Paul Kossoff, Fire and Water, Orange Amps
(Lucy Piller photo.)
Free’s Paul Kossoff did NOT play Orange amps – except for the below performance on Germany’s Beat Club TV show because apparently every act on the show had to play through the Oranges. Verdict: The amps (Koss) sounded FREEkin’ great.
If you want to know how great, get the new Free Forever DVD 
Koss’ tone is awesome, and to my ears/preference the tone he gets from the Oranges slays the tone he gets from his Marshall Majors. (Disclaimer: I haven’t watched the second DVD yet!) Judging from his preferred Marshall tone, the Oranges probably distorted a bit too much for Koss, but they sound schweet to me.
So of course my mission now is to hunt down an old Orange amp or clone and…sound…like…Koss! Of course, per a tip from Joe Bonamassa, there’s more to it than guitar and amp – more on that in a future post. But for now, just watch and listen. In the vid, you can really hear the higher gain of the Orange amps vs. his Marshalls on ‘All Right Now’ because it’s easier to call up the ‘All Right Now’ tone we’ve heard a thousand times.
‘Fire and Water’ and ‘All Right Now,’ Beat Club, Orange amps
> This vid of ‘Fire and Water’ sounds better (can’t embed), but still no way as good as the DVD.
Here’s a vid of Queen with Paul Rodgers doing Fire and Water. Cool to hear Brian May’s take on the tune. Paul sounds the same – great!
P.S.
Since everyone doesn’t read every post, appending posts with this for a bit. C’mon fellas!
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Category: Orange amps, Paul Kossoff
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Hi there,
as i´m a big Kossoff fan i bought many original gear.
I bought three different Selmer amps, two Orange amps and two marshalls. I even had the chance to play two block logo marshalls with old 4×12 cabinets.
The closest Kossoff sound came along with an 1969 orange matamp halfstack, the old cab had original loaded fane acoustic speakers. Paul Kossoff owned a very early orange matamp too as the orange owner said in a interview.
Cheers,
Oli