Any speaker gurus in the house?

[tedmich]

To me vintage speakers are like vintage tires; you'll not have to compete with me for that "classic" Jensen beater on Clist Chuck. No secrets have been lost in speaker Mfg. You got a drawer full of black cats and bumble bees too?

[Chuck H]

You got a drawer full of black cats and bumble bees too?

Ha ha!.,. Nope. All my vintage speaker experiences have come from conversion projects where a speaker just came with the deal and general exposure to like minded tweaks. That's why I mentioned that y experience was limited. Unless I was trying to reverse engineer a vintage speaker, resulting in it's ultimate destruction, I would never actually seek one out to purchase. You caught me! I'm not an advocate. But I've had enough good experiences to be tempted sometimes. And if a cool looking old Magnavox comes my way incidentally for peanuts I might buy it even though I still have six, or maybe eight speakers (can't remember now), mostly modern, that I haven't used yet.

[Diablo]

To me vintage speakers are like vintage tires; you'll not have to compete with me for that "classic" Jensen beater on Clist Chuck. No secrets have been lost in speaker Mfg. You got a drawer full of black cats and bumble bees too?

Yeah, but reconing a speaker is like having an old tire retreaded....

[J M Fahey]

Yeah, but reconing a speaker is like having an old tire retreaded....

Sorry but no.

Having a speaker reconed, which means it gets a new cone/VC/spider/dustcap/wires/edge , all glued with fresh adhesives, only retaining the metallic frame and magnet, is exactly the same as putting a new tire on that old wheel frame.

To me vintage speakers are like vintage tires; you'll not have to compete with me for that "classic" Jensen beater on Clist Chuck. No secrets have been lost in speaker Mfg.

You sure of that?

Who's commercially making paper thin cones, paper voice coils, glued with nitro adhesives speakers today?

Not even Jensen , working with the old blueprints and dies has hit the jackpot, for the very good reason that they use Kapton voice coils glued with Epoxy (that alone is a game changer) .

To boot old sound is wrongly attributed to Alnico ... yet all here are Alnico powered but do not deliver .... then there must be another more important factor

If that's not "forgetting/not applying" old technology then I don't know how to call it.

Read carefully this 15 Alnico speaker shootout and for each of them match sound with technology used.
Guitar Player Speaker Shootout

The only one which delivers is the Celestion Blue ... miles ahead of all others.

It's also the only one with a VC made out of "cartridge paper" (what was used to make black powder muzzleloading gun cartridges) varnished with Nitro enamel, and obviously, glued with same type of adhesive.

The difference with all others is gross:

The Blue is far and away the most tonally sophisticated -- as well as the loudest -- speaker in this roundup. Its chime and midrange complexity are truly magical, and it never sounded harsh or brittle. The Blue handles sparkling rhythms and milkshake-thick lead tones with equal poise, and is an unbelievably dynamic and multi-dimensional speaker that sounds great with any amp.

Then follow the paper voice coil ones, and last in the race are the Kapton ones.

Proof that it's built the old way, Celestion Blue handles has a large voice coil and magnet, yet handles only 15W .

And they warn you, 15W is the real limit, not guaranteed beyond that.

FWIW Greenbacks are Ceramic, yet are very close to old style technology (Nomex "paper" and light adhesives) and keep that original sound from the early 70's ... and handle meager 20/25W .

Nowadays only Weber and Scumback, both very small "factories" dare to make things that way, and Celestion makes a grand total of *one* model.

Other modern Alnicos, such as the Gold, have much higher power handling (guess why ) and sound duller , midrangey or nasal, take your pick.

We're talking speakers for old style guitar tube amps, meant to be used cranked but low power.

Can't compare with bone crushing Metal speakers , Bass speakers or PA ones.

Different game altogether.

[Justin Thomas]

Nobody whines about my bass being too loud when I play my Bassman 100 through the new(er) Ampeg 4x10" with the 350W rating, rubber/plastic/epoxy speakers. And the detail sucks too. I show up w. my 50W Bassman & 67 2x15 and I get bitched at for too much stage volume. "I have you muted in the house and you're still filling the room... can you turn down?" Um, no. My amp and speakers are simply doing their job. Now, I know they're CTS ceramic 50Watters in there, but they're still lighter & efficient. Read: LOUD. I'd rather play a 20W amp through 4 low-power lightweight speakers made the "old way" than whatever out there is new. I would LOVE to find more "bass" speakers that are low power and efficient. Every fricking detail comes through, with clarity and authority. The best part? I plug my guitar in the other channel and it handles it with ease and sparkle.

I'll take a quality old-dfashioned speaker anyday. Sure, it'd be great if they were Jensens, but it's as good as it gets. I love old speakers. If I need more power handling, I add more speakers. Know why an AC30 is so loud? It's not the amp...

