Choosing speakers - is it super important, or can you EQ enough to get them to sound good?

[youngthrasher9]

That’s actually a really good idea. I don’t want to go on a wild goose chase, trying to find a good v30 cab. I’m actually getting close to just saying fuck it, and do IRs for V30s. I’ve got cabs for playing, and don’t really need another. I just figured a v30 cab would be cool, since I have 3 amp heads and 2 cabs, so another cab might be cool. What I’m hoping is that if I get a v30 cab that doesn’t have the “good era” v30s then I can EQ it in some way to reduce the harshness, tighten up the bottom end, etc.

IMHO- you should never have a problem with the tightness in the low end of a V30. There are leaner sounding speakers out there, yes. But unless the cabinet is strange dimensions or poor construction, one V30 won’t be sloppy compared to another.

Having played through literally dozens of v30’s at this point, the only way I’d say to nearly guarantee you’ll get some that aren’t “harsh” sounding from the get go is to buy a used cab that you can verify was made 2005 or before, or just one that has seen a lot of play time (100hrs plus). I’ve had some “bad year” v30’s that were only slightly brighter than pre-05’s and I heavily suspect they had been played a bit.

You could also get some Hellatone 60’s from Avatar. They’re just broken in V30’s with a new label.

All that said, even the harshest V30 will only be super apparent if you are recording, playing in a room with horrible echo, or have the cab on a shelf or a stand aimed right at your head. If it’s projecting into your knees while playing you really won’t notice a deal breaking amount of difference IME.

 

[Stiman]

I just figured a v30 cab would be cool, since I have 3 amp heads and 2 cabs, so another cab might be cool.

Yes, definitely would be cool to have 3 and 3.

 

[JediMasterThrash]

Another train of thought. The reason it's so hard to EQ out the speaker differences is that you're choosing speakers with specific spikey peaks and cuts :cough:: v30s ::cough:. And EQs are usually quite broad, even a 31-band EQ affects about half an octave per band.

And same with those pickups. If it's called "modern" there's no bass coming out of that thing.

And the poweramp, tube-based with it's own color.

The trick is to use flatter frequency range pups and flatter frequency ranges (possibly solid state) power-amp, and a flatter frequency response speaker (I love the CL80's, it's like the walls were removed form my sound).

Now your preamp and pre/post EQ actually matters, Tune your pups into the preamp with pre-eq/OD, tune the output sound with a post EQ into the poweramp. And let the OD/preamp do all the distortion. It gives you fully control where it makes sense in the chain, and none of these weird frequency responses at the start and end of your chain locking you in to some tone you keep trying to dial yourself out of.

 

[DECEMBER]

Speakers can sound so completely different. If a given speaker doesn't sound the way you want, no amount of EQ will make it sound like a different speaker. Any given speaker presents its characteristics and frequency response regardless of EQ. If you EQ a Creamback, it'll sound like an EQd Creamback.
It took me about a year to figure out that I can't stand the wonky midrange of the Celestions. Using a 10 band parametric EQ in the FX loop with several different amps and no matter what I did with the EQ, no matter how much mids I cut, the Creamback always had that wonky midrange. Finally got a different speaker and the difference is night and day. I had to completely redo the EQ for the new speaker.

 

[DECEMBER]

If it's called "modern" there's no bass coming out of that thing.

On everything I've used with 'modern' and 'vintage' tone options, the 'modern' settings always had a lot more bass.

 

[Hollowway]

Another train of thought. The reason it's so hard to EQ out the speaker differences is that you're choosing speakers with specific spikey peaks and cuts :cough:: v30s ::cough:. And EQs are usually quite broad, even a 31-band EQ affects about half an octave per band.

And same with those pickups. If it's called "modern" there's no bass coming out of that thing.

And the poweramp, tube-based with it's own color.

The trick is to use flatter frequency range pups and flatter frequency ranges (possibly solid state) power-amp, and a flatter frequency response speaker (I love the CL80's, it's like the walls were removed form my sound).

Now your preamp and pre/post EQ actually matters, Tune your pups into the preamp with pre-eq/OD, tune the output sound with a post EQ into the poweramp. And let the OD/preamp do all the distortion. It gives you fully control where it makes sense in the chain, and none of these weird frequency responses at the start and end of your chain locking you in to some tone you keep trying to dial yourself out of.

