Playing live on television is one of the most nerve-wracking gigs for the pro musician. A lot can go wrong, you’re not entirely in control, and there are a lot of eyeballs watching you, millions of them. But Orianthi has proved that it is a gig that you can do on a budget, revealing that she played to an audience of millions using her $219 Orange Crush practice amp.
Amps don’t get much more compact. Orianthi’s signature Orange Crush is a 1x8” combo, a a two-channel solid-state 20-watter with digitally emulated spring reverb and an onboard guitar tuner.
It is a straightforward, beginner-friendly design; a three-band EQ serves both channels, an abundance of gain on the Dirty channel. But when it was launched in November Orianthi, insisted it sounded good enough to record, and by then had already proved its worth, using it to play the 2024 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show – an event broadcast live from the Duggal Greenhouse in Brooklyn, New York, to a peak audience of 2.67 million viewers.
“I just did Victoria’s Secret and I used the Crush for that,” she says, speaking to MusicRadar upon the launch of new single, Some Kind Of Feeling. “Live on TV with, like, 70 million viewers, and I used the Crush! People were like, ‘Your tone was really great.’ ‘Yeah, it was the fucking Crush!’ It’s so easy to use, to transport. That amp is awesome.”
Playing a medley of Joan Jett’s I Love Rock And Roll and Lenny Kravitz's Are You Gonna Go My Way, this wasn’t the first time Orianthi has used the Crush live but the result was the same, and it goes to show that sometimes you don't have to spend big to get a great tone, and cranking small guitar amps is never a bad idea.
“Live, I have used the Crush a couple of times already,” she says. “People don’t even know it. They’re like, ‘Oh, it must be some really expensive or whatever.’ No, it’s like 300-and-something bucks [Laughs].”
Well, you can find it for even cheaper than that, with the limited edition amp – finished in white vinyl – presently available at a street price of £179/$219 from the likes of Andertons and Sweetwater. Who knows, it might well be your go-to amp for TV performances. It’s small enough to take on the bus to the studio.
As for playing live for the cameras, Orianthi has some advice: make sure your guitar strap is securely fastened.
“You can’t really prepare,” she says. “You just make sure that your strap is on and locked so that you’re strap doesn’t fall off! [Laughs] There are so many things that don’t even go with the music that I worry about, that have happened to me before and that’s the most nerve wracking thing. It’s make sure my strap doesn’t fall off. Okay, the amplifier works? Awesome.
“That’s the whole thing – especially with me doing the Grammys or Good Morning America, or any of those late night shows. I opened the AMAs with Wayne Brady, and that was all live, and you just go for it. And that high is something else. I like that high because you don’t know what’s going to happen. You do your best in the moment, and it is never 100 per cent perfect but it’s entertainment.”
Read more about Orianthi’s new single, Some Kind Of Feeling here. It is a conversation in which she discusses the risks of touring with Alice Cooper, and the development of the Oriverb, an altogether more high-end guitar amp she developed with Orange. That 2x12 fire-breather might well be too loud for TV.
