Orange 20 Rt article
Orange 20 Rt for Beginners: A Complete Guide
There isn't much to learn before you're making sound you like. Here's the beginner's guide to getting started on an Orange Crush 20RT.
Picked up an Orange Crush 20RT as your first proper amp, or thinking about it? Good choice — it's genuinely one of the friendlier amps to start on, precisely because there isn't much to learn before you're actually making sound you like.
What you're actually looking at
Put simply, the Orange Crush 20RT gives you: two channels (clean and dirty), a gain knob, a shared bass/middle/treble EQ, a volume knob per channel, a reverb dial, a built-in tuner, and a headphone socket. That's genuinely most of it. There's no menu to scroll through and no presets to choose between — you turn a knob, you hear the difference immediately.
That simplicity is exactly why it's such a sensible amp to learn on. You won't spend your first month reading a manual to understand what half the buttons do.
Clean versus dirty, in beginner terms
The clean channel is a starting point — quieter, less distorted, good for learning chords and picking without extra noise getting in the way. The dirty channel adds Orange's own gritty, high-gain sound at the flick of a switch, which is genuinely useful once you want to start exploring rock or heavier styles. There's no wrong channel to learn on; start with whichever sound made you want to play in the first place.
Your very first session
- Plug in your guitar and set the gain and volume knobs low to start.
- Select the clean channel and slowly bring the volume up until it's comfortably audible.
- Use the built-in tuner first — mute the signal, tune each string, then start playing.
- Try the dirty channel once you're comfortable, again starting with lower gain and volume than you think you need.
- Experiment with the reverb dial in small amounts — a little ambience, not a wash of echo.
None of this needs to happen in one sitting. Spend a session just getting comfortable with where the knobs are and what each one actually does before worrying about "getting a good tone" — that comes naturally once the basics feel familiar.
Using headphones (and why it's genuinely useful)
The headphone output includes something called cabinet simulation, or CabSim, which is a fancy way of saying it's designed to sound more like a real speaker and less harsh than a raw signal would through headphones. It's a genuinely great feature for practising quietly — late at night, in a shared flat, or whenever you don't want to disturb anyone. Just know it's for listening, not for recording onto a computer; there's no USB connection here.
A beginner mistake worth avoiding early
New players often max out the gain and volume straight away because it feels exciting. Try resisting that urge — lower settings are genuinely easier to control while you're learning technique, and a maxed-out dirty channel can mask sloppy playing rather than making it sound better. Turn things up gradually as your playing (and your ears) develop.
Looking after it as a beginner
There's very little maintenance to worry about with a solid-state amp like this one. Keep it somewhere dry, don't leave it powered on unattended for long stretches, and give the speaker grille the occasional dust. Being solid-state rather than valve-powered, there are no tubes to warm up, bias or eventually replace — one less thing for a first-time owner to think about.
Do you need pedals?
Not to get started, no. The built-in dirty channel already gives you a proper high-gain sound without a single pedal. Once you're comfortable with the amp itself, the clean channel is a good, simple platform to start experimenting with a pedal or two — but there's no rush, and plenty of great playing happens with nothing more than this amp and a guitar.
Where to go from here
Once the basics feel natural, our complete guide to the Orange 20 RT covers every feature in full detail, and our buyer's guide is useful if you're still deciding whether it's the right amp for you.
The bottom line
You genuinely don't need to know much to get started on an Orange Crush 20RT, which is exactly the point. Learn where the knobs are, start quiet, and let your ears — not the marketing — tell you when it's time to turn things up.
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