aint a lot for a bass but I have only ever had 100 watt bass amps and when playing live have always been D.I'd so I thought it could be a possibility.

[brensabre79]

I think in general guitar amps don't do so well with bass. Many have a HPF built in. One reason the old all-valve 100 - 200 watt heads ARE good for bass is the size of the transformers they used to put in them. These days manufacturers have realised that the older stuff was over-specified and they can get away with a less gutsy transformer for a guitar amp.

Now I have not tried the Orange CR120, but it is a solid state head and may or may not have a HPF. I would imagine it will do dirty crunch amazingly, but don't expect much in the low end.

[Billy Apple]

I think guitars through bass amps is usually OK, but not the other way around. I think it's Doyle from the Misfits uses SVT's for his rig. It might be about watts, but I play through a 100w Burman PA head and it's loud as thunder and clean as a whistle. I've heard guitar heads will overdrive and distort very early doors with basses and lack bottom.

[peaveyorangegretsch]

I own a cr120.  I play my bass through it going into a Peavey Valveking 4x12.  I use the dirty channel.  Set treble to about 3 or 4.  Cut mids completely.  Boost bass to about 7 or 8.  Gain set between 30 to 50% use a little reverb (i like the top one for it) It is a 120 watt amp.  I have the older version before they dropped them down to 100 watt amps.  This tone set up makes for a pretty good metal sound too with a treble cleff guitar, if you boost the mids from here it really opens up with the standard guitar. But muds up the bass.  I play a 5 string Alvarez bass.  No idea the model.  It has 2 very sensitive pickups.  No pickup selector, you can hear it when you adjust them to their sweet spot it is like the tone just gets opened up.

[BassmanPaul]

In the very early Seventies The band I joined had bought a whole whack of Orange equipment. I played my bass through said amp and an orange 4x12. Handled it just fine though I was just using a four string Precision. How the set up would handle a five or six string bass I can't say. 

[northcountrybob]

The CR120 is a bit odd in comparison to other solid state amps. It's an opamp verion of a rockerverb and all the component values are close to what is in a real rockerverb, rather than scaled for lower impedance circuitry. The rockerverb and most modern oranges cut bass early in the preamp by having a small coupling cap between the first and second stages. That's a common move on high gain heads now. It's to stop them going flubby at higher gain settings. Orange do a thing where they use increasingly sized coupling caps between gain stages to allow more bass to pass later in the preamp.

 

There was a band called Black Peaks that ran a bi amp set up. I think that may have included a Thunder 50 for the dirt??? 

 

The OB1's are cool. I've played guitar through one a lot but not since years ago. There is actually an OB-1K. A 1000W solid state version that predates the 300 and 500. The Obiwan Kenobi reference was not lost on anyone. But I think the story was it never passed unwanted electronic emissions testing. Haha! 

 

I've worked on amps that claim to be 50watt amps with output transformers the size of chokes. When you run them up on a scope the output can look dreadful.  At the other end of the spectrum you get bigger OT's designed to have wider frequency response. I think transformer design is old and understood pretty well. I'd surprised if 50's-60's amps had commonly over spec'd parts. Ampeg used to give pretty detailed specs compared to most amp makers. I had a VT22 once and the power spec on paper was 100W RMS at 3% Total Harmonic Distortion across 20 - 20KHz. Most manufacturers will give a power rating at some level of THD around 10%, or just won't tell you anything apart from an RMS figure. The VT22 at 10% THD is a fair bit over 100W but I can't remember the figure! LOUD is the answer! What it doesn't have is small transformers... brutally heavy item!