Tiny Terror vs. Tiny Terror Hard Wired
By MNJ
| Posted in Guitar
The Orange Tiny Terror has been an amazing success, with over 30,000 units shipped worldwide. Those are serious numbers for a single model of amplifier and those sales have helped put Orange back amongst the big boys in the amp game.
I was lucky enough to grab one of the first Terrors when they first appeared in 2006. The first thousand were actually manufactured in Korea and everything since has come out of China but don’t pre-judge, this is a killer amplifier.
If you’re not familiar with the Tiny Terror, it’s a 15 Watt, portable valve guitar head with only three controls, volume, gain and tone, which produces clean, crunch and massive overdriven sounds. It has true British gain characteristics – aggressive, punchy and loud! It can be switched down from 15 watts to seven, a facility that renders it indispensible in any recording situation where overdriven guitar sounds from a ‘real’ amp is the order of the day. Most players will use it with a matching cab, probably the Orange PPC112, but run through a 4 x 12 cab, it’s just amazing and would see off a lot of 50 watters with no problem at all.
This year, Orange decided to build some Tiny Terrors in the UK which were hand wired (or ‘hard wired’ as they prefer to call it), naming them the Orange Tiny Terror Hard Wired. Armed with an Orange PPC212 cab and a trusty Les Paul, I commandered a soundproof room and set up. To look at, the two heads are virtually identical, as you’d expect. The only difference is the control knobs – the HW version has what look like traditional 1970s Orange knobs. The back panel is exactly the same on both, with two 8 and one 16 ohm speaker output. The Hard Wired also comes in an attractive leather carry bag witth Orange logo which is also available to existing Tiny Terror owners. Surprisingly, the Hard Wired is lighter in weight.
Initially, the difference isn’t obvious. However, after several swapovers my overall impression is that it has a wider frequency response and better articulation, especially at the bottom end. Further differences were revealed when I began to compare top end, the mids and bottom end individually. It was only with this analysis that the Hard Wired started to show its colours, with cleaner, smoother top end and a pronounced definition in the bass. The term I would use to describe the difference is that the Hard Wired is more ‘refined’. For the price difference, this is exactly what I would have expected.
Is the Tiny Terror Hard Wired worth the extra? I would say yes, it can be justifed if tonal excellence is your goal and cost isn’t an issue. That’s not to disparage the original Tine Terror, it’s a fine amp and will continue to sell loads. After all, 30,000 customers can’t be wrong.
Tags: orange ppc112, orange tiny terror, orange tiny terror hard wired