Piercing Orange TH100. What went wrong?

[VergDan]

I played an Orange TH100 with its matching 412 cabinet at a local music store today. Sure it has amazing low end, but the high ends of the dirty channel really pierced my ears. It sounded awful.
I turned the shape knob up to about 10 o clock which is a pretty middy setting. And the piercing highs didn't seem to go away. I sat directly in front of the cabinet less than 1 meter away with the volume at about 9 o clock which was still pretty loud . Was I sitting too close ? Were the power tubes not turned up enough?
I did basically all the same things with a Marshall MG100 sitting next to it, and it sounded muffled and kind of muddy.
Would someone please enlighten me

 

[Surgeon]

Re: Piercing Orange TH100. What went wrong?

Interesting... I owned a TH30 and, while it was crisp and crunchy in a very good way, I wouldn't have described it as piercing or unpleasant (through eminence govnors)... might have been brand new non-broken-in speakers and trebly pickups? Of course, sitting too close tends to make things really bright IMHO, as opposed to standing a bit further and standing up.