mega-post... sorry
stratman323 said:
(a) Thanks Marcus, that's good to know. One more thing was that I checked the speaker in my Blues Junior, which I don't rate at all - thin, scratchy tone. It has a Fender speaker - made by Eminence!
(b) The amp is 35w or 40w (depends what you read), & as there are two speakers, I understand that I need to divide the power by 2 - so I need each speaker to handle 20w. Is that right?
(c) So that means I should be OK with the C10R, which can handle 25w. Am I right in thinking that using a speaker with a higher wattage than the amp would lower the overall amp output, but may increase the low frequency response?
(a) i don't think it's fair to judge eminence based on its oem models. I mean, celestion do the same thing and have plenty of terrible oem models, and i've tried a few oem jensens too which weren't great either.
not saying you shouldn't go for the italian jensens, just saying you shouldn't discount the eminences because the oem ones you've tried sucked (i'd agree, the oem eminence in the hot rod deluxe, for example, is horrible).
(b) yeah, i think so. at a minimum, anyway. valve amps can put out more than their rated wattage... but then presumably speaker manufacturers know that too. depends on the speaker, i guess, and how much speaker breakup etc. you want. also bear in mind, if you go for two differently rated speakers, it's the lower power-handling speaker's wattage multiplied by 2, i think. for example, if you combine a vintage 30 (60 watts) with a g12h30 (30 watts), the combined wattage handling is 60 watts, not 90, as the output is split evenly between the two speakers. I think. mixing speakers might be cool to get a slightly more complex tone... but then you can go wrong too, if you aren't careful...
(c) i don't think it's going to lower the amp's output, the sensitivity/efficiency is what matters there (i think so, anyway). the higher the wattage you go for, the less chance you have of a blown speaker, and speaker distortion, but if you go too high (say a 500 watt rated speaker coupled with a 1 watt amp), things can start to sound a little sterile, bit like running a 100 watt valve amp on 1 versus running a 5 watter on 7...
I think so, anyway. again, it depends on the tone you're going for, the specific speaker, etc. etc. etc. i'm giving you more questions than answers, unfortunately.
:lol:
marcusnieman said:
I pulled and stored the original speakers from all of my 60's Fender blackface amps (Super Reverb, Pro Reverb and Princeton Reverb) and put Italian Jensens in all of them. They sound fantastic and don't cost an arm and a leg.
ah, sweet. like someone else posted in this thread, i've heard bad things about the chinese jensens, but if the italian ones are good, that's definitely another option (i'm sort of considering a speaker swap myself into my valve junior cab, it needs to be a pretty high wattage though).
is there any way to tell if they're italian or not, other than reading the back of the speaker?
EDIT:
stratman323 said:
Thanks, so are you saying I should get the 25w or 70w rated speakers? You know I'm a bit slow on this stuff, I need it spelled out for me.
just to spell it out, all in the one place, the 3 main quoted specs about speakers are:
1) the impedance. this needs to be matched to the impedance of the output transformer.
if you're replacing speakers, unless the amp has an impedance selector, replace speakers with the same impedance as the old ones.
2) the wattage- this is how many watts the speaker can take (more or less- they're often rated conservatively) before blowing up. It doesn't say anything about how loud the speaker will be, but generally you'll get more speaker distortion if you use a lower wattage of speaker with the same wattage of amp (though some speakers break up more than others, etc. etc.).
you want, at minimum, the same wattage as the wattage of the amp. some people/manufacturers suggest double the wattage (to cover for valve amps putting out more than their rated wattage), some don't... not certain which is best, to be honest. i know when i emailed eminence, their rep said that its speakers were rated pretty conservatively, and if i were willing to take a chance, could even go slightly lower than the amp's rated wattage, as long as i wasn't cranking the amp to 10 all the time.
3) the sensitivity/efficiency, rated in decibels. This is the amount of decibels the amp puts out for a given wattage from an amp- the higher, the louder.
often you can make a lower wattage amp louder than a higher wattage by using a much more efficient speaker, as the sensitivity can range from low 90s to 103, or even more, decibels. Some different companies rate the efficiencies slightly differently, so it's not always a direct comparison.
other specs too, like whether it's a ceramic/ferrite, alnico or neodymium magnet, the graph of the frequencies it outputs, size of the voice coil etc. can tell you about the tone etc., but those three are the main ones for determining the basic specs- how loud it's likely to be, and whether it'll work with your amp without destroying either the speaker or the output transformer. i should add that i'm far from a speaker expert, i can't understand all those graphs etc. regarding the tone, but those should keep you right and at least make sure you don't blow anything up.