Mesa 4x12 OS: other Celestions?

cardinal

cardinal

Well-known member
I have an older Mesa straight/slant OS4x12 with the original V30s. It sounds great except it cuts my head off if I use it with a JMP: it's just a treble death ray in front of it. Sounds very smooth with more modern amps, oddly enough.

Anyway: anyone try other Celestions in a Mesa oversized cab with good results? Wondering if a G12M or G12-65 would smooth out some of the treble that the JMP is blasting me with.
 
cardinal said:
I have an older Mesa straight/slant OS4x12 with the original V30s. It sounds great except it cuts my head off if I use it with a JMP: it's just a treble death ray in front of it. Sounds very smooth with more modern amps, oddly enough.

Anyway: anyone try other Celestions in a Mesa oversized cab with good results? Wondering if a G12M or G12-65 would smooth out some of the treble that the JMP is blasting me with.
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The 75H creamback in a Mesa OS is the only time I like it as much or better than the 65 watt creamback personally. I’d say you can’t go wrong giving either a shot though.
 
I recently made the switch to G12-EVH in both of my 4x12s and have not looked back. My 4x12s were previously loaded up with 65 watt Creambacks in one cab and old school V30s in the other cab. I have noticed that I end up setting the tone stack on my amps very differently than when I had the 65 watt Creambacks in one and V-30s in the other (and I was constantly adjusting the heads depending on which of those two cabs I was using). By the time you adjust the tone stack to make your ears happy with any given speaker, you are very likely bringing the finished ‘sound’ off the speaker cone back to within a fairly narrow tone parameter that you like. BUT it’s the overall ‘feel’ of the amp and sound that has changed - once you have adjusted the amp for the speaker it’s working with. Side by side, the 65 watt Creambacks had a tighter, stiffer ‘feel’ than the G12EVH do, and the V-30s had a more ‘fizzy’ or ‘sizzly’ quality where the EVH sound more natural with ‘glassier’ highs.
Again, the settings across the tone stack necessarily look very different to compensate for each speaker type while bringing the overall ‘tone’ somewhere within the bandwidth that my ears want to hear. But the overall ‘feel’ with the G12EVH works for me.
 
I had and gigged a Mesa OS cab for years. I had G12H30’s anniversary in it and it sounded amazing with modded Marshall’s and such. I wasn’t a fan of the V30’s in it.
 
The Jubilee is the only Marshall that jives with V30s, in my experience. I had an OS Mesa with the armor plating (lol) 12 years ago and tried to force feed a 2204 with it for a year...finally sold the cab and found a 79 1960a with 65s. Heaven at last.
 
Racerxrated said:
The Jubilee is the only Marshall that jives with V30s, in my experience. I had an OS Mesa with the armor plating (lol) 12 years ago and tried to force feed a 2204 with it for a year...finally sold the cab and found a 79 1960a with 65s. Heaven at last.
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Yeah, I'm using a 2204 and typically use a 1960a with the G12-65s. It can sound good with the Recto 4x12, but some of the really high notes come through the cab with a bit too much zing.
 
Interesting take on the OS. I had one with a Bogner and thought the cab was too dark. Mesa V30s have mids but definitely darker than standard V30s.
 
motorboy1 said:
Interesting take on the OS. I had one with a Bogner and thought the cab was too dark. Mesa V30s have mids but definitely darker than standard V30s.
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It's weird. With a high gain amp, it's very smooth and could be accused of being too dark. But with the 2204 it's like OMG so bright
 
Yeah, I'm mainly looking for experiences people have had with using non-V30s in the Mesa OS4x12 cab.
 
cardinal said:
Yeah, I'm mainly looking for experiences people have had with using non-V30s in the Mesa OS4x12 cab.
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I would consider loading it up with the aforementioned speakers here in this thread...65s, Creambacks, GBs, H30s and the C90s which are very similar to the Classic Lead 80..Mesa cabs are great cabs so any of these combinations would sound killer, I would think.
 
I sold the Mesa V30s that were in my 212 Recto cab. I like those speakers in the Traditional Mesa 412 but not at all in the 212 or Standard OS recto cabs. Sounded pretty beamy and unmusical and just awful with any Marshall.

I tried a bunch of speakers in that cab over the years, various combinations of CL80, H30, greenbacks, some different Webers and oddly enough I landed on a Chinese V30 from a Bogner cab and regular old broken in g12-t75. It sounds great standing up on its side in the corner of the room. Sort of acts as a natural bass boost and gives it bit more oomph. I like the cab now with my Jubilee.
 
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