Another speaker question

[masterofsparks]

I'm sure this has been covered before, but anyone have any experience with the Celestion C90? I'd like to put one in my IIC+. Also, will a Celestion Vintage 30 be enough for my 60 watt IIB?

Thanks in advance.

Scott

 

[Joey707]

I've been using the MC 90 for a long time now. I have them in a couple of Boogie wide body 1x12's and in a custom made 2x12. It's a fat sounding speaker. Probably the most balanced sounding Celestion. You'll like it if you're a Celestion fan. If not you may want to check out the EV. The EV is tighter, brighter, and louder. Not my cup of tea, but many people like them.
The Vintage 30 should work in the 60 watt IIB. However it's a bit spikey in the upper mids compared to the MC 90.

 

[Russ]

As far as the V30 in the 60 watt IIB is concerned, I would use it if you like the sound of it but just be careful that you do not drive the speaker too hard. V30s are only 60 watt speakers. It is easy to overpower a speaker in this case because your typical 60 watt tube amp will make more than the 60 rated watts.

 

[masterofsparks]

Thanks Russ,

That was a concern, but I figured I was o.k. Any general guidelines as to what I should keep it below in terms of volume?

 

[Russ]

Basically you just have to keep the speaker from beginning to break up. This would be the point at which you are pushing its limits. Typically your amp is rated for clean headroom. So with this in mind as soon as you begin to hear speakers breakup you are either hitting their threshold or that of the amp in either case for you with a 60 watt amp and a 60 watt speaker I would suggest keeping it below this level. Once you begin to achieve power tube saturation I would believe that you are already beyond 60 watts. For that matter I would try to just use the preamp as the form of gain in this application and keep the volume somewhat reasonable. You may want to use the cleanest settings that you can to find where the amp would begin to push the speakers and take it from there. Boogies are known to be cold so their wattage figures may not be exactly what they are claimed though tube amps in and of themselves are misleading for wattage anyway. Try to see how loud you can get but take into consideration that speaker damage isn't an instantly noticeable thing unless you just outright fry your coil or tear your cone. If you are careful you can slowly bring up your speaker to its max then back it off a safe amount allowing for peaks and spikes. From this point I would say it would be important to take note of the level taht you are using and take into consideration any amount of boost you might use and then set your levels accordingly. A db meter would be a useful tool here if you are trying to max your speaker as would some sort of sound analyzing tool. If you don't want to get too technical with the whole thing just use your ear and be sure to turn the volume back down some to give yourself some leeway to prevent damage to your speaker. If you begin to smell anything odd or hear anything unusual stop playing and cool your speaker. Then turn down your levels because you are damaging your speaker. The odd smell would be your voice coil as might be the unusual sound.

Some people like to push their speakers some but this practice just leads to premature wear of your speakers. If you kill your speaker you can also kill your amp because your amp might see a different load and then fry your tranny. Though the overdriving of your speaker might take a long time to finally kill your speaker you may not notice it until it is too late. I would suggest just being careful not to drive your speaker too hard. This includes running settings that flub you out.