Anyone use Alnico magnet speakers?

  • Thread starter Thread starter MadAsAHatter
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MadAsAHatter

MadAsAHatter

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Been looking at a couple of Alnico speakers (Celestion Gold, Weber Blue Dog & Silver Bell, Scumback Scumnico) and wondering if they have anything special over ceramic speakers that help justify the extra costs.

A secondary question; In terms of tone, where does the Celestion gold fall in comparison to Greenback type speakers?
 
Alnico have a different tone from ceramic. They usually aren’t that good for distortion. Often a fizzy top with heavy distortion. But they can be great for anything clean up to edge of breakup.

A Celestion Gold is quite different from a Greenback. Neither has a very tight bottom but the mids and highs sit very different.

There’s gotta be some YouTube videos comparing them.
 



No Alnico experience but here's a great video series I've seen that helped me understand the Celestion speakers.
 
SpiderWars said:
Alnico have a different tone from ceramic. They usually aren’t that good for distortion. Often a fizzy top with heavy distortion. But they can be great for anything clean up to edge of breakup.

A Celestion Gold is quite different from a Greenback. Neither has a very tight bottom but the mids and highs sit very different.

There’s gotta be some YouTube videos comparing them.
Click to expand...

I'd be going for more classic/hard rock type distortion. I've seen some people say a Blue/V30 mix does well for a hard rock sound. I also have a cab with Weber Gray Wolf/Alnico Blue Dog 15 that sounds great for heavy rock into 80's thrash tones. But those are also an Alnico/Ceramic mix.

I wouldn't expect a Gold to sound like a Greenback. I'm familiar with Greenback tones and can use that as a base of comparison. Zilla has Gold comparison video which compares it to the Greenback category with light crunch sounds. That helps, but I haven't found anything decent yet comparing heavier distortion sounds.

CDawg said:



No Alnico experience but here's a great video series I've seen that helped me understand the Celestion speakers.
Click to expand...


That's for those. I saw one of his older similar videos, but I missed those. The guy from Bareface has several good videos on this subject.
 
I will say that I have never used any Celestion or Jenson alnicos, nor any of the Webers based on them, but I have had a pair of Fane AXA12 alnicos for gotta be around 20 yrs now, and am up to four alnico EV SRO's.

The Fanes are 100 watts with iirc 35oz or 40 oz alnico magnets, and fiberglass voice coils. They're amazing speakers, and definitely the opposite of thin and fizzy. Milkshake thick midrange, with smooth rolled off treble and a round sweet bottom. To me they sound like a fatter and sweeter Greenback. They do that elastic and silky sweet vintage thing better than any other speaker I've tried. Awesome for blues, jazz, classic rock, even stuff like Sabbath they would be fine, but on the darker side. They have an awesome midrange grind to them when wound up and hit with gain or fuzz, but there is always this subtle velvety smoothness to the sound.

They would not be my first choice by themselves for metal, but blended with ceramic speakers that match well then that's another story. I had them in a 4x12 with two EVM12L's and they were awesome. The EV's provided the punch and clarity, the Fanes provided the fat midrange grind and sweetness.

Now they're paired with a couple Heritage G12H (55hz). It's a warm, fat, kinda vintage sounding cab that really does most everything I throw at it up to thrash to heavy stuff in like C to A standard.

The EV SRO alnico is the world's only perfect guitar speaker imho. From clean to crunch to heavy high gain distortion to thick fuzz, no matter what I'm playing I like it better through the SRO's. It's the only EV I've played that can go toe to toe with the best Celestions for chime and midrange kerrang, but hits harder than any of them on the lowend, and the highs are sweeter thanks to the alnico magnet.

Playing a neck pickup clean through them is relevatory, and playing a good heavy riff with distortion or fuzz puts a shit eating grin on my face every time. The only thing that sucks is they weigh a ton. Like 22lb or 23lb per speaker. So I currently have two with two Fane Medusa 30's in one cab, and two with two Celestion G12H-100's in another cab.
 
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