MIxing C90 and V30's? Good? bad? ugly?

[dudleydawson]

So i just got myself a 3/4 back 112 (C90).
i play it with my F30 combo (V30).

love love LOVE the cleans - they sound full, deep, colorful, multi dimensional... everything you could want in a 2x12 setup. sounds much better to my ears than cleans with the combo alone.
on the other hand - the lead channel pretty much stinks when i use both speakers. i've spent a few weeks tweaking, EQ'ing, and playing around - but i just cannot reproduce the searing, singing, dripping-thick, liquidy lead sounds i get from my combo on its own.

i don't have experience changing out speakers - i always just got something i liked and ran with it - but now i'm in a conundrum.

what i don't understand (yet) is whether my sound is being affected more by changing my setup - ohmage/2x12 etc., or if it's the C90 which has a greater affect. But why would it sound so good clean and so flat dirty?

Back in the day i spent hours A/Bing the F50 and F30 and, even though i walked in wanting to 50, i chose the 30 - maybe my ears just don't like the C90?

i know i'm not the first person in mesa history to mix a V30 and C90.
i'm just frustrated that i get bliss on one channel and crap on another...
anyone experience anything like this?
should i just keep on tweaking? should i consider swapping the C90 for another V30?
any suggestions?

thanks! love the boogie board!

 

[94Tremoverb]

Just to check, are you correctly setting the impedance when adding the cab? (Plug *both* the internal and external speakers into the 4-ohm jacks, not one into the 8 and one into the 4.) If so...

Try using *just* the extension cabinet (at 8 ohms, of course) - if you still hate it, you've eliminated the impedance and the dual-speaker setup as the cause, and you just don't like C90s. If this is the case, you should definitely try changing the speaker for another V30 - it still won't sound the same as running just one.

Luckily, clean sounds tend to be slightly less affected by the speaker choice than dirty ones, because dirty sounds contain far more harmonics across a wider frequency spectrum - so it's quite possible you can improve the dirty sound without ruining the clean.

 

[dudleydawson]

and yes - i should have mentioned - yes i have correctly matched the impedance...
i guess your comment about the lead channel having more harmonics and overtones helps make sense of this for me -

i have run with just the ext cab, and it sounds good - i can tweak it to sound great in fact.
i just can't seem to find a way to get them to mesh the way i was hoping for...

i've been playing for almost 20 years - but i've always been a player who gets a rig that sounds good - finds a sound i like - and runs with it. (now that i think about it - that only really applies to amps - i've modified by guitars more times than i can remember!)

so here's a beginner question - if the sound i'm accustom to is coming from the single V30 speaker - can i assume that i would need to run my amp louder to reproduce that sound with 2 V30s?

 

[ibanez4life SZ!]

I'm actually not a fan of C90s either. I used them a bit a few years ago. In the end, I founded them to be a dark and muddy speaker for anything other than cleans. I preferred my sound much more with all V30s.

I'd stay that swapping one speaker isn't too big of a deal. Buy a used V30, and give it a shot....it shouldn't cost you any more than $70 or $80, and you might get the sound you've been looking for.

Eric

 

[TimeSignature]

Funny how opinions vary.... I have a 2x12 cab with V30's that has been collecting dust for years now. I absolutely can not stand them. I am a c90 guy. I love the darker sound. Less fuzz and high treble ice pick sound that I just couldnt tame with the V30's.

 

[ibanez4life SZ!]

I guess I should add that I've always played Rectifiers with them....don't need to make those amps darker :wink:

 

[dudleydawson]

ok - dumb question to help my as i experiment with my setup...

rather than using my 4 ohm outputs to both my combo and ext. cab (both rated at 8 ohms), can i safely run my combo through my 8 ohm output and the extenstion cab at 4 ohms?

 

[94Tremoverb]

I wouldn't. Mesa amps are tough and not very prone to impedance mismatch damage, but it also probably won't sound very good - low mismatches like that tend to make the sound squashed and flubby. You could try it though - keep the amp at fairly low volume and there's no risk. If you find it sounds bad, don't try it louder. You will also find the speaker connected to the 4-ohm jack is quieter, because it's now mismtached.

If for some reason you do like the sound, there is a safe way of running mismatched speaker loads at equal volumes, but you will need a different speaker - you need to run an 8-ohm speaker from the 4-ohm jack and a 16-ohm speaker from the 8-ohm jack. This is an overall safe mismatch - although my personal experience is that it doesn't sound as good, because *each* load is now not correctly matched... if you're still with me .

 

[dudleydawson]

silly me.
chalk this post up to '1st time noticeably breaking in speakers'
this combination now sounds phenomenal. wow.

 

[RectoStudioGuy]

I have some V30's laying around for anyone that prefers them over C90's. I used to use them until I discovered Swamp Things. I'd consider trades if anyone is interested.

 

[RectoStudioGuy]

Funny how opinions vary.... I have a 2x12 cab with V30's that has been collecting dust for years now. I absolutely can not stand them. I am a c90 guy. I love the darker sound. Less fuzz and high treble ice pick sound that I just couldnt tame with the V30's.

