Best speaker for voicing amps?

[R.G.]

How about a mega test cabinet with about a dozen speakers and a big selector switch? Not exactly cost effective but it would be a cool conversation piece.

The problem is that the enclosure affects how the speaker eventually sounds when used in it. Any speaker in one mega cab would sound different from the same speaker in a smaller cab, especially with the other "dead" speaker cones flapping back and forth from the back pressure and letting treble reflect through them unless you sub-compartmented the mega cab.

We did do the test-every-speaker thing for the Workhorse amps, but we found we had to actually put the two speakers being A-B'd in two identical cabs and switch between the two cabs to give a fair test. And in spite of the cabs being nominally identical, any speaker in cab "A" had a bit rougher treble than the same speaker in cab "B". So we had to perform the same tests twice with speakers in both cabs to get a fair reading on speakers, not cabs.

[m-fine]

Yeah, I was joking. I figure the biggest issue with mega cab would actually be the increased bass response from a much much larger baffle. For the same reason you could not even stack up a bunch of 1x12's because of they are top to bottom and side by side the effective baffle area will increase and the other cones could resonate.

[Gregg]

How about a mega test cabinet with about a dozen speakers and a big selector switch?

In case someone missed it this is the Rivera shootout of some 15 most famous speakers:

"This is a comparison for ear education. We compare a Celestion Vintage 30, G12-H30, K100, M70, Seventy 80, Gold Tone, Greenback, G12T-75, Jensen Alnico 12, JBL M222, EVM12L, Tone Tubby 40/40, Tone... "

YouTube - 15 Speakers compared Celestion vs E.V. vs Eminence vs JBL vs Jensen vs Tone Tubby

I was curious what was the power level.

[Hardtailed]

But maybe there is no such thing as a generic generic speaker, as others have pointed out.

Run a Marshall through Celestion Alnicos and it starts sounding like a Vox.
Run an AC30 through Greenbacks and it sounds like a Marshall

The only real difference between the Tweed Bassman and the Marshall JTM45 was the speakers used (10" Jensen in the first, 12" Celestion in the second). Oh, and the Marshall was closed back.

Nope, there is no generic speaker. But the single most common speakers is the G12T-75 because that's what Marshall used for 25 years and tons of people are using these cabs. Vintage30 is close 2nd, that's if it has not stolen the first spot (thanks for Mesa/Boogie)

[pdf64]

'The only real difference between the Tweed Bassman and the Marshall JTM45 was the speakers used'
There's a lot more global negative feedback with the Marshall, as the 5F4A used the signal from a 2ohm speaker output, the Marshall from a 16 ohm speaker output, which also has the consequence of making the presence control more effective.

[Steve Conner]

No, I hadn't seen that video, thanks!

I think it was quite a good test, though I wonder why they used a ported cabinet. It's not exactly representative, and you can hear it making a bit of a nasty throb with the Jensen.

I'd guess the power level is quite low. I don't think the speaker is even screwed to the cabinet, and you can't see the cone vibrating.

The tones they recorded for the Alnico Gold and EVM12L sound similar to the recorded tones I got from mine, and the G12T75 reminds me of some stuff I recorded a while back with a borrowed Marshall 4x12. I thought it had Vintage 30s in it at the time, but it had that nice crispy top end that you hear in the G12T75 clip. I never opened it to see.

The Alnico Gold still sounds like a Celestion, but the EV has a definite flavour different to all the others. I preferred it out of the group of high-powered speakers with big dustcaps.

I think the Vintage 30 and G12T75 were probably my favourites, but I liked most of the lower powered Celestions. My least favourites were the Seventy 80 and San Rafael.

[uvacom]

The thing is, pretty much all of the common guitar speakers have nothing like a flat response, so if you use one of the Celestions like a G12T75, it's possible you'll have some nasty stuff going on in the high-end that would never materialize on that speaker but would make that amp sound terribly shrill if played through a Jenson P12M Alnico. It's the classic recording engineer's dilemma, and it's the reason why nearfield monitors are so flat in their response. Nearfields don't sound as good on their own, but the idea is that if you can get the sound to be good through them, they'll sound good on anything from a $30 boombox to a $10k supermegahi-fi.

I would say the best (although not easiest) thing to do is to actually use a hi-fi speaker and just train your ears to listen to things that might interact badly with any of the common speaker/cabinet configurations. Unless you're voicing your amp very specifically so that it will compliment a certain speaker, of course!

