Orange OBC410 Bass Cabinet Review

I remember when I started playing bass that everybody and their brother was using speaker cabinets with 15 or 18-inch speakers in them. Guys that used cabinets with 10 or 12-inch speakers usually teamed them up with larger speakers because there was not enough air moving to satisfy them. In 1988 (or so) I endured a deafening audition/practice at an airplane hanger near Santa Anita that shredded the speakers in my two old-technology 4x10 cabinets.

Everything has changed over the past 25 years, and now there are plenty of 4x10-inch cabinets out there that have a full range of sound and sickeningly huge power capabilities. Today we are looking at the Orange OBC410 bass cabinet that I tried out recently with the Orange Terror 500 bass head -- it is a nice piece of work, for sure.

This is an imposing cabinet, measuring 24 by 24 by 18 inches and weighing in at a spine-compressing 95 pounds. It earns this weight honestly through liberal use of 13 ply high-density 18mm birch plywood. This English-made (really?) product comes in two colors: orange or black. But why would anyone in their right mind buy one of these and not get an orange one? There are nice skids to help protect the tolex, but no wheels. Ouch.

This cabinet is loaded with four 10-inch heavy-duty Eminence speakers coupled with a crossover and a n Eminence APT80 horn. It is rated at 600 watts at 8 ohms. There are two parallel ¼-inch/Speakon connectors on the back panel, along with a 3-positon horn control switch (Hi, Lo and Off).

I hooked the OBC410 up to the Terror 500, and let fly with a few different active and passive basses. My initial impression was that it had a very tight and punchy sound and that was well-balanced with the horn control in the Off position. This cabinet certainly took everything that the 500-watt Terror could dish out, and it got to incredible volume levels with consistently good bass and no farting out.

I tried the horn control switch in the Hi and Lo positions, and was not happy with the higher registers in either one of these modes. For a thousand bucks, I think they could have included a variable control like the other manufacturers use. As it sits, I think the horn is not terribly useful.

What can I say? It is pretty nice and it sounds good, but the Orange OBC410 has a list price of $1379 and a street price of $999. This is very spendy for what it is and I am not impressed with the horn control. There are plenty of good 4x10 cabinets out there for less cash, and the only reason I would ever buy one of these is if I really wanted an Orange head and needed a matching cabinet to complete the set. This is not going to happen…

Mahalo!