Orange Tiny Terror Sighting

[Armchair Bronco]

Check out this YouTube video of my 9- and 10-year-old boys covering a Nirvana classic at their school's talent show.  The younger one is playing his Ibanez through the Orange Tiny Terror + Avatar G12H30 1x12 cab that Santa brought me last year.

Just imagine how great he'd sound with some Bare Kunckle Pickups in his guitar... :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KWfI1c4OzM

If you have the bandwidth, be sure to click on the "Show in high quality" link.  Enjoy!

[Crazy_Joe]

hahaha "are you ready to roooockkk"

That's one lucky kid, he gets to play through a TT and Avatar 1x12!!

He's awesome, he's 9 and can already front a band haha.
The 10 year old is also pretty epic too!

[Armchair Bronco]

 :P Glad you liked it!

And since you did, you might like this one, too of the 9-year-old doing an acoustic cover of The Meat Puppet's "Lake of Fire":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0625ATfJIUI

He also has a really short (1 minute) electric guitar jam to the same song while I play acoustic guitar in the background:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49N4bBnijSs

I'm so stoked that I took up guitars about 2 years ago, and now my boys and I can jam together.  :D  Playing real guitars is much more fun than playing 'Guitar Hero'.  But having decent gear is also a big plus for all of us.

[WezV]

thats absolutely brilliant!!  i hate to see teen spirit covered because no-on ever does it in a way that lives up to the original for me... its strange that a 9 year old can get closer than most cover bands

gonna have to dig out my unplugged tab book and learn lake of fire again


yeah, i was a teenager in the 90's.... what of it!!

i hate to say it but BKP's are not what you need for grunge, cheap and nasty works quite well.

[headtheball]

Too true. I never owned an Instrument could get as close to the general Nevermind tone as my Sunn Mustang, with it's horrible Fridge magnet magnet and steel pole piece single coils, into a (borrowed) Fender twin and a clamjaffery of various fuzzboxes.

[Armchair Bronco]

thats absolutely brilliant!!  i hate to see teen spirit covered because no-on ever does it in a way that lives up to the original for me... its strange that a 9 year old can get closer than most cover bands

gonna have to dig out my unplugged tab book and learn lake of fire again


yeah, i was a teenager in the 90's.... what of it!!

i hate to say it but BKP's are not what you need for grunge, cheap and nasty works quite well.

My son's $240 Ibanez GAXB-150 was going straight in to the Tiny Terror with no effects: just a 10-foot monster cable, with the volume and tone turned way up & the TT's gain at around 3 o'clock.  I added the bit about BKP's just to give a nice plug to this site...although I agree that cheap & simple gets it done for most grunge covers.

At 45, I'm even older than you.  I moved to Seattle in 1987, and I actually got to see Nirvana and the other early Seattle Bands (Green River, Mud Honey, Malfunkshun, Mother Love Bone, Skin Yard, Big Tube Squeezer, etc.) up front and close when there were like 100 people crammed into tiny venues.  It was an amazing time to be sure.  8)

[sjwebb90]

Anyone with a Tiny Terror may want to check the biasing of their amp.

I have an early Made in Korea model and the EL84 biasing was way off.

Orange use the 120 ohm bias resistor for both 15 Watt and 7watt settings. When you flip the switch all you are doing is changing the winding and lowering the voltage from around 325V to about 240V.

In theory there should be 12Watts on the Plates of the EL84's for optimum sound and value longevity. The biasing on the plates of mine coincidently measured, 15 watts in the 15 watt mode and 8 watts in the 7 watt mode.. One is therefore running too hot and the other is running too cold. (Not good)

I have since replaced the factory fit 120 ohm resistor for a (150 Ohm + 10 Ohm is series = 160 Ohm). This get the biasing correct in the 15 watt mode.

You then need a 68 Ohm resistor in parallel with the 160 Ohm combination to get the biasing correct in the 7 watt mode.

