Orange Crush 35 RT

This is my first Orange amp. having used Vox, Marshall etc. in the past. I wanted a practice/recording amp and this seemed like a suitable unit. The build quality is certainly very good, it feels substantial without being unweildy, and looks the part, if you like bright liveries! I've tried it with a variety of guitars, both single coil and humbucker, so I think I am able to comment with some justice. It has to be said that initially I was going to write a negative review, but maybe the speaker takes time to bed in, because things are looking better now!
The first comment is that the voicing is on the dark side, certainly no glassy treble to be had, even with a Strat. Having said that, it's the speaker - how do I know, well with headphones the opposite holds true, painful treble is on hand. Of course, my headphones might be to blame, but they work very well with my stereo so I don't think so. Equally it might be the cab sim they mention for the headphone output, but whatever, the speaker sound is too dark - I have the treble fully up and still no brightness.The second comment concerns the dirty channel - I'm not a huge distortion fan so maybe I'm not the best judge, but it reverses the dark voicing of the clean channel and sounds a bit fizzy for me, probably because it restores the missing treble from the clean channel. I think Orange have got this balance wrong, at least for me. If I am to use this amp for recording I am going to have to bring the treble down quite a bit. I haven't had time to put this through my DAW yet, so I'm judging this from the headphones, but they have a good track record.
So overall, the product is well built, it is as loud as you would expect, but the tone voicing has lost it's way somewhere along the line.
Bear in mind that for me a Fender amp is my ideal and perhaps that puts my comments in perspective for those of you who like the dirty side of life!

It's almost a given that affordable amps need a better loudspeaker, so I buy them and upgrade them with either Celestion Creamback's or Jensen Ceramic's. Thus this review will be split in two: the review with the stock generic chinese speaker, and with the Jensen.

The stock tone is on YouTube and here so I'll just say all the features work well, the footswitch jack, the effects loop, the headphones jack, the aux input do their job. The digital reverb is not overly long unlike many spring reverbs, and its sound is pretty. The outside build of the amp is very good and tough. Tight fit and clean finish.

The tuner works very well, and is confirmed by several tuners of various makes and brands. It's accurate enough to set an intonation, very nice. With the stock speaker the low distortion settings make for a high quality, warm and bright sound. Same for the highest settings, nich gritty harmonics and savage rock tone.

However the in-between settings were not as pretty, they sounded a little raw and dry.

So the switch to a Jensen C12N speaker was made. Beware that such a mod voids the warranty, of course. The 12" is heavier so I added four steel nuts to the original four that I recovered before enlarging the opening.

The baffle that holds the speaker was 2mm to narrow for the frame, and 2mm too small in height, so I stapled strips of wood inside the frame to tighten the fit. Small and easy job, some cheese boxes are made of wood strips that have the required thickness.

Now the baffle was held by six pieces of MDF that were not pressed accurately on the baffle, a thin strip of folder material had to be inserted in-between for the first week before the mod. This does not imply other amps have the same fit issue, can't generalize based on one case.

But I made height holders of solid wood, held with screws instead of the MDF's staples, and the assembly is stronger without gaps.

Now back to the tone: the Jensen is a very forgiving loudspeaker, no amount of bass/treble/mid can make it sound objectionable . And the mid-level distortion is now as creamy as the extreme low and high settings.

This shows how good the Jensen is, but also how well the Orange circuit has been designed. The grille was very tough and protected very effeciently against any normal life accident, but had to be removed to enlarge the opening to 12".

The replacement is a tough and somewhat rough cotton of the same color, with hard fibers as cotton fibers go, but it's also thinner than the factory grille, and lets tone through with no alteration to speak of, unlike the overbuilt but very protective stock grille.

The logos were unglued and screwed to the amp's sides out of respect for the brand.

There, these mods are not essential to everybody but they make my amp more enjoyable for me.

The amp is really solid and pretty loud. So, if you don't want to bother your neigbours, you have to keep the volume down. The volume knob, however, is sensible enough to have a nice control so you can chose easily the level you want.

The gain of the dirty channel is very felxible, so the amp can space from a slight crunch type of sound to an heavilly distorted metal-like sound.
The only problem i found with the common eq for the clean and dirty channel is that, when you turn up the volume, there is an enormous quantity of low-end frequencies that come out in the dirty one, so in theese cases, in my opinion, you can't use easily both channels without touching the eq.

The spring reverb is good and easily controllable.
The chromatic tuner is basic and intuitive.

The simulated headphones output is somehow brighter than the cone out (at low volumes), but the sound is still good so you can use it to record with a soundcard.

The manual says that the clean channel can naturally break up at higher volumes, but without a wattage control or a master volume it's just too loud for any bedroom or "practice amp" situation.