TC Electronic Rebelhead

[GreeneKing]

TC Electronics have been around making high quality studio equipment for a long time but the Rebel Head is their 1st foray into the bass amp business and I think that their fresh approach has worked wonders.

There's two sides to an amp in my opinion, features and sounds. Sound must come 1st because if the amp doesn't sound good no amount of features will make up for that. Most features of course have a direct influence on the sound produced too. Perhaps there's another aspect I haven't mentioned, reliability.

Features abound! The amp has 4EQ with the usual Bass, Lower Mid, Upper Mid and Treble adjustment highlighted by a ring of LEDs (the 'Ring of LEDs' is used to great effect throughout):

[i][b]Tone control

Bass
Center Freq: 280Hz (range: 71-1120Hz, Gain: +15/-24dB)

Low Mid
Center Freq: 400Hz (range: 100-1600Hz, Gain: +15/-24dB)

High Mid
Center Freq: 800Hz (range: 200-3150Hz, Gain: +15/-24dB)

Treble
Center Freq: 1600Hz (range: 400-6300Hz, Gain: +12/-24dB)[/b][/i]

The use of the shift button, that switches itself off after 20s inactivity, gives semi parametric adjustment of all EQ's again shown by the LED ring:

There is a rotary input gain control with obligatory ring of lights and a clipping light and a rotary 'Tubetone' knob as well as the master volume.

The amp also has 3 presets that incorporate the gain, EQ settings, both position and level and the level of tube tone. Also incorporated into the preset is the compression which is multi (3) level. The compression is multi level to address the issue whereby it's normally just the lower notes that control and dominate the compression in a simple single band compressor.

The use of the shift button allows shifting of the EQ centres, adjusting the multi level compression, operation of which is illustrated neatly by the 'ring of light', and the control of the total range of the Tubetone.

There is a tuner constantly displaying on the front panel of the amp and when the mute button is pushed (yes another button) the bass ring of light becomes a fine tuner indication.

And then there's the floor control, a robust 4 button unit with a fine tuner display. Buttons are mute and the 3 presets and it comes with over 6 metres of sturdy lead.

There is just the one speakon output on the rear of the amp necessitating daisy chaining the cabs but there is an input for a MP3/Tascam and a studio quality headphone amp.

So features absolutely ooze out of every orifice.

It's sounds really great. A little warmer than a LMII imo and my initial worries that it was light on juice were unfounded as unlike the LMII the master volume is very linear.

It's very sturdily made and compact with a neat handle built in. It's not ultra light at 4Kg but the shoulder bag makes carrying a breeze with the pedal and bits and bobs fitting in nicely. It's well made and nowhere near as expensive as the LM equivalent.

As for reliability, well I am a beta tester no doubt, watch this space.

The TC Electronics website hosts many videos that ably demonstrate the function and features of the amp.

[url="http://www.tcelectronic.com/rh450.asp"]http://www.tcelectronic.com/rh450.asp[/url]

The Tubetone works well for my purposes, adding a wide range of subtle crunch that can be kicked in just when needed.

Front Panel:



Pedal:



Rear:



Handle:



Bag:

Edited September 21, 2009 by GreeneKing

[ped]

Excellent review, thanks. I like the handle, very clever, and the vents will keep it nice and warm!

[Dood]

I was really impressed with the Rebel. I loved the way that it was so easy to program - then you could forget about it.. Touch a button and the settings instantly come back. Very handy if you left your amp and somebody twiddled the knobs whilst you weren't looking / getting a pint.

Tonally, the parametric EQ was another joy. Again, so simple and made sense. Nice bit of kit that!

[Legion]

I absolutely love my RH450 - its been used for plenty of rehearsals and a couple of gigs and I'm really pleased with how its performing

The built in tuner is great, the presets are awesome and the footswitch makes using them even more accessible. The DI is good quality and as Peter says, even the bag is very good for carrying the whole lot about.

I'm using mine with 2 GS112's at the moment as they are nice and durable and stack vertically without any issues - although I did fit some slightly taller rubber feet to the RH450 so it clears the top handle of the cab when vertically stacked. I'd love to get the RS210/RS212 combo but I have some concerns about the durability of the finish and the fact that to get 4 ohms I'd have to drag 2 medium sized cabs about instead of 2 tiny ones.

A little tip for setting up the EQ centre frequencies (as you cannot easily identify which freq its targetting) is to turn up the EQ in question to the max (EG low mid), then go into shift mode and adjust the centre freq until you hear the range of freq you wanted to target, then go back and reduce the amount you are adding/cutting to a decent level.

[attachment=33334:the_rig.JPG]

[Musicman20]

I am a convert to this amp.

Having recently swapped my Shuttle 9.0 that had a fault, for this amp....it is a massive difference. Much better quality construction.....the tone is awesome, and the features are very very good.

My favourite micro amp by far.

Even the cabs impressed me...so I might get some!

[Dubs]

This massively does not help with my GAS :wacko: I might have to bite the bullet on this and buy one new; I can't see that any will come up 2nd hand any time soon...