+1

 

[sted]

I was speaking to the top amp builder at Matamp and he told me that the V30's are unique in the celestion range that they are designed to sound as intended straight out of the box, every other speaker requires a breaking in period but V30's actually go "off", I know some people actually prefer the broken in V30 sound. I tried loads of speakers with my MV combo which has a C90 and didnt find the V30's overly offensive, quite good actually, but I settled on G12K 100's in a 2x12.
I cant get a straight answer on impedances, the guy who built the cab (Its a 4 ohm cab) told me to run the combo in the 8 ohm socket and the cab in a four ohm socket, but other people have said to run both out of the 4 ohm sockets, have to admit the latter seems correct to me and sounds pretty good!

 

[YellowJacket]

Funny how opinions vary.... I have a 2x12 cab with V30's that has been collecting dust for years now. I absolutely can not stand them. I am a c90 guy. I love the darker sound. Less fuzz and high treble ice pick sound that I just couldnt tame with the V30's.

Totally personal preference.

From my experience so far, I *think* that v30s work much better in a traditional 4 x 12 than they do in a 2 x 12, which is more mid heavy. I'm personally not big into uber-scooped tone so I prefer a more mid heavy speaker. When looking for speakers I could never choose between a greenback or a v30 (greenback is too farty in the lows and v30 is too stiff) so I combined both for favourable results. A thiele 2 x 12 emphasizes treble and bass more so it balances these speakers well.

I was going to recommend dudleydawson combine a G12H-30 with the v30 but I think his problem solved itself! ^__^

 

[94Tremoverb]

"I was speaking to the top amp builder at Matamp and he told me that the V30's are unique in the celestion range that they are designed to sound as intended straight out of the box, every other speaker requires a breaking in period but V30's actually go "off", I know some people actually prefer the broken in V30 sound."

Do you actually know anyone who doesn't?! I can't believe Celestion really want them to sound like that, they're horrible straight out of the box. It's got to be nonsense anyway - they break in quite a lot fairly quickly, so if the out-of-the-box sound is the intended sound, you'd need to be replacing them every few weeks.

I also think they keep improving with time, even after the first few weeks and especially with heavy use... the V30s in my Tremoverb - which was used for a long time at high average volumes by its former owner - sound fantastic, the best I've ever heard V30s.

Even funnier is that I tried a (used and broken in) Alnico Gold in it, to see what the combination would be like... I was expecting a chalk and cheese thing that sounded great, as it often does. What I didn't expect is that there's almost no difference! Not none at all - the Gold is a bit brighter, slightly sweeter and has that Alnico 'chime', whereas the V30s does still have that characteristic upper-mid spike - but it's quite marginal and if you didn't know there were two different speakers in it you wouldn't notice at first. They really sound like just Alnico and ceramic versions of the same thing.

So a really well-broken-in V30 (which is supposedly "off") sounds extremely like the flagship premium speaker they make... hmmm .

 

[sted]

"I was speaking to the top amp builder at Matamp and he told me that the V30's are unique in the celestion range that they are designed to sound as intended straight out of the box, every other speaker requires a breaking in period but V30's actually go "off", I know some people actually prefer the broken in V30 sound."

Do you actually know anyone who doesn't?! I can't believe Celestion really want them to sound like that, they're horrible straight out of the box. It's got to be nonsense anyway - they break in quite a lot fairly quickly, so if the out-of-the-box sound is the intended sound, you'd need to be replacing them every few weeks.

I also think they keep improving with time, even after the first few weeks and especially with heavy use... the V30s in my Tremoverb - which was used for a long time at high average volumes by its former owner - sound fantastic, the best I've ever heard V30s.

Even funnier is that I tried a (used and broken in) Alnico Gold in it, to see what the combination would be like... I was expecting a chalk and cheese thing that sounded great, as it often does. What I didn't expect is that there's almost no difference! Not none at all - the Gold is a bit brighter, slightly sweeter and has that Alnico 'chime', whereas the V30s does still have that characteristic upper-mid spike - but it's quite marginal and if you didn't know there were two different speakers in it you wouldn't notice at first. They really sound like just Alnico and ceramic versions of the same thing.

So a really well-broken-in V30 (which is supposedly "off") sounds extremely like the flagship premium speaker they make... hmmm .

Well I dont know about "nonsense" they're a premium british amp builder of some 60 years who almost exclusively use and recommend Celestion speakers for their products, as pointed out a lot of people prefer the sound of them broken in, theres probably people who dont, I thought they sounded ok straight out of the box, the point was the design intent was to give a broken in sound out of the box, it doesnt matter to me either way mate, if you like 'em, go for it.

 

[RectoStudioGuy]

My experience over the years w/ V30's is that the mid-range spike smooths out after a fair amount of use and loses some of that stiffness. They sound good for some styles while others they completely clash, as with power amp choice. When I ran a 20/20 through a pair of 'em it was absolutely hideous but hit 'em hard with some 6L6's and they improve. I later opted for a different speaker all together and they've been colecting dust ever since.