MusicRadar Verdict
If pedals or multi-effects are your thing, the Pedal Baby 100 could be just what you need to bring them to life, and at a tempting price, too.
Pros
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No-nonsense clean amp for pedals and modellers.
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Proper Class A preamp.
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Solid build quality.
Cons
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It's not exactly versatile – but that's what your pedals are for!
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Announced at this year’s Winter NAMM show, Orange’s Pedal Baby 100 is a neat solution for pedalboard and multi-effects users who want to get their sound into a speaker cabinet at proper gig volume levels, without the hassle of lugging big heads around.
While many small amps use Class D circuits because of their efficiency, the Pedal Baby has a guitar-friendly Class A preamp mated to a proper class AB output stage that punches out a full 100 watts into an 8 ohm cabinet, or 70 watts into 16 ohms. It’s designed to respond like a guitar amp, while remaining transparent.
Built into a tough orange-painted steel chassis, the Pedal Baby’s electronics are typically robust and built to endure life on the road. There are just three controls, for volume, bass and treble, with a pair of speaker output jacks on the back panel. Unlike conventional guitar amps which use passive tone controls, the Pedal Baby’s EQ is active and can cut or boost, with 12 o’clock as the neutral ‘straight-thru’ position.
In use, the Pedal Baby’s beefy output stage turned our budget multi-effects pedal into a fire-breathing stack, with volume to spare and clarity that flatters the overall band mix, keeping things easy on the ears, even at averagely loud volume levels.
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