[Steve Conner]

All guitar amps have "nasty stuff going on in the high end" and need the limited response of guitar speakers to make them sound acceptable. Have you ever tried cranking a guitar amp through a hi-fi speaker? I have, and it sounds disastrous. They sound nice with bass guitar, but you have to be careful not to blow them.

It's a chicken and egg situation, too, because the nasty stuff comes from treble boost that guitar amp designers introduced to compensate the limited high-end response of the speakers. The amp clips like crazy at high frequencies with that treble boost.

If you soak up the amp's output in a dummy load, and send it through an EQ, you can dial in something that sounds like a guitar speaker. When you look at the EQ, you always find that you had to dial in a massive rolloff of the high end to make it sound right.

Nearfield monitors are tuned to be flat in the near field, where direct sound from them dominates over the reverberant field. They show a treble boost when you use them as hi-fi speakers in a reverberant room. Good hi-fi speakers should be flat when measured from the couch in an average living room, even though no such thing exists. McIntosh used to sell an EQ and their dealers would install it and spend a day EQing your living room, for a sizeable fee I'd imagine.

[uvacom]

Okay, but none of that makes guitar speakers more flat. How about a hi-fi speaker in conunction with a butterworth filter at like 2-4KHz then?

[Steve Conner]

Gah! What a horrible... OK... it's actually quite a clever idea.

It'll sound pretty bad, but it would probably do as a kind of "Standard bad". Maybe with a dummy load that had some inductance to model the voice coil inductance, it would work.

But then, a hi-fi speaker with a filter is probably about the same as an Eminence Beta, and we're back where we started...

[Pedro Vecino]

Recommend speakers regardless of the cabinet can not find it very appropriate. They depend on it. There are very resonant cabinets, some very inert ...
I use two 4x12 Peavey straight cabinets for modding. One with Sheffield and another with Jensen . These cabinets are rather "neutral", with little punch, no predominance of mids and with a fine grain that interferes very little with the character of each amp.
All typical ceramic Celestion (V30, G1275/H/Greenback, CL80...) have a particular focus and grain can be easily identified and somehow bring their own color/texture to the sound associated with the Marshall characters (at least that happens to me).
Old classic EV12 (modern I have not tried yet) are very good speakers but its density and its particular big punch can be very misleading if used as a reference. Alnico speakers (Blue alnico, Jensen P12, etc.) I does not consider them suitable as a reference for all styles because their behavior is very variable between clean and overdrive in modern amps.
Something like this happens with the guitars. Itīs necessary to serve as a reference to later fit the Strats/Teles with traditional singles, heavy Les Pauls and Superstrats (Ibanez, Jackson, etc.) with powerful modern ceramic pick-ups in the same amp. Few rules here. Everything intuition...
Regards

[imaradiostar]

I had an interesting conversation with a guitar playing friend that resulted in doing a lot of research on the internet and I wanted to mention what I'd come up with.

I don't feel there is a "standard" speaker but I think a few simple options could get you really close to some standard sounds.

We concluded that the Celestion classic lead 80 would be an excellent choice for a small cabinet, ported or not. Supposedly it has slightly more even response at the top when bottom of the frequency range when used in a small cabinet. Supposedly Bogner and Egnater are both using versions of it in their small cabs. You can get that little Egnater 1x12 pretty cheaply and it's supposed to be a very even sounding cabinet. Of course, I don't own one and I'm going on my friend's comments and those of people on the internet and you know what that's worth! I do really trust my friend's judgement though.

The other "major" flavor to me is some sort of open back cab. Speaker size depends on your choices but I would say if you have a small ported 1x12 and a small open back 1x12 or 2x10 you can get a pretty good feel for how an amp would sound with a wider variety of different cabinets.

Dunno if that's helpful, it's just where I've landed.

jamie

[mac1amps]

'definately a good idea having a few different types to test with. I've always liked the EV's (and the Eminence/EV clones), whereas a lot of players prefer sticking with traditional "guitar" speakers (i.e. Jensen, etc.). Let's not forget another significant variable [IMO], that being "sealed" enclosure vs "open back". For instance, I Love the low end that an EV can produce in a "combo", whereas in a sealed cab, they tend to sound too "boomey" to my ears. I personally never cared for the sound of JBL 12's (especially with a distorted sound), but when they're installed in a sealed cabinet, it "tones down" the emphasized high end [primarily resulting from the 4" aluminum dust cap], and they don't "sting" my ears quite so bad, but still have that "up-front" presence to them.