Orange TH30H

Orange amps never cease to fascinate me. i love that elusive dirty tone - not fizzy, but with just that hint of harshness...

the TH30 is a great way to enter the Orange world, without spending a fortune, but it's a very peculiar piece of gear...

it has got 2 channels. an extremely loud clean with a 2 band EQ, that's very, very clean up to 12 o' clock, but can be driven into a really sweet (but ridiculously loud) crunch.
the dirt channel has lots and lots (4 stages, actually) of gain. even too much (fizzy to the point of being unusable after 3 o clock), and a shape control that can - well - shape EQ from a slightly nasal, middy and extremely smooth tone that reminds me a bit of Santana's mark amps to a metal-zoney mid-scooped adolescent idea of metal. between the two extremes there's a wide range of non-linear EQs. getting a completely satisfying tone is tricky and takes multiple attempts, but it's entirely possible.
the problem is, the first gain stage is weak and unremarkable. the fourth is chaotic and muddy. it's and the gain structure is not really ideal for rock.
it's a metal amp, great for doom and stoner (of course) and surprisingly good for black and even trash, if overdriven.

it has a non switchable fx loop (that works really bad with instrument level effects, beware!) and can be downgraded to 15 and 7 W (without losing much of its volume, but with much less headroom)

i modded mine changing the tubes for milder ones, and swapping a resistor to get a smoother gain structure (it's still a nasty beast, anyway), more similar to a Rockerverb. and it worked great (there's some info on the web).

i'd really love if the first gain stages sounded somehow as the pushed clean channel (did i mention it gets REALLY loud?). it would have been a much more versatile amp.

I play in a pop-punk/punk-rock band and this perfect for me. I don't need to spend hundreds upon hundreds on higher spec products in the Orange line, as this offers exactly what I need.

It delivers that perfect punchy dirty noise I need as a rhythm guitarist. The twin channel suffice in offer that nice balance in the music I play for the few clean parts in songs. Though this lacks any built in effects such as reverb etc, this is easily customisable with a few pedals here and there that would set you back even more should you decide you wanted a head with these features build in.

The ability to control the output on the amp as well makes it ideal for recording demos and as well as full studio tracks.

From an amateur perspective getting into big hardware, I would recommend the TH30 as it will definitely see you through. It also asks a gateway to tube driven Orange products. Perhaps later down the line I may look at the more expensive end of the chain. For now though, I am more than content with this amp.