MadAsAHatter
Well-known member
I bought a pair of Mojotone Greyhound speakers and they arrived earlier this week. When looking into these I couldn't find a whole lot of reviews and eve fewer sound clips. In fact the only clips are the promo one from Mojotone and one other comparing the couple of Mojotone speakers to V30s. They are competitively priced for today's marked at $110. I was able to get 15% off so I took a chance on buying and want to offer my first impressions. At this point they're not fully broken in with only about 10 hours of play time at moderate volume. I did crank them for a bit but not very long. Didn't want to piss off the neighbors too much.
I wanted to briefly run them through the gamut of what I have available. They were put in an Eminence 212 and Egnater Vengeance & Armageddon 412. I ran them as a pair by themselves (stereo mode in the 412 with a dummy plug on the other side) and combined with a couple of other speakers I have. I played all those combos though A Peters Vega, KSR Gemini, Zinky MOFO, Crate Stealth & ENGL Inferno. I also tried them with 2 different Ibanez Iceman guitars one with a Duncan JB, the other with a Dimarzio Super 3.
Before I get into my impressions, these are the description and specs from Mojotone:
We wanted a new speaker that was in between the British Sound and the American Vintage sound so we came up with the new Greyhound Speaker. During the design process we mainly used a Blackface Twin to test so we think this speaker sounds particularly good in this type of amp as well a Peavey 5150 for high gain. As far as tone goes, the Greyhound is smoother sounding on the top end and upper midrange than a Celestion Vintage 30 but has more punch than a Jensen C12N. It has a great rock tone (specially for mid gain to high gain amplifiers) but stays clean enough for those who don't like too much speaker break-up.
On my initial playthrough I wasn't immediately blown out of my seat, but I wasn't left with a meh feeling either. My first thoughts were this is a good solid sounding speaker. They felt balanced but not flat or neutral sounding. There's enough unique tonal characteristics to stand out and cut well in a mix.
Obviously you'll hear the difference in the amps and guitars being used, but overall in all setups the Greyhounds kept their tonal characteristics when played by themselves. When paired with another speaker at a sensitivity of 101.3 dB it was the dominant speaker but didn't completely drown out the other speaker. In most instances they played well enough with the other speakers. The sound came mostly from the Greyhound, but the prominent frequency of the other speaker was still able to be heard. More on that later.
In the 212 and 412s they sounded really good with the differences being what you'd expect between a 212 cab and 412 cab; the 412 projected more bass. The Mojotone description is pretty spot on. It does sound like a good blend of and American and British voiced speaker. It has the high end clarity and and tight low end response combined with some midrange punch.
The first thing I noticed was the clarity. That held up even as I pushed it into band level volumes. The sound was very focused and articulate even when playing with high gain. Individual notes rang out clearly, triplets were tight and playing open and power chords stayed clear and didn't sound like a buzzed out muddy mess.
They have a really nice high end sparkle that holds on to that clarity as described above and are pretty smooth not going into icepick in the brain territory. They also seem to sit in a good place with midrange frequencies. They're not as aggressive and ear fatiguing as a V30 but are still in the zone where it shouldn't have any problem cutting through. The low end is fairly tight. Even with the volume decently turned up it stayed out of the mud pit. Personally I may like the bass frequencies to be extended just a bit more. But my ears are also accustomed to G12K100's and their massive bottom end. So if not for that bias I think I'd consider it to have just the right amount of low end.
AS far as mixing with other speakers go, overall it played well in most cases but wasn't a perfect match for everything. I paired them with a Celestion G12T75 & G12K100 and WGS Retro 30 & ET-65.
I wanted to briefly run them through the gamut of what I have available. They were put in an Eminence 212 and Egnater Vengeance & Armageddon 412. I ran them as a pair by themselves (stereo mode in the 412 with a dummy plug on the other side) and combined with a couple of other speakers I have. I played all those combos though A Peters Vega, KSR Gemini, Zinky MOFO, Crate Stealth & ENGL Inferno. I also tried them with 2 different Ibanez Iceman guitars one with a Duncan JB, the other with a Dimarzio Super 3.
Before I get into my impressions, these are the description and specs from Mojotone:
We wanted a new speaker that was in between the British Sound and the American Vintage sound so we came up with the new Greyhound Speaker. During the design process we mainly used a Blackface Twin to test so we think this speaker sounds particularly good in this type of amp as well a Peavey 5150 for high gain. As far as tone goes, the Greyhound is smoother sounding on the top end and upper midrange than a Celestion Vintage 30 but has more punch than a Jensen C12N. It has a great rock tone (specially for mid gain to high gain amplifiers) but stays clean enough for those who don't like too much speaker break-up.
- Speaker Size: 12"
- Voice Coil: 1.75''
- Magnet: 48 oz. Ceramic
- Power Handling:70W
- Revc: 6.700 Ohm
- Resonance (Fs
97.280 Hz - Sensitivity: 101.3 dB
On my initial playthrough I wasn't immediately blown out of my seat, but I wasn't left with a meh feeling either. My first thoughts were this is a good solid sounding speaker. They felt balanced but not flat or neutral sounding. There's enough unique tonal characteristics to stand out and cut well in a mix.
Obviously you'll hear the difference in the amps and guitars being used, but overall in all setups the Greyhounds kept their tonal characteristics when played by themselves. When paired with another speaker at a sensitivity of 101.3 dB it was the dominant speaker but didn't completely drown out the other speaker. In most instances they played well enough with the other speakers. The sound came mostly from the Greyhound, but the prominent frequency of the other speaker was still able to be heard. More on that later.
In the 212 and 412s they sounded really good with the differences being what you'd expect between a 212 cab and 412 cab; the 412 projected more bass. The Mojotone description is pretty spot on. It does sound like a good blend of and American and British voiced speaker. It has the high end clarity and and tight low end response combined with some midrange punch.
The first thing I noticed was the clarity. That held up even as I pushed it into band level volumes. The sound was very focused and articulate even when playing with high gain. Individual notes rang out clearly, triplets were tight and playing open and power chords stayed clear and didn't sound like a buzzed out muddy mess.
They have a really nice high end sparkle that holds on to that clarity as described above and are pretty smooth not going into icepick in the brain territory. They also seem to sit in a good place with midrange frequencies. They're not as aggressive and ear fatiguing as a V30 but are still in the zone where it shouldn't have any problem cutting through. The low end is fairly tight. Even with the volume decently turned up it stayed out of the mud pit. Personally I may like the bass frequencies to be extended just a bit more. But my ears are also accustomed to G12K100's and their massive bottom end. So if not for that bias I think I'd consider it to have just the right amount of low end.
AS far as mixing with other speakers go, overall it played well in most cases but wasn't a perfect match for everything. I paired them with a Celestion G12T75 & G12K100 and WGS Retro 30 & ET-65.
- With the G12T75, the Greyhound seemed to mostly bury it. Or at best the T75 didn't add or subtract anything. The T75 didn't have enough mids or enough extended lows & high to do any more than blend in to what the Greyhound was already doing. And with a sensitivity of 101 vs 97 it was pretty much all Greyhound.
- Pairing with a G12k100 to me was a good blend. Overall the Greyhounds sound remained intact which I liked, but the bigger bottom end of the K100 came though. This combo still had great clarity, punch, and remained tight in the low end. I came away thinking this would be a Greyhound version 2 keeping everything the same but extending the low end a little more. If I were to continue mixing a Greyhound with something else a G12K100 would be my choice.
- Greyhound/