Review: Orange Tremlord 30 Combo

(Image credit: Orange Amplification)

I love multi-channel amps that produce a multitude of tones as much as anyone, but personally my most soul-stirring moments of tonal revelation have almost always come from Fifties or Sixties amps with features that most players would consider primitive. Orange’s new TremLord 30 combo is designed for players with similar tastes, who prefer one great tone over dozens of good ones. Orange calls the TremLord 30 “our very British take on the Fifties amplifier,” but it’s much more than that, offering several features like reverb, tremolo with two footswitchable speed settings, a “bedroom” low-wattage switch and effects loop that weren’t around before Elvis discovered amphetamines.

FEATURES The Orange TremLord 30 is a 30-watt all-tube combo with a single 12-inch speaker specially designed by Italy’s Lavoce company to provide maximum clean headroom and smoother treble response. The circuit includes four EL84 power output tubes, three 12AX7 tubes for the preamp and tremolo and two 12AT7 tubes for the buffered effects loop and reverb. Controls consist of volume, bass, treble, tremolo speed 1, tremolo speed 2, tremolo depth and reverb knobs. Inside the cabinet is a switch for selecting all four or two power output tubes. Used in conjunction with the front panel’s headroom/bedroom switch, this can provide 30 or 15 watts in the headroom setting or 2-or 1-watt output in the bedroom setting. The two tremolo speed settings, tremolo on/off and reverb on/off, can be controlled with an optional footswitch(es). The post-tremolo effects loop is fully buffered and compatible with everything from stomp boxes to pro rack units.

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Chris Gill

Chris is the co-author of Eruption - Conversations with Eddie Van Halen. He is a 40-year music industry veteran who started at Boardwalk Entertainment (Joan Jett, Night Ranger) and Roland US before becoming a guitar journalist in 1991. He has interviewed more than 600 artists, written more than 1,400 product reviews and contributed to Jeff Beck’s Beck 01: Hot Rods and Rock & Roll and Eric Clapton’s Six String Stories.