Review – TecAmp Puma 900 Bass Amp Head and TecAmp S 212 Classic Bass Cabinet

The TecAmp Puma 900 Bass Amp Head and TecAmp S 212 Classic Bass Cabinet are a match made in heaven. The 900 head is an unbelievable head that only weighs 2.7 pounds and packs the punch that would out do a monster size head many times larger in size. It projects 900 watts at 4 ohms, and 600 watts at 8 ohms. On the front panel, you have input, and controls for gain, taste, lo, lo mid, hi mid, hi, master, mute control, and DI out with pre/post control. The rear panel has speaker out, headphone, aux in for mp3 or music source to facilitate practice, tuner out, line out, and effects loop.

The TecAmp Puma 900 is real effortless in giving you the tone you desire and getting that tone very quickly. Whether running it at 4 or 8 ohms, it always gives you plenty of headroom. I don’t want to forget to mention that this is the ultimate touring head, being able to run at 115volt or 230volt; it is definitely a workhorse. I took it out on a few gigs and it only took a few seconds to find that tone I was looking for. The taste control really helps this stand out and instead of having to adjust the eq controls, I could adjust the taste control to go from a dry sound all the way to a big fat, round, rich tone with just the turn of one knob; there are many tone differentials along the way with just that one little taste knob. One can only speculate why TecAmp decided to use ‘taste’ for the control other than they must have been thinking ‘adjust to taste’, which appropriately fits!

While the TecAmp Puma 900 is a little, yet extremely powerful beast, it’s perfect partner is the TecAmp S 212 Classic Bass Cabinet. I would even go to say that this pairing would be true soul mates to each other. The combination of these two are incomparable and adding an additional 212 to the lineup would be breath taking. You really need to hear these together to hear what I am talking about.

The S 212 is available as either 4 or 8 ohm with two 12” ceramic speakers, and a 1” NTW-1 horn with tweeter switching. A single cabinet will handle 600 watts and only weighs just a little over 44lbs. Connections are two speakon connectors.

A couple of features that really make the 212 stand out above the rest are:

• The tweeter switching. Just as the taste control is on the TecAmp Puma 900, the tweeter switching practically does the same thing from a speaker standpoint. Tweeter Control adjusts the crossover frequency and Soft Attack sounds more “open” and transparent offering low, medium, or high output at a higher crossover frequency, and “Hard Attack,” which offers medium and high output level at a lower crossover frequency. It provides a more “aggressive” midrange presentation, which is great for Rock, or when more “cut thru” is required, depending on what genre you are playing.
• As we all know, bassists are the most versatile when it comes to covering multiple genres. We all know that when we play at louder volumes, the head tends to bounce around a little on the cabinet. TecAmp has solved this issue by placing an amp bracket on top of the speaker cabinet to help secure any of the TecAmp bass heads. This is also the only bass cabinet that I have seen recently that uses acoustic foam to dampen the bracing for the cabinet, which controls unwanted acoustic anomalies, and gives you that pure bass tone that you know you need to have.

The Combination of the TecAmp Puma 900 Bass Amp Head and TecAmp S 212 Classic Bass Cabinet will provide many years of enjoyable playing. With the headroom that the Puma 900 provides and the solid design of the S 212 cabinet that livens up any room, this is a pair that is meant to be together. TecAmp will provide you with all of the quality features you desire and require to achieve that ultimate volume and tone! Also, be sure to check out the other great TecAmp offerings including the Bass Amp Heads, Cabinets, and Combos!

Visit online at tecampusa.com