"Orange was founded in 1968 by Clifford Cooper of London, and started as a recording studio. The studio featured an IBC mixing console originally owned by Joe Meek of The Millionaires.

In autumn 1968, Cliff placed an order with the Huddersfield-based company Matamp (named after founder Mat Mathias) to make some 100-watt`valve amps for Orange to Cooper's design. The manufacturing plant in the United States signifies that only the US-distributed Oranges cabinets are made in the States; currently, valve amps are manufactured in England, Korea and China.

Orange amplifiers are primarily mid to low-gain valve/vacuum tube amp heads, designed to be coupled with a matching speaker cabinet. Their most popular guitar amplifiers were the OR120, usually referred to as the "pics only" model for its use of pictures instead of text to indicate each knob's function, and the later OD120 overdrive model which was equipped with a master volume control. Most Orange guitar amps were based on output circuitry which used EL34 tubes (as did other popular British amp makers such as Marshall and Hiwatt), and were available in the separate amp head and speaker cabinet format."