Yeah, and that’s why I like the EVM12L.

I’ve never played a CL80, so maybe I’ll look into that. I have nice monitors and a mixer, etc, so I should probably just get an IR box and use that, but I’ve convinced myself I need to spend more money on guitar stuff, lol.

 

[Hollowway]

Speakers can sound so completely different. If a given speaker doesn't sound the way you want, no amount of EQ will make it sound like a different speaker. Any given speaker presents its characteristics and frequency response regardless of EQ. If you EQ a Creamback, it'll sound like an EQd Creamback.
It took me about a year to figure out that I can't stand the wonky midrange of the Celestions. Using a 10 band parametric EQ in the FX loop with several different amps and no matter what I did with the EQ, no matter how much mids I cut, the Creamback always had that wonky midrange. Finally got a different speaker and the difference is night and day. I had to completely redo the EQ for the new speaker.

Which is my hesitation. Speakers are the biggest part of the tone, can’t easily be corrected with EQ, and have a huge amount of variation from speaker to speaker. It would be like buying a Ferrari, only to find out that you have to try them all, because there’s so much variation in the engines that some do 0-60 in 3.5 seconds, and others in 6 seconds. I see these guys with shelves of speakers - many of the exact same type - because each one sounds different, and they pop it in a cab for recording. We treat them as if they are organic things that occur in nature, and that such variation is normal, but good GOD it’s maddening to not be able to depend on any level of consistency.

 

[spilla]

but I’ve convinced myself I need to spend more money on guitar stuff, lol.

Youve come to the wrong place if you want to be talked out of that lol. Keep an eye on the used market for a mesa, orange, marshall or avatar cab thats loaded with V30's if you dont like it move on and try something else.

That said what amps will you be using?

 

[Estilo]

Another train of thought. The reason it's so hard to EQ out the speaker differences is that you're choosing speakers with specific spikey peaks and cuts :cough:: v30s ::cough:. And EQs are usually quite broad, even a 31-band EQ affects about half an octave per band.

And same with those pickups. If it's called "modern" there's no bass coming out of that thing.

And the poweramp, tube-based with it's own color.

The trick is to use flatter frequency range pups and flatter frequency ranges (possibly solid state) power-amp, and a flatter frequency response speaker (I love the CL80's, it's like the walls were removed form my sound).

Now your preamp and pre/post EQ actually matters, Tune your pups into the preamp with pre-eq/OD, tune the output sound with a post EQ into the poweramp. And let the OD/preamp do all the distortion. It gives you fully control where it makes sense in the chain, and none of these weird frequency responses at the start and end of your chain locking you in to some tone you keep trying to dial yourself out of.

Flatter response speakers would be the Seventy80 and the K100?

 

[broj15]

Speakers are, in my opinion, the most important part of a rig, big or small. Even if you go all out and spend a fortune on guitars, pedals, amps, etc. It won't mean anything if you're playing through sub par speakers. It's the last think in the signal chain and the this the final thing that effects the sound before it hits your ears.

As far as knowing what speakers will suit your needs instead of just blind buying (or deaf buying ) speakers and cabs trying to find "the one" maybe trying out a bunch of IR's/cab sims through a good set of headphones or nice studio monitors is a good place to start. Of course there will still be variables not covered by this (cab size, cab construction, how the speakers sound it whatever space you play in, mixing different speakers together, etc.) I still feel like that would be a close approximation that would at least get you in the ball park of know what you do or don't like.

 

[boltzthrower]

Yeah, and that’s why I like the EVM12L.

I’ve never played a CL80, so maybe I’ll look into that. I have nice monitors and a mixer, etc, so I should probably just get an IR box and use that, but I’ve convinced myself I need to spend more money on guitar stuff, lol.

If you’re a fan of the EVM12L and you’re interested in something more Brittish/Celestion I would recommend the Redback. Not to knock the CL80, they are good, but the Redback sounds like a Brittish speaker that more or less competes in the EVM12L market. Also it pairs phenomenally well with the EVM12L.

Compared to the EV, CL80 has more lows, more low mids and the highs are rolled off. The EV is tighter but I would not describe the CL80 as loose. The CL80 has some Brittish growl and being a low mid heavy speaker the growl is a heavy low mid rumble vs some other Celestions where the growl is mid or high mid oriented. Where the V30 cuts through the mix with high mids, expect the CL80 to cut with low mids. The CL80 pairs okay with the EVM12L but it’s nothing to write home about.

