SPEAKER... CELESTION ...all of them? ...YES! ...every single one ...good luck :-)

CELESTION SPEAKERS

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

A speaker can change your tone as much as a whole new amp can!!!

It can turn an OK amp into a killer amp!

There are 4 brands with a history of great guitar speakers ...in the UK Celestion and Fane and in the US it has been Jensen and Eminence.

Jensen were the first but the parent company were so busy in the early 60's with the Stereo boom they stopped innovating. In fact they even stopped promoting the guitar biz and slowly just shut down that branch of their company down. 

Celestion took over all the British biz. Eminence was a new company that hustled to fill the guitar amp American biz. 

Celestion were very aggressive and had a well funded research team. Eminence did better and better as they went along. Fane started to move ahead with HiWatt but when the owner died they lost their foothold. 

About 10 years ago a handful of guitar players that worked for Jensen started over.

They had no idea of how to build a speaker. One an engineer talked the company in letting them resurrect the business. Not even the blueprints survived nor even a list of material suppliers. They had to find old speakers and reverse engineer the original speakers.They were all self taught and have now got together the complete old catalog and have come up with some very innovative and progressive new product.

There are several small new companies and a couple that survive on budget clones.

But I have digressed enough. So lets have a good look at the Celestions.

CELESTION

EVERY SINGLE ONE ...please bring a lunch

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

I found that the best way for me to choose 

Neo Creamback 12"

was listening to comparisons with a bit of
crunch in a rhythm guitar groove. But not in a band track as there is too much going on. With single note things ...F-all is going on. I was listening like everyone to the basic overall tone. I was specifically  looking for fullness as I only carry a single open back 12". Since I know what I am missing I was looking for something with more bass and/or punch. I realistically felt I may need to add another speaker ...maybe even a 15" to get both fullness and more lows. One really nice surprise is that after choosing three I really liked ...one of them was the Celestion Neo Creamback which is the one I now am using. It incredibly light to tote around and we all like that.

The unusual thing is although the Neo is In the

Creamback 10"
punchy!

Creamback family it generally agreed on that it sounds like a Greenback 30. The Greenback 30 has the rep of being as warm and pleasing as the V30 but with less issues in the highs and lows. A perfect compromise. The tie between the ones I liked was broken when I found that all but my Neo had the power handling capacity. A 15' is indeed a much bigger sound. But the real surprise was a 10" Creamback it had killer punch that came thru in the lower mids and bit in the lows. I really think the punch alone would keep me away from a 15". Add to that carrying a second 10" cab would not cause weight or bulk issues. At 97db for the 12" and 96db for the 10' they should match up OK. But the blend of 2 different speakers sound is never a given.