I did a search and came up with this quote on another forum that was discussing Chinese Celestion's. Thought it might be interesting to some of you.
“Dave is certainly someone who likes to talk, isn't he? If you ever spend time with him on the phone, he'll tell you all sorts of interesting things. He's a premier salesman.
My recollection of the time frame for the move to China is not 6 years, but then time flies doesn't it? Maybe I've had one of my projects back-burnered for longer than I had thought. How embarrassing!
I guess I could Google for press releases, or go on a hunt for my receipts, or examine my new and old speakers for date codes, but I don't feel the need to do that to convince myself that what I have is what I have. I have two pair of V30: a pair of new Chinese, and a pair of NOS/NIB Ipswitch that have never been mounted, and sat in their the original single-unit brown corrugated paper boxes for a great many years.
If you read the various guitar-oriented boards on the web, you'll hear all sorts of stories and opinions about UK vs. Chinese Celestions. Most A/B comparisons have been impaired by the fact that people were typically trying to compare used UK speakers to new China speakers. Because I just back-burnered one of my speaker projects for way too long, I ended up with a unique opportunity to compare original, never mounted, NOS and still-in-the-sealed-box UK V30 to new Chinese production V30. Here's how we did the test:
Both sets of V30 were mounted in identical 2x12 cabs that were purchased from Avatar at the same time. Both sets of speakers were broken-in with pre-recorded programming at ear-splitting SPL for 48 continuous hours; both cabs were attached to a mono HiFi amp that played each of the following CDs for 12 hours each: Led Zeppelin's BBC sessions, Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers, RHCP's Blood Surgar Sex Magik, and AC/DC's Back in Black. After 48 hours of hammering in "the booth," the speakers were considered "broken-in" and we performed "live" testing with guitars and amps.
The test guitars included a Teles, Strats, and LPs equipped with P-90s and Burstbuckers. Amps included a Mesa Mk IV, a vintage Plexi, a 5F6 bassman clone, and several other miscellaneous amps including various Champs, Deluxes and whatnot. While one person played, someone else used an A/B switch to switch the cabs back and forth between the speakers so that the identity of the speakers wasn't known to the player.
None of the players was able to tell the speakers apart using blinded tests. The UK and China V30 were indistinguishable at every volume level, with every amp and guitar combination we tried. Doing blinded A/B tests, no player has ever been able to reliably discern between the two. The only thing about the UK/Chinese speakers that appears different is a subtle change in the label (Ipswitch England is present on the UK speakers vs. absent on the Chinese), and the box they came in.
That's the result of our littke A/B experiment that we did with the old and new V30. We controlled as many variables as we could (including the speakers' playing history) and found that when they've been broken in the same way, the speakers were sonically indistinguishable. (This was part of a bigger test that also compared some of the Eminence Red Coats to Celestions, and we noticed some definite differences there. I only mention this to show that I'm not totally tone-deaf and that I can hear differences in some speakers!)
I don't sell speakers, so I don't have anything to gain by telling stories that aren't true. The good news from our little experiment is that anyone who's interested in a V30 doesn't have to spend their time and money trying to find the UK version. The China speaker is the same speaker. The only difference is that it doesn't say Ipswitch England on the label.”