Justin

[Diablo]

I'm certainly not a speaker expert, but just dabble a little in the art. Although Juan Fahey attributes much of the vintage speaker sound to the voice coil material and glue, I can only wonder about the weight difference. Are we talking about a gram or a few grams difference between paper VC + nitro adhesives vs Kapton VC + epoxy? The late Ted Weber believed that a big difference between vintage and modern design was the VC gap. His vintage recreations all used narrow VC gaps in order to increase the flux density in the gap and better control the movement of the VC. A narrow VC gap is more difficult to manufacture and can result in a VC rub and rejection if the speaker is handled roughly during shipping etc. Weber also sells their Signature Series speakers at a lower price point - these have a wider VC gap for ease of manufacturing. Weber doesn't use epoxy on their narrow VC gap speakers. They are hand assembled and glued using industrial strength cyanoacrylate. Alnico magnets do contribute "something" to the speaker sound, according to my ear - more volume compression at high power than a ceramic magnet. I'm not sure about any other tone differences. The other can of worms is the speaker cone itself - stiffness, thickness, weight etc. I don't know if the cone manufacturers are able to duplicate the vintage cones or not. I have measured vintage cones and modern cones with a micrometer, and found the same thickness of paper and number of ribs - but that doesn't tell me anything about the stiffness. I also weigh the cones, but cones with similar weight can sound very different depending more on the cone design.

[Chuck H]

It ALL makes a difference. Including the adhesives. It's not a this OR that matter as to cause. It's this AND that. Juan was extoling the aspect of vintage speakers that was discussed. He never said it was the only difference. And on that note, Diablo, your post has me even more interested in vintage speakers since I have a definite preference for the tone and feel of more efficient speakers. Lighter, harder adhesives and materials may be fragile, but they are also more efficient. I can't say about the VC gap but it makes sense. So lets get both together and see how it goes!?! One thing that confuses me is that the dB efficiency rating on the old CTS speakers wasn't all that compared to modern speakers ratings. Hmmm... So if the alnico, the smaller VC gap and the lighter, harder construction are resulting in louder speakers, WTF? I'll have to assume that, like all advertised ratings, there are ways to fudge them to imply more rich and tasty goodness? After all, doesn't everything get 10% or 25% better, lighter, stronger, faster, etc. every year. I don't think anyone has ever advertised something like a 2% improvement or an actual decline in quality. So what gives with that? Well, you get the point I'm sure. But it doesn't seem like the sort of rating that could be fudged. Is the DB rating of a speaker measured as a quantity of physical work, measurable sound or either depending on which acceptable test is used? There's a lot of this sort of thing too in ratings. So I'm all out of reality on this one for the moment.

[Diablo]

dB ratings of speakers aren't performed in a standard manner by all speaker manufacturers. That's why someone's 103 dB speaker is the same efficiency as someone else's 101 dB speaker. The different manufacturers are using different frequency input to the speakers, and that's why there can be a ratings difference for the same "real" efficiency. A couple of other factors influence efficiency - the BL is the big one. BL is increased by number of turns of wire in the VC that are in the magnetic field (overhung coils are lower efficiency), increased by the strength of the magnet (size and type of magnet), the reluctance of the magnetic circuit, the width of the VC gap, the mass of the moving parts (lower mass = higher efficiency), the stiffness of the spider and surround ( stiffer = less efficient).

[Paleo Pete]

Yeah I k now I'm a little late, never looked before...

I'm with J M on reconing...I ran across a pair of Emminence 12's in a reconing shop in Houston about 1991. I Had a Utah reconed, came from an old Peavey 3x12 PA column, used it for years in a 1x12 home built cab with my Peavey MX. Anyway this pair of speakers was hanging there so I asked. Someone dropped them off, never paid and picked up, so he put a price tag on them...$100 for both, freshly reconed. Still in my 1967 Kustom 2x12 cabinet now, working perfect, after being plugged into the 130 watt MX since about 1991 or so. Don't know what the wattage is, or anything else about them actually, just Emminence 12 inch 8 ohm...but they sound great with the MX and I've plugged them into several other amps, killer for the Fender Champ, and still work great after almost 25 years of onstage use with the MX. Not bad for a retread tire huh...

If it's done right, a reconed speaker will do the job and last a long time.

Another point, a little off topic, I always transport my amps/speaker cabinets face up or face down, not standing in onstage position. When you hit a bump, that lets the voice coil move in the same direction it always does when in use, instead of knocking against the housing, which I think is probably the main cause of most trashed voice coils. I've carted all 3 of my reconed speakers and my 73 Super Reverb all over the place since 1991, Super Reverb since about 2002, never blew a speaker yet. If you took one ride down the road I live on you'd know why I think it's a good possibility I would have trashed a few speakers by now...I think most of these potholes have potholes...someone lost a 4 wheeler in one a couple of years ago...