For a decade, the battery-powered busking market has belonged to two Japanese giants: Roland and Boss on one side with the CUBE and CUBE Street lineage, Fishman on the other with the Loudbox Charge. Orange, a brand whose reputation was built on 100-watt valve heads and the kind of midrange roar that powers stadium rock, never had a horse in that race. That changed this summer. The Outlowd by Ed Sheeran range is Orange’s first swing at the street-corner player, and it arrives as Ed Sheeran’s first line of signature amps.
There are three of them, and Orange has been careful to space them across the price ladder so almost nobody walks away empty-handed. The ES3 is $199, the ES60 is $699, and the flagship ES100 lands at $1,499. In the US the whole series launched as a Guitar Center exclusive, which tells you a lot about who Orange thinks is buying these: not the boutique-pedal crowd, but the walk-in customer looking for one box that handles a guitar and a vocal mic in a park.
The three-amp ladder, from pocket speaker to pro rig
The ES3 is barely an amp in the traditional sense. It is a 3-watt, 4-inch full-range unit with a slanted cabinet, volume, tone and reverb controls, USB-C charging, Bluetooth playback and a leather carry strap. Think practice amp that doubles as a Bluetooth speaker, aimed at the kid learning three chords in a bedroom. At $199 it competes less with amps than with the Positive Grid Spark Mini and Fender’s smaller Bluetooth combos.
The ES60 is where the range gets serious. Orange calls it the “ultimate busking amp,” and the spec sheet backs the ambition: 60 watts, two channels with reverb, a balanced microphone input with +48V phantom power, an effects loop, headphone and aux inputs, an onboard battery, and a slanted cabinet that throws sound up toward a standing crowd rather than at their ankles. It ships with a gigbag. Orange’s official listing puts it at $699, or £499 in the UK.
The ES100 is the flagship at $1,499. It steps up to a 100-watt output driving a 12-inch Celestion neodymium full-range driver paired with a high-frequency tweeter, two channels with fuller EQ, an XLR vocal input and an effects loop. Orange pitches it as a “fully professional acoustic solution” for larger rooms. It went up for preorder with shipping slated for September, while the ES3 and ES60 are available now.
The ES60 is the one buskers will actually argue about
Nobody agonizes over a $199 practice amp, and the $1,499 ES100 is a specialist purchase for players already gigging acoustic sets. The ES60 sits in the exact spot where real buying decisions get made, and that spot is crowded.
Its most obvious rival is the Boss CUBE Street II, which most guides still crown as the busking amp to beat in 2026 thanks to a 15-hour battery, a built-in looper, vocal harmony, and a 5.5-pound weight, all for well under the Orange’s price. The Roland CUBE Street EX offers 50 watts of stereo COSM modeling and a genuinely absurd 20 hours of runtime on eight AA batteries. On the acoustic-fidelity side, the Fishman Loudbox Mini Charge delivers a clean, natural 60 watts through a 6.5-inch woofer and tweeter, which is the tone reference a lot of singer-songwriters buy first.
Against that field, the ES60’s pitch is straightforward: two proper channels, phantom power for a condenser mic, an FX loop, and Orange’s voicing and build quality in a genuinely good-looking box. What it does not obviously offer is the one feature you would expect on an amp with Ed Sheeran’s name on it. Sheeran built an entire arena career on a loop pedal, yet Orange’s spec sheets make no mention of onboard looping. Buskers who loop, which is most of them chasing the Sheeran sound, will still be running a separate looper pedal on the ground. That is not a dealbreaker, but at $699 against a $399-ish Boss with looping baked in, it is the first question a savvy buyer should ask.
Why a valve-amp brand is chasing the street corner
The more interesting story here is not the gear, it is the strategy. Orange makes its name on high-gain British tone, the same lineage covered when we looked at the Super Crush 100. Acoustic busking amps are a different customer entirely. Tying that pivot to the biggest solo touring artist on the planet is how you buy instant credibility in a category you have never competed in.
Sheeran, for his part, is leaning into the origin story rather than the celebrity. “Music doesn’t start in arenas or on streaming platforms,” he said in the launch material. “It starts in bedrooms, youth clubs, pubs, schools, parks, living rooms and street corners.” He also framed the whole thing as a gear decision he made for himself first: “Is this something that I need in my life as a musician? And the answer was yes.”
The amps arrived alongside a grassroots effort called Play It Home, a campaign running through cities including Ipswich, Guildford, Toronto, Paris, Sydney, Los Angeles, Tokyo and Bamberg, with local artists playing community spots and retailers pitching in. Sheeran kicked it off on June 5 by playing Ipswich Waterfront with music teacher Lianne Kaye, then handing his amp and a year of free lessons to a nine-year-old in the crowd. Orange CEO Cliff Cooper called him “such a talented and caring person who does so much to introduce people into music.” Cynics will read a marketing budget into all of it. They would also be missing that a year of lessons for a kid is a better use of an amp than a review unit gathering dust in a closet.
Who should actually buy one
If you busk with a voice and an acoustic and you want one clean, good-looking box with phantom power, the ES60 is an easy amp to recommend and a genuinely strong debut in a category Orange had no business being competitive in on the first try. If your set is built on looping and layered parts, price the ES60 against a Boss CUBE Street II with your looper needs written down first, because the feature math may not land where the badge suggests. And if you are a working acoustic act playing rooms rather than corners, the ES100’s Celestion neo and 100 watts are worth the September wait.
What Orange has really done is prove it can read a market it never served and show up with a credible product ladder on day one. The Roland and Boss street kings are not dethroned. But for the first time in a long time, they have a rival wearing orange vinyl and a very famous signature.