Marshall did it way back in 2012. Fender followed suit five years later. And now another rock legend has finally turned up to the Bluetooth speaker party. Was the fashionably late arrival of the Orange Box worth the wait? We find out.
"Orange Amplification has been a pioneering force in guitar and bass amplification since 1968 with a reputation for innovation and uncompromising attention to detail and quality," the press release boasted earlier this month. "Orange Bluetooth Boxes are the only Bluetooth speakers on the market that use both Class D and A/B Analogue amplifiers, giving them controlled, tight, punchy bass and smooth, natural mids and highs."
At a glance
- Excellent sound delivery in a portable package
- Tone tweaking at your fingertips
- Iconic Orange styling might not be everyone's taste
- The lack of app control may disappoint
Orange Music (now Orange Amplification) was founded by CEO Cliff Cooper in 1968, and the Orange Shop opened in London in September of that year. Finding that equipment manufacturers weren't keen on selling new gear to the shop, Cooper decided to make his own but the novel product seed was planted a couple of years earlier with the creation of a battery-powered micro guitar amp called the CTI Pixy Mk V – "there weren't any earlier ones but I figured Mk V was a good starting point," quipped Cooper in the Book of Orange.
The iconic Orange signature sound was developed over the following few years with input from professional guitarists like Peter Green and Paul Kossoff, as well as a Harley Street hearing specialist.
After building the brand on tube circuitry, Orange diversified in the mid-70s with the world's first digitally programmable amplifier, a solid-state amp and the hugely successful Jimmy Bean Voice Box under the new OMEC range.
After a production blip in the 1980s and a brief licensing stint with Gibson in the 90s, the company bounced back in 1997 with the overdriven OTR and the AD series, while the Crush combos took care of the budget end of the market.
Notable releases in the years since include the gig-bag-friendly Tiny Terror, the Thunderverb 200 (which can be used as a guitar or bass head, or both), the minimalist TH30, the Dual Dark series, and even perhaps the OPC amp/computer.
The list of artists who have used Orange amps over the years reads like a who's who of rock's finest, and includes Chuck Berry, Jimmy Page, Jeremy Spencer, Johnny Winter, Andy Powell and Ted Turner, Martin Barre, Geddy Lee, Stevie Wonder, Angus Young, Billy Gibbons, Brian Welch, Robert Smith, Noel Gallagher, James Dean Bradford, Jim Root, Tim Sult, Tiago Della Vega, Fantastic Negrito, Orianthi, and many, many more.
Where Marshall partnered with Zound Industries for the manufacture of its line of headphones and BT speakers, the Box and Box L were developed and produced completely in-house and built in the same Orange factory in Korea that produces its guitar amps and cabinets.
Blueprints for the company's first Bluetooth speaker were initially drawn up in 2017, when it was dubbed the Juicebox, but the design team's desire to get the sound just right has led to many returns to the drawing board in the years since.
"When we had the first prototype back for testing, it just wasn’t better than anything else," explained Cooper. "It was fine – good, even – but it just didn’t stand out, and one of the things Orange has always been proud of is that anything we do has to be better than what’s already out there. So that’s why it took so long."
The Box we got in for review is a battery-powered portable speaker, while the bigger Box L (that's home to a slightly bigger woofer) is aimed more at living room listeners – as it needs to be set up near a wall outlet.
Each employs active electronic crossovers to split the audio signal in two, routing the lower frequencies to a Class D amp and the mids and highs to a Class A/B amp – with long-time technical director Adrian Emsley and Cambridge academic Frank Cooke tasked with the job of determining exactly where the split point should fall for best results.
The whole shebang is encased in a resonant wooden cabinet, with many iterations rejected for resonating at the wrong frequencies until Emsley had a lightbulb moment. "I put a hole in the active crossover at the frequency of the enclosure," he said. "This 'de-boxed' the box, if you like, and gave the whole thing a more balanced frequency response."
