Well, my ideas of great tone have less to do with what other people are doing on records, and more to do with what sounds good to me. Except, many people like Garcia and Santana, Eric Johnson and others have hit on the idea of using high power-handling PA speakers to get an accurate, hi-fidelity rendition of exploding tubes. Jim Marshall's two primary design parameters for his legendary 4X12 cabinets were that they use as little wood as possible to save costs, and that they use the cheapest speakers he could buy in bulk, which happened to be Celestions. No moola wasted on Thiele-Small parameters, there, folks....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiele/Small
Over the course of the years, we all heard Hendrix, Blackmore, Clapton etc etc etc playing though these farty, distorty last-gasping speakers and because these guys were creating an entirely new genre, we actually came to
like the sound of buzzy, farty, dying speakers. The reason Hendrix, Blackmore, Page et alia had big piles of speaker cabinets behind them was because they blew more speakers than snot, and needed spares. Because Jim Marshall was smart and prescient, he realized that giving away free amps and speakers to the right selected artists would pay off in the long run. For Hendrix Page Clapton etc, speakers were cheaper than Kleenex! Of course, Clapton
recorded with Fenders (or the Beano Marshall etc), Hendrix
recorded with a Twin Reverb, Page used his Supro. Once the sound of Celestion speakers were hammered into our heads, however, Marshall began showing up in more recording studios, hence the need for isolation booths and power attenuators. When I listen back to late Hendrix & mid-Zeppelin, I'm struck by just how clean most of their tones were.
Now I like Marshall amps - my (72? 73?) 50-watt no-master head was my main gig amp all through the 1980's. However, after finding out about Santana and his speakers, Garcia and his speakers, Duane Allman and his speakers, I started using good speakers. Once I discovered that Peavey Black Widows were as flat (
accurate flat) as old EV's, cheaper than new JBL's and as reliable as both, I've never looked back. The new neodymium speakers will get there, soon, but so far I haven't heard a compelling reason to switch.
If you're a fan of Celestions because you want
everything you play to sound like AC/DC, great, but if you're a fan because your fave guys (who get them free) endorse them, remember - most of the endorsees and famous past users have something
else for clean sounds. Eric Johnson, Santana, Joe Bonamassa, Brad Paisley etc etc etc are all running multiple amps, usually with a dedicated all-midrange Marshall-type with buzzy farty speakers for
that howl tone, and something more adult with JBL's or EV's to pick up clean highs and lows. If you can only afford one rig or don't have a roadie to tote your stuff or don't want to spend two hours setting up a multi-amp setup, it's far easier to "do things" to a good base clean tone to make it sound nasty, than it is to try to make Celestion speakers sound hi-fi with clear treble and flat (
accurate) bass reproduction. (CB, your jazz guy is swimming against the current, congrats to him!).
I've run across a few Marshall 50-watt combos that had a great clean tone, but only in a small sweet spot, and if you're gigging it always seemed to me to be important that you can get a consistent tone at a variety of volumes (this is weird, I know). I know that Celestion is making some speakers with a higher power-handing capacity (though I clearly have my model numbers off) but unless I'm totally dinosauring here, I believe that they're still trying to emulate the sound of their own earlier buzzy, farty triumphs.
It's all about match-ups and combinations. There is no one perfect
anything, clearly you can make anything sound awful with a little work and in the past, people have made much out of little. But, historical accidents and the subsequent imprinting of what "great tone" is shouldn't rule out the idea that you ought to, at least once, try a really good clean speaker and get your nasty on from the tubes alone. :evil4:
All of the speakers were upgraded to Electro-Voice speakers.
but changed out the speakers for Electro-Voice EVM speakers
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amplifiers_used_by_Stevie_Ray_Vaughan
You might get by with one of the newer Gold series Celestions that's designed to sound like a dying 30 but with a little higher capacity.
