Laney RBH700 > Reviews > Laney is not lame-y

Author's product rating:   

Sound Quality	Good
Ease of Use	Very easy
Durability	Average
Transportability	Easy
Value for Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Good Tone, Comprehensive EQ, Cheap
Disadvantages:	Unreliable, Quite low power

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

The RBH700 is a 165W Bass Amp Head, packed with features at a bargain price.

On the front panel, controls include input gain, compression, enhance, bass, lo paramid (freq. and gain), hi paramid (freq. and gain) treble, limit defeat, and finally the all important volume. If you already understand what most of the controls do, then sorry, but for those of you who dont, then read on!

firstly, input gain controls the level of the input from the bass. if it is quite low you will get a clean sound, but if you crank it you will get distortion, and as this amp is not a valve amp the distortion is not particularly pretty. but gain is pretty much standard on all amps.

the compressor on this amp is not really an advanced compressor since there is one button which is on or off. when off this feature is bypassed, but when on, all of the highest volums of the input are cut, this means you dont get many peaks in the sound, and there is no distortion no matter how high you turn up the gain. i dont particularly like this compressor as it is a bit heavy and isnt adjustable, but it could be useful if you had the gain set quite low as it would only cut out the very high peaks.

the enhance knob on this amp does not have any apparent purpose, it just slightly alters the sound, in some positions the treble frequencies become more prominent, and in other there is more bass or both, but it can be used well to control the tone.

Bass affects how much of the bass frequencies you cut or boost.

lo and hi paramids are the same but have different frequency ranges. These are semi parametric controls, as you can select the frequency and then the gain(volume) of these frequencies. I like this method, however if the gain is anything above +1 or 2 (out of 5) the sound distorts which i find quite annoying when tryin to get a lot of mids tou of the amp. otherwise, i think this is a much better way of working than just having a mids knob.

Treble is used to manipulate the amount of treble frequencies exaggerated.

Limit defeat when turned on bypasses the limiter. the limiter is a built in feature, which when the amps is cranked up loud, cuts out the very loud peaks as it trys to protect your speaker cab.

finally volume adjust the overall output of the amp.

also the amp has 2 inputs, one for active and one for passive basses, and there is a DI output for going to a mixer of a PA, and a tuner output and effects loop.

I think that the number of features on this amp is excellent for the price of it. all of the features work quite well, with a few minor complaints.

however one major complaint i have about this amp is its reliability, or rather its lack of.

hen i first got it it was fine, however after a while the power switch didnt work evey now and again, until it stopped working all together. as i mail ordered this amp i didnt really want to send it back as it would have cost me loads in postage and packaging, so i opened up the amp and the wires from the power socket to the power switch had come off the switch, which was easy to fix as they were jst pushed on, but it really shouldnt have happened.

then after a few weeks, the amp would only come on very quietly, and only came on when i wiggled the volume knob for ages, and also some unnatural distortion occured when playing. i still havent fixed this problem for the last 8 months, and i have tried everything. it is more of a problem when the amp is moved, which is a big problem when gigging because i have to wait a while before the amp will play. i should have sent it back but the warranty has probably expired now.

but in the end i can always get the amp to play, and it doesnt bother me enough to send it back.

overall i think this amp is great and very cheap. the power rating of 165W is quite low in comparison to some bass amps, but again for the cahs is very good, and has been easily loud enough for quite large gigs. also i dont think that all laney products would be this unreliable otherwise they wouldnt sell.

i would definately recommend this amp, especially if you are on a budget, but if it plays up be sure to send it straight back.