Only One Speaker Co Website Doesn’t Suck!

Of course speaker choice makes a difference – a real, audible difference. Unfortunately it takes buying different speakers and swapping them out to hear it for yourself. There are some clips/vids of speaker shootouts on the web (one metal one below), but not many and definitely not ones that you can take to the bank with your rig in your setting.

For classic rockers it’s a little easier because the choices were so limited for many classic acts (Marshall head plus Marshall 4×12 cab with Celestion Greenbacks or G12Hs) so your choices can be too – though they don’t need to be. But beyond that it’s tough – partly because Celestion and Eminence do such a poor job providing sounds on their websites.

With Celestion’s Tone Selector chart you can hear some audio clips, but they are no apples to apples and are largely unhelpful: For example, you can only hear “Rock” clips with Greenies and V30s – no Greenbacks!

Eminence at least has clips for each speaker (though not all of them) using the same riffs, but you have to click from one speaker to another to hear each of them. It’s a pain in the read and not exactly web 2.0.

Before watching the vid below, where you can hear drastic differences even with the detuned metal riffs, check out the clips on Blues City Music’s site. BCM is a Soldano-focused retailer in Oakland, Tenn. which commissioned its own Soldano model, the Soldano 44, a small 50-watt combo.

Scroll halfway down to get to the clips with different speaker combos. Amazing stuff. Different speakers sound like entirely different amps, or at least different power tubes, but only the speakers are different! Very eye- (or ear-) opening. I like the Jensen Neo speaker for the Les Paul, and the Jensen Blackbird or Neo for the Strat.

Hmmm…. Jensen speakers. Checked out their website and lo and behold there it is! One page with all their speakers and you can hear the same riffs through each speaker. What a concept! Check it out – their speakers sound pretty darn good. I’m suddenly GASing for a couple Jensens….

Various Celestions through a Rivera Amp (detuned metal riffs)