right out of the box. I ran the RH450 and a
pair of RS210 cabs through all of their paces
and couldn’t find anything that would disappoint even a picky gearhead like me.
Getting Started
I want to tell you that I set things up, plugged
in my bass and it roared—but that would be
getting ahead of myself. Let me tell you about
the cabs first. At 38 lbs each ( 44 for their RS212
cab), these are relatively easy to haul around by
the sturdy metal handles on each side. Rather
than the common “rat fur” carpeting, these
plywood cabs are coated with a skidproof
substance like you might find on an outdoor
stairway. The heavy gauge metal grilles are
recessed and should withstand a lot of use
while doing their job effectively. I thought the
covering was a little rough on my hands, but
it’s a functional design choice because TC
Electronic recommends stacking their cabs two-high on ends, but doesn’t use the usual locking
plastic corners. The speakers in these cabs are,
like many bass cabs these days, designed by
Eminence for TC Electronic. The cabs themselves have a “Made in Malaysia” sticker
on the crossover plate (the amp is tagged
“Made in Thailand”).
To keep these rear-ported cabs more compact,
a tweeter is located behind the top of the two
woofers in each cab. And yes, the tweeter has
a fully adjustable level control, not just an On/
Off switch. By stacking the cabs on end, you
get the focus of a line array setup while also
bringing part of the stack up closer to your ears
than is possible with the usual 4x10-on-the-
floor setup. And it really works. With the vertical stack, I heard a clean, focused sound with
a smooth middle and tight bottom. Stacking
them like a 4x10 cab provided more bottom
but less focus. If you’re on a wobbly, bouncy
stage, I’d use a conventional arrangement so
that the tower of cabs doesn’t come tumbling
down. But with a decent stage, I’d say go for it!
Everything lines up really neatly, and the head
fits atop with grace and style.
Time To Face The Music!
Enough about the cabs. On the back of the
RH450 amp is a Speakon combo jack that lets
you use either a quarter-inch or Speakon plug
for your speaker cable. I connected the head
to the top cab, ran a cable from that cab to
the cab on the bottom and started putting the
rig through its paces. I quickly decided that
you can use the RH450 two ways. If you’re
the no-nonsense, don’t-confuse-me-with-the-details kind of player, you can plug in, turn up
the input level, tweak the four bands of EQ
and you’re jamming. But most likely, if you’re
attracted to the RH450 in the first place, you
have a bit of gear-for-gear-sake attitude in you
(c’mon… confession time!), and you’ll want to
take advantage of what this rig can do.
