Orange O Tone 40 review – is this the world’s loudest practice amp?

$399/£329, orangeamps.com

Here are two facts about the Orange O Tone 40. Firstly, it’s intended primarily as a practice amp. And secondly, its output power is rated at 40 watts. If you don’t see a mismatch between those two statements, then I feel sorry for your neighbours.

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To be fair to Orange, this compact solid-state combo is also described as “a small-venue workhorse” – and the fact that it’s packing a proper 12-inch speaker means it should be able to hold its own on most modern stages. But if you’re thinking this is another of the company’s classic hard-rocking crunch machines only on a smaller scale, get ready to think again.

What is the Orange O Tone 40 for?

Here’s what it’s not for: overdrive. A glance across the top panel reveals that this amp has controls for reverb, tremolo depth, tremolo speed, bass, middle, treble and master volume. A second glance, just to be absolutely sure, reveals that there definitely isn’t one for preamp gain – and given the 40W output rating, that means pushing this thing over the red line at practice-friendly levels is surely going to be impossible.

In fact, what we’re looking at here is a neutral-voiced amp with plenty of headroom to accommodate clean strumming and provide a platform for your pedals. Get your head around that most un-Orangey concept and the whole thing starts to make more sense.

Exactly how compact is it? The fact that they’ve squeezed a 12-inch speaker in there – one of Orange’s own ‘Voice of the World’ jobs – means we’re not talking desktop proportions, but it is slightly smaller than a Princeton Reverb in all three dimensions. It’s lighter too, at a smidge under 12kg, though that’s still pretty clompy for a solid-state practice amp.

The reverb is digital, the tremolo is analogue, and there are a few other features to note: a buffered effects loop, line-out and headphone-out sockets, an input for a footswitch (not included) to bypass the tremolo, and even a 3.5mm aux-in for plugging in an external music source to jam along with.

Is the Orange O Tone 40 easy to use?

Orange’s famous hieroglyphics have no shortage of charm, but from a practical point of view they can be a bit of a pain. Still, even for inexperienced players it shouldn’t take too long to get it baked into the memory that a sharkfin with a down-arrow means depth.

And for an amp with seven knobs to play with, the O Tone 40 really couldn’t be easier to get to grips with – as long as you remember to start with the volume at zero and turn it up gradually. Stick everything else at halfway and you’ve got a solid starting point.

What does the Orange O Tone 40 sound like?

With really loud amps – like, 100W all-valve loud – the tricky part of playing at home is finding the sweet spot where you’ve got enough volume to sound good but not so much that your windows fall out. The O Tone 40 doesn’t require that kind of caution, but you will want to go easy: push that dial anywhere past nine o’clock and you’re going to be making quite a racket.

The noisefloor is a little on the high side, which is a shame, but you might consider that a price worth paying for what happens once you start playing. It’s big and rounded, totally clean, and stays perfectly well behaved even when the volume is pushed past halfway – by which point the decibel level is climbing into the ‘unsuitable for home use’ zone.

With some guitars you might even want to dial the bass down a bit, but this amp’s tonality is, generally speaking, evenly balanced and unremarkable. That might sound like reviewer code for boring, but it isn’t. It’s a compromise between Orange’s characteristic midrange ‘clonk’ and the more scooped voicing of a black-panel Fender, and the result is a real blank canvas – one that’s just waiting to be splattered all over by your favourite pedals.

Yes, there’s a buffered loop, and that’s a great option if you prefer to have your delay(s) after the preamp, but the real advantage of all this clean headroom should come when a big whumpy fuzz is plugged into the front end. Sure enough, the O Tone 40 takes dirt pedals – everything from low-gain overdrives to extra-gigantic Big Muff types – with serene mastery. Nothing feels squished down, or stifled in the low end – you’re getting the full picture.

And what of the amp’s onboard effects? The digital reverb is workmanlike, with a convincingly spring-like wobble, but the tremolo is the real star. A lot of people swear by the valve-based bias tremolo circuits in certain vintage amps, and what Orange has done here is to recreate that effect using JFET transistors. So it’s proper bias trem, and it sounds like it: rich, warm and bouncy. The speed range is somewhat limited, though – look elsewhere for rapid judders.

The headphone output is apparently “cab sim-loaded”, which probably just means it’s been EQ’d to make it a bit less, well, headphoney. It’s okay, and will do the job if you find yourself needing to practise in silence, but doesn’t sound anything like as good as the speaker.

Should I buy the Orange O Tone 40?

There’s no mystery about what you’re getting here… or what you aren’t. The O Tone 40 is extremely loud and doggedly clean, it feels impressively solid for an affordable Chinese-made amp, and the bias tremolo throbs like a bee-stung buttock.

So if there’s room in your life for a small yet very powerful combo that gets on famously with pedals – and you don’t demand a crunch channel – then this might be for you.

Orange O Tone 40 alternatives

The Fender Champion 40 ($209.99/£219) is a 40W 1×12 combo marketed as “your first practice amp and an affordable stage amp”, and has numerous built-in effects. For a few more digital features (and a few more watts), see also the Boss Katana 50 Gen 3 ($349.99/£269). Or, if your budget is stretchy, consider the ultra-clean Roland JC-40 ($699.99/£659).