To do this I have replaced the (15 watt - 7 watt) SPDT switch with a DPDT variant. This allows the normal switching, plus being able to switch in the 68 Ohm resistor at the same time as you go to the 7 watt setting.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/66957213@N00/2627824665/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/66957213@N00/2628642862/

I use mine for bedroom practice and played through a 1 X 12 Orange cab, standing on an Gamma Auralex riser, and loaded with a EVH G12M it now sounds bloody awesome!!

Cheers
SJ

[Armchair Bronco]

Hummm... I have the newer 2007 (or early 2008) Chinese model.  I wonder if the circuitry is identical to your Korean model.

Mods to tube-based amps are not for the feint of heart, so this is beyond my modest soldering abilities.

However, I may post this information over at the OrangeAmps forum if you don't mind (with proper attribution).  Some of those guys over there love this kind of stuff.

[sjwebb90]

I believe this has come up before on one of the music-electronics-forums. Its kind of a known issue in the early days.

I think mines circa 2006 and also has the ON-ON 15Watt - 7Watt switch.

I believe Orange revised the switch on the later ones and they have an ON-OFF-ON switch for selecting the Wattage.

(I have to switch mine to Standby before changing the wattage setting.) Kinder to the circuitry.

Also just to make it clear, the above reference to biasing is for the factory fit JJ Tesla EL84 valves.

Obviously, if you have different EL84's valves fitted you will need to bias those accordingly.

Any competent amp tech should be able to check the biasing.

You'll probably find that this is something the Jules Tiny Terror Mod attends to amongst other things. I believe he also adds a choke.
http://www.juleamps.com/

Everyone seems to be jumping on the bandwagon with regards the Orange Tiny Terror. Mercury Magnetics are now offering a Transformer upgrade.
http://www.mercurymagnetics.com/pages/catalog/kits/TinyTerror/Orange-TT.htm

Out of interest I have also swapped in and out few different ECC83 valves and have settled on a JJ Tesla ECC3 in V1 and a NOS Mullard ECC83 (Yellow writing) in the Phase Inverter. For some unknown reason this gives the better tone for what I was trying to achieve. (Personally I would have thought it would have been the other way around) Thats Electronics for you!!!!

[Armchair Bronco]

I thought the Tiny Terror was self-biasing?  In fact, I think I've read threads in which people were deliberately mis-matching tubes just to try out different tones.

[sjwebb90]

Thats true the amp is self biasing but you still need to get the idle current correct for the EL84 output valves at the outset and thats what you are setting with the correct value of bias resistor.
(NB If you change a ECC83 valve that will regulate itself by default.)

Here's the analogy.

Before being able to drive your car down the street, you need to start it up and it needs to idle. Using an old fashioned Carborettor as an example, you need to get the air/petrol mixture correct and thats done by tweaking the mixture screw. If the mixture is set incorrect it will either run too rich or too lean. The car will probably still run, but either of those two settings would not be conducive for optimum performance.

The same things goes for the EL84's  Output Valves, you need to tweak the ("mixture screw"), in the case of the amp its the the bias resistor. This sets the quiescent current or idle current going through the valves. In the case of the EL84's you are looking for 12Watts on the Plates. To work this out you need to take voltage and current measurements and then by using Ohms Law work out the Plate discipation  (Power (watts)= Voltage x Current.)

Taking my Made In Korea unit as the example I worked out with the "factory fit" 120 Ohm Bias resistor installed, there was actually around "15W" on the Plates in the 15 watt setting and around "8W" on the Plates in the 7 watts setting. (Ideally it should be 12 Watts on both) Taking the car analogy one is too rich, one is too lean.

To my ears, once I'd got things right, the amp sounded a lot fuller and fatter and all that horrible fuzzy fizz at high gain settings had gone.

With regards mixing and matching: you are probably referring to people mixing and matching the ECC83 Pre-amp Valves.
Not so the EL84 output valves though, they ideally need to be a matched pair.

However, I wouldn't worry too much about it, if you are happy with the sound of your amp leave well alone. The only issue would be,  if the Plate discipation is too high (>12Watts), then the EL84 valves will burn out a lot quicker.