A circuit between the crossover and the amps has the job of monitoring the output volume, and fires up a LED to the right of the volume knob if the "Voice of the World" speakers are being driven too hard, to prevent damage as well as ensuring that the listener enjoys playback without suffering distortion. If the audio-limiter warning light shines, the user simply knocks the volume back a bit to avoid any potential issues with tinny instrumentation, vocal sibilance or muffled edges.
Externally, the Box and Box L will be immediately familiar to anyone who has used or seen an Orange guitar amplifier. Our 11.02 x 6.89 x 6.69-in (28 x 17.5 x 17-cm), 6.61-lb (3-kg) portable model arrived in bright orange, but if you don't want to don a pair of sunglasses every time you power on and play, versions with black Tolex-like wrapping are available too.
The basketweave grille out front sports the company emblem in the middle, there's a control panel to the rear top with a satisfyingly clicky metal toggle switch to power on/off that's next to a crystal-topped orange status light. To the right are three top-hat knobs for treble, bass and volume adjustment (with the iconic glyphs above), and at the far right is a 3.5-mm line input for connecting a music source directly to the speaker via the included guitar-like curly cable, plus a signal status light (blue for Bluetooth and green for line in) and a pairing button.
I readily accept that I'm no longer a young man, and folks might prefer to tweak EQ and other parameters through an app but there's just something so much more satisfying about doing so old school via the treble/bass knobs. However, all is not lost for zoomers, as Orange did tell us that a companion mobile app will be looked into down the line.
A guitar-like strap button sits on either side of the bass reflex cabinet for attaching the supplied carry strap, and the Box sits on four rubber feet. The design lacks the corner bumpers of the amps and the speaker hasn't been weatherproofed, though an optional carry bag can offer some protection from the elements.
Inside, a 30-W Class D amplifier drives the 4-inch, 4-ohm subwoofer (or 5-inch, 4-ohm sub in the Box L), and there are there are two 10-W Class AB amps each driving a 2-inch, 8-ohm full-range speaker. There's also a 24-bit stereo DAC (Digital-to-Analog Converter) and Bluetooth 5.0 module with support for aptX, AAC and SBC decoding. The frequency response is given as 35 Hz to 20 kHz.
The onboard 2,600-mAh Li-ion battery is reckoned good for more than 15 hours for every 3 hours on charge, depending on how hard it's pushed – which worked out about right during our review testing.
So does it rock? Such things can be quite subjective, but from my very first listen to packing it back in the box for return, I was taken aback by the awesome performance both indoors and out. Orange is definitely a very, very late player in the wireless speaker game, but I'd say that it was worth the wait.
Despite the quality limitations associated with Bluetooth streaming, I enjoyed many an hour of clear, lively and responsive music delivery. The sweep available from the treble and bass controls – 10KHz +7 dB to -10 dB for the former and 50Hz ±10 dB with the latter – allows for a good deal of tweaking to taste, with the analog warmth providing the icing to a rich and flavorsome audio cake while there's enough bottom end to satisfy most modern tastes.
With the volume set to around 9 o'clock, there was enough volume and depth to fill my open-plan living room, with a soundstage that didn't feel as though members of the band were fighting for space. At midnight, there was sufficient oomph for a cosy beach party and 3 o'clock towards a click before 6 could be heard clearly a distance away. It's nowhere near as loud or as bulky as members of the monstrous Soundboks tribe, but it is much smaller and costs a fraction of the price.
I listened to a good range of genres and styles during this review – from classical to metal, techno to blues and recent chart-toppers (ugh) to masterclass legends. Wireless playback seemed louder out of the gate than when plugged into a source, but cabling up did offer the chance to listen to high-resolution music and the Box didn't disappoint.
Unlike the Spark Go from Positive Grid, the Orange Box doesn't feature an instrument input jack for jamming along to favorite tunes or tapping into an infinite arsenal of modeled amps, guitars and effects. Given the guitar amp vibes, that might seem like a missed opportunity but the Box series members focus on doing one thing well, and they do that really well.
The battery-powered Box model is available now for US$299, while the mains-powered Box L is priced at $345. The video below has more.
Product pages: Orange Box, Box L