With Redback vs CL80, the Redback has more crispy presence and clear & detailed highs although I wouldn’t say it has boosted highs in general, I would say the Redback is more balanced across the EQ spectrum. Mids are different, hard to describe, both have a lot of low mid. CL80 has more Brittish growl. Redback has a certain richness to the tone, idk how else to describe it. Both can be useful for recording depending on what you’re going for, ime, the CL80 comes through the mic with beefy low mids and the Redback is more mid oriented.

SS.org, where you ask about one specific thing and the replies recommend twelve other things.

 

[JediMasterThrash]

ears tell the full story, but if you go by the posted frequency response on celestions website, the CL80 is more evened out than the redback or K100, while also having less >10lk content. THe EVM12k specs show it to be quite narrow banded with heavy low and highi pass.
Though I will say by my ears, the G12K-100 was my second option to try out. Interestingly enough I felt it was a bit darker.

I had contacted celestion about the response curves, since the published V30 curve actually looks more even than the CL80, and doesn't show any upper mid spikes whatsoever, which contradicts everything we know about them. They said the curves are just general guidlines and not representative of a specific speaker.

So in the end i don't trust the published speaker curves at all.

But I love low-mids and hate the >=14k icepick resonances, which is probably why I like the CL80s.

Despite people always saying guitar speakers don't reproduce sound about like 8k, definitely I can say that's not the case. Those 12k to 14k icepicks definitely make it through.

 

[ExMachina]

The curves on speaker sites are far field and smoothed a lot, so you can really only get a general idea. You're better off loading up cab lab 4 from fractal to look at IRs or pass a sweep through an IR to check the frequency response.

 

[Necky379]

Cool seeing the CL80 get some love. CL80 + G12T pairing will change your lives folks.

 

[Hollowway]

Speakers are, in my opinion, the most important part of a rig, big or small. Even if you go all out and spend a fortune on guitars, pedals, amps, etc. It won't mean anything if you're playing through sub par speakers. It's the last think in the signal chain and the this the final thing that effects the sound before it hits your ears.

As far as knowing what speakers will suit your needs instead of just blind buying (or deaf buying ) speakers and cabs trying to find "the one" maybe trying out a bunch of IR's/cab sims through a good set of headphones or nice studio monitors is a good place to start. Of course there will still be variables not covered by this (cab size, cab construction, how the speakers sound it whatever space you play in, mixing different speakers together, etc.) I still feel like that would be a close approximation that would at least get you in the ball park of know what you do or don't like.

Yeah, I definitely like the v30 sound. But, as far as I can tell in looking into it, there’s a suuuper wide variation in how individual v30 speakers sound. One might be tight and harsh, another darker and mellow, etc. just hearing the different ones on YT show a crazy variation. Which is why I feel like I have to try a v30 cab before I buy it.

I’ve got my eye on a couple used ones, though, so I might snap one up just for shiggles, and see how it sounds.

 

[ExMachina]

Yeah, I definitely like the v30 sound. But, as far as I can tell in looking into it, there’s a suuuper wide variation in how individual v30 speakers sound. One might be tight and harsh, another darker and mellow, etc. just hearing the different ones on YT show a crazy variation. Which is why I feel like I have to try a v30 cab before I buy it.

I’ve got my eye on a couple used ones, though, so I might snap one up just for shiggles, and see how it sounds.

Did you watch that John Browne video? I didnt get the feeling there was that much variation, really just two types.

 

[Hollowway]

Did you watch that John Browne video? I didnt get the feeling there was that much variation, really just two types.

I don’t think so - I’ll check that. I just watched a few - Glenn Fricker and Kyle Bull had some comparisons. I’ll check out a few more, and see if I can calm my first world problem worrying.

 

[Hollowway]

Did you watch that John Browne video? I didnt get the feeling there was that much variation, really just two types.

Just watched damn near all of those. That guy went deeeep into that research! That was so cool!

 

[HanSwolo]

While I do agree with most statements here. The only thing that I'll go extremely against the grain is the burn-in myth. Like in the same audiophile community that I'm also in, I can surely tell you, that the burn-in period is exactly as long as your replacement period is.

 

[Stiman]

Just watched damn near all of those. That guy went deeeep into that research! That was so cool!

Can you share a tldr?