speaker response

[Leo_Gnardo]

Seems like No Speaker gets as much "hate" as the Celestion Vintage 30. I do not know for sure, but I get the feeling it outsells any other speaker by a Big Margin.

I often advise my customers "listen to all the speakers you can, your friends' and whatever you hear at a show. When you hear something you like, find out what it is and get yourself one, or more." Half the time they land on the Vintage 30. Most recently, i bolted a pair into a customer's freshly acquired '57 tweed Twin. He told me Celestion stopped making them (WTF?!?) and he got nearly the last stock from Amazon.

Sometimes there's a nice surprise. I had two recently. One customer just out of the blue decided to replace the speaker in his Hot Rod Deluxe with a Scumback 65. All of a sudden he had way more bass than he could deal with. It was even rattling the sheet metal of the amp chassis. After thinning down the excess bass response of the amp by reducing the size of the cap at the power amp input to something reasonable (Fender has 0.01 uF, I put in 680 pF) THEN, what a sound! Especially when pushing the amp into clip or using the OD channel, lots of ear-friendly overtones. I'd have to say, that's one exceptional speaker.

Surprise #2 when I put a freshly reconed Mesa 90W Celestion (marketed as Black Shadow) into a MarkIV combo. Not much a fan of the MarkIV but this amp was turning out scrumptious tones even with this untalented tech trying his lame licks thru it.

And I always luv luv luv Altec 417's. Works for everything, guitar, bass, even sounds terrific as a single-driver hi fi speaker, very full range and pleasing tone.

Curves and specs can tell you something, but certainly not everything about a speaker's response. You have to actually listen, and occasionally you can find some that are exceptionally good.

[guitician]

I can tell you that the cabinet that the speaker is in makes a huge difference in the sound you hear from it. I had this JBL MI-12 in a chipboard box about 2.5 cu ft sealed and filled with poly fiber. Well, after taking it out of that cabinet and putting it in a small solid wood combo cabinet, WOW! It was merely flat sounding before and now it really shines. I think the closed back was over damping the tones that it produced when in the open back cabinet. Also, I think that the solid wood helps add desirable tones to the hole speaker/cabinet combo, or maybe removes undesirable ones, or both.

[Enzo]

Sure, the enclosure is mechanically part of the speaker. Just as the stiffness of the spider and surround, for example, affect the motion of the cone, so does the enclosure. The air pressure can resist cone motion, the flexibility of the baffle, etc.