Orange The Amp Detonator

Running two amps is one of the most powerful moves in a guitarist’s toolkit, and one of the most technically fraught. Ground loops, phase cancellations, passive signal split loss: a cheap ABY box hands you all three. The Orange Amp Detonator was built to solve each one properly, and it does.

Controls

The Amp Detonator has no knobs. The entire panel is three switches and one tri-color LED, which is exactly what you want from a utility box you’re operating with your feet in a dark room. Reading from left to right across the top panel, there is a small Phase pushbutton. Below it are two stomp switches: the left one selects between amp A and amp B, the right one engages both simultaneously. The single large LED in the center tells you where you are: one color for A only, a second for B only, a third for both at once. Relay-based silent switching means there are no pops when you move between states.

The phase button is the control that earns its place. When you run two amps together, cabinet placement, cable length differences, and mismatched transformer polarities can put your two signals out of phase with each other, which kills low end and thins out the combined sound in a way that’s hard to diagnose. A single press of the phase button flips the polarity on the transformer-isolated output to correct it instantly. In the demo above I’ve set up a Phase Switch sweep so you can hear exactly what phase cancellation sounds like and what the correction does, plus comparison presets that flip between amp A, amp B and both at once, summed to mono or split in stereo.

The transformer isolation on output B is the other piece of engineering that matters. Output A is buffered: your signal gets driven cleanly down long cable runs without loading down your pickups. Output B runs through a transformer that breaks the ground connection between the two amp circuits, which is where ground loop hum actually comes from in most two-amp rigs. The internal charge pump boosts the working voltage to 18V (or 24V on a 12V supply), keeping headroom high and harmonic distortion low well above normal playing levels.

How It Sounds

Transparent is the goal, and it delivers. The buffer keeps your guitar’s tone intact through the splitter rather than rolling off high end the way a passive Y-cable does. The transformer on output B is voiced to pass the full audio band without the coloration that cheaper transformers introduce. In the demo the signal chain runs an Orange Terror Stamp into one cab sim on the A path and a different amp plugin on the B path: the point is that both amps track the same guitar signal with the same dynamic response, rather than one getting a loaded-down, tone-thin version of what the other receives.

Who It’s For

The Amp Detonator is for anyone who wants to run two amps and actually use both at the same time without fighting hum or phase problems. That covers classic clean-plus-dirty blends, stereo spreads where two different cab characters sit left and right, and lead boosts where you kick in a second, louder amp for solos. The battery option makes it genuinely pedalboard-friendly without a power supply tap.

The honest caveat: if you only ever switch between two amps and never run them together, the isolation transformer on output B matters less to you, and a simpler true-bypass box might do the job. The Amp Detonator’s value is highest when both amps are on simultaneously and ground loop hum is a real concern, which is most real-world two-amp situations.

Specs

• Buffered signal path with studio-quality buffer on both outputs
• Output B: transformer isolated to eliminate ground loops
• Phase correction pushbutton on output B
• Silent relay footswitching, tri-color LED status indicator
• Internal charge pump: 9V input boosts to 18V internally; 12V input boosts to 24V
• Power: 9V battery or 9 to 12V DC adapter (centre negative), 12mA at 9V
• Size: 9.5 x 6.5 x 13 cm

Signal Chain

• Fidelity Guitars Stellarosa Lite II with Lollar Firebird pickups (bridge pickup)
• The Amp Detonator
• A: Orange Terror Stamp set to medium gain into Mixwave Benson Chimera Plugin* (cab sim only)
• B: Mixwave Benson Chimera Plugin* with the Benson Preamp internally set to a dirty, beefy sound.
• A bit of room-like reverb from the Valhalla Vintage Verb plugin

Where to Buy

'Cause why not? Fuel your tone obsession Feeling pedalbored?

Buy through these links and support Loopy Demos at no extra cost to you.

Get detailed specs on Orange's website

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