Celestion Vintage 30s

BeZo

BeZo

Well-known member
Some people love them. Some people hate them. Some people say that the UK made ones are better that the Chinese. Some people say the there is no difference between the Chinese and the UK made ones. One thing I truly believe, however, is that Mesa Vintage 30s are better than all of them.

I've heard Chinese Vintage 30s and UK made Vintages 30s. I never really notice a difference. They all sound like Vintage 30s to me. The only time I really ever noticed a difference, was when I did a shootout between an Orange cab and a Mesa cab. The Mesa cab has more meat in the mid range department. An argument could almost be made about the cabinets themselves. I have since acquired the Mesa speakers reverenced, and put them in my VHT cab. The Orange vs the VHT w/Mesa Vintage 30s found the same results. Mesa's Vintage 30s sound better.

Is it because Mesa gets their V30s from the UK plant still? Were the Orange Vintage 30s Chinese? I hear Mesa gets a special Vintage 30 from Celestion made to their specs. Is that the case? Shootouts I've done in the past between old UK made V30s and new, Chinese made V30s didn't have this result. Why are Mesa Vintage 30s so much better?
 
Mesa sources their Vintage 30's from the English Celestion plant, and do indeed have a slight high end roll off. ANY new production Vintage 30 that does not come out of a Mesa cab is Chinese made.
 
I'm not sure the date the Orange cab we used in our little shootout was made. That relevance might be important. I will inquire about that to the owner. If it's from the last decade, I'm sure they are Chinese. The Mesa cab was from the 90s though. The other cabs I have V30s in are older UK made Celestions. The Orange cab didn't sound too different from those V30s.
 
fluff191":25w7x732 said:
Mesa sources their Vintage 30's from the English Celestion plant, and do indeed have a slight high end roll off. ANY new production Vintage 30 that does not come out of a Mesa cab is Chinese made.
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The V30 in my Diezel combo says made in Ipswich, England. Not sure if that qualifies as "new production," though since the amp was made in 2005.
 
fluff191":hct51q0e said:
Mesa sources their Vintage 30's from the English Celestion plant, and do indeed have a slight high end roll off. ANY new production Vintage 30 that does not come out of a Mesa cab is Chinese made.
Click to expand...

Marshall 'Vintage' model is their own V30, and still UK made. So let it be written.
 
Pay no mind to the magnet stickers. It's the small white sticker on the side and it's code that matters.

T3903 Standard 8 ohm (PC)
T3904 Standard 16 ohm (PC)
T3987 Marshall OEM 16 ohm (UK)
T4416 Mesa OEM 16 ohm (UK)
T4335 Mesa OEM 8 ohm (UK)
 
I have a pair of old Vintage 30s laying around that I believe are from the early 90s. I wonder if they are the good basket or not. I have to date them and maybe find the number on the basket. They have a black basket, so it's hard to read the serial number. I'm going to have to go look and see if they have the old basket or the new basket.
 
BeZo":f2la0wv5 said:
I have a pair of old Vintage 30s laying around that I believe are from the early 90s. I wonder if they are the good basket or not. I have to date them and maybe find the number on the basket. They have a black basket, so it's hard to read the serial number. I'm going to have to go look and see if they have the old basket or the new basket.
Click to expand...
Seems as though the original UK made V30 had the T3903 & 4 codes as well. When they moved to the Chinese production the code remained the same. So an old original UK V30 will have the T3903 & 4 codes. But will likely show signs of age and have the older colored baskets compared to the new ones from China.
 
D-Rock":2r4mk19w said:
Check out my thread on the subject at the VHT forum. Mr. Fryette chimed in and gave a very insightful post on the V30 and it's lineage.
http://www.fryette-users.com/forums/sho ... s-better...
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Great post by Fryette, that cleared up a lot of mystery for me on the V30.

I have a Marshall V30 lying around, considering putting it in a Peavey Classic 30, just not sure if it will be an upgrade to the stock blue marvel. It may be too bright.
 
For those who are too lazy to click the link...here is the post from Fryette:

The 30 in V30 has nothing to do with power handling. But making a distinction between the Mesa version and the off-the-shelf version is legit, even though it has little to do with actual power handling capacity. The rated power handling of the V30 of any version (see below) is 65W.

The Mesa version is OEM. This is the T4416 model, which is a 16 ohm speaker. It is made in England specifically for Mesa. But Mesa didn't specify it that way. From what we were told by Celestion around 1997-8, Celestion changed the model T3904 (16 ohm) V30 design in the early 90s to make it easier and cheaper to produce. Mesa didn't like it and insisted on the original version, which then became an OEM model. The 8 ohm version of the Mesa speaker is the T4335. To get an OEM model from Celestion requires a large order. This speaker was made on a separate production line from the off-the-shelf V30, which as Van Nord says is fizzy and thin sounding by comparison.

There is a third 16 ohm version only used by Marshall - T3897 - which is even brighter.

When we were using Celestion speakers, we found out about the existence of the T4416 which we had purchased from our German distributor at the time and asked Celestion about it. They had claimed that they didn't offer OEM varitions of the V30, but changed their story when we sent them a T4416 "for evaluation". Then a new rep called us, confirmed that there were in fact two separate V30 production lines and agreed to make us a special T Number OEM speaker. After a couple of months back and forth, we placed a large order and requested the special number assignment, at which time they cancelled the order and reneged on the deal. That's when we switched to Eminence. We haven't used Celestions speakers since.

It's not that V30s don't sound good with our amps. It's just that the T4416 sounds better. The T3904 is now made in China and after all these years, the P50E does what we wanted Celestion to do originally - and does it better, in fact - so we don't need Celestions help.

So, if you like V30s, there is nothing about the amp design that will be compromised using a V30. Our amps are not voiced "only" for the P50E. What is optimized for the P50E is the cabinet design. In that, the P50 will perform better in our cab than any others.

And now you know that when you say V30, you could be talking about 5 different speakers - that all sound slightly different:*

T3903 Standard 8 ohm
T3904 Standard 16 ohm
T3987 Marshall OEM 16 ohm
T4416 Mesa OEM 16 ohm
T4335 Mesa OEM 8 ohm

*When you change the impedance rating of the speaker, you also change the inductance of the coil which changes the resonant frequency among other things. Also an 8 ohm speaker will be driven by the amp set at 8 ohms which lowers the amplifier impedance (compared to the 16 ohm setup), and thereby lowers the amplifier damping factor, which flattens out the system (amp plus cab system) frequency response and resonant behavior. So if you have 2 identical amps and 2 identical cabs - one cab loaded with 8 ohm speakers and amp set to 8 next to one loaded with 16 ohm speakers and amp set to 16, they will sound noticably different. The 16 ohm rig will usually sound brighter and deeper.

Personally I prefer the 4416, but not in a Recto 4X12. And therein lies the rabbit hole - you can't accurately compare like speakers in unlike cabs.
 
The Vintage 30s I have laying around don't have the white label on the side of the magnet. It's a black frame, but I can barely make out the serial number on the frame.

24CBT4294720

I'm not certain on the last 4 numbers. The basket has 444 stamped on them. These good UK made or new basket Vintage 30s?
 
The black frame V30s were an OEM speaker. These came from an old Ampeg cab from the early 90s. When did they change the baskets from the old one to the new one? I wonder if these are the old basket, considering they are the 444 basket, or if they were made after the production switch. Anybody know how to date these and/or when the production switch was?
 
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