No bullshit here: my EL34 KSR Orion kept up astonishingly well with a 50w Wizard Modern Classic in a comparison we did 3 weekends ago. More on that later…
My 3 other amps are a GZ Hellion (fave of all time…so far), Splawn Comp, & BFG Modded Egnater Seminar. I usually live in the modded Marshall camp.
I like the Orion quite a bit, especially for used priced right now: great bank for the buck, value. I gig quite a bit and although I use my Hellion, I always have my Splawn mini Comp as a backup. I’ve become a big fan of smaller heads with big balls: the Orion is that amp.
It took me some time to figure it out and it’s my first KSR experience. First, I don’t find the amp dark or too dark. Sure, it’s not as inherently bright as some of my other amps, but the EQ on the amp is very good, between the bright switches, the trouble, presence, and negative feedback, I struggle to think how someone would get lost in a mix with the Orion. It’s not a Marshall, but it’s not suffering from a lack of treble and mids.
It took me a while to figure out the bass structure and how that corresponds with gain. I tend to dial the game anywhere between 11 to 1 o’clock on all four channels. Anything more than that and I am dialing the bass in the bottom back.
I was just playing GNR earlier today on channel 2, which is the red channel and without a bus with my last paw. I could get a pretty good AFD Tone. The EQ knobs have a pretty wide range, unlike your typical Marshall circuit.
I don’t play the two high game channels, which are lead one and lead two. I feel like the higher the gain, the less articulation you have, and I’m not a super high gain player anyway. Lead one is where I would live between those two.
I’m a single channel guy anyway, and so I usually will dial up a good mid gain rock Tone, and use my pick ups and guitar volume to get the clean tones that I need on stage for songs that have clean sounds in them
Then I’ll boost from there with either a clown type boost or a Timmy V2 for my harder rocker up to 90s metal tones.
I can see why some folks maybe don’t gravitate to the KSR town sound or feel. I wouldn’t say the Orion has a particularly are very, extremely unique tone to it. However, this little amp has a lot of balls, especially for its size and it would sound great on any stage I play on.
So I brought it over to my buddy’s house a few weekends ago, and I trust his ear as he’s had a lot of great amps over the years and he’s a great player.
We dialed up the Orion as close as we could to his wizard modern classic 50 W and we were all pretty blown away by How well the Orion could keep up. Of course, there was a point where the wizard took things over and did something only a wizard is going to do. But at reasonably high volumes, the KSR through the same speaker cab of course was doing pretty damn great. The wizard of course could get super bright and slice your body in half, and that’s where the Orion didn’t have quite as much brightness, but we all felt the Orion, especially for the price, it was pretty awesome.
I got mine used that are a pretty decent price, though I had to buy the foot switch directly from KSR and I really didn’t need it because I only play channel one and channel 2 anyway, or I could play channel 2 for an entire gig for my clean to mean tones. I got it with the assumption that I would flip it eventually, but I haven’t listed it yet and I may end up just holding onto it for a while. I need to try it at a gig and see how it goes. It’s lighter and it has way more EQ control than my Spay competition, so I’m starting to favor it over my spawn as my back up head.
Whatever that’s worth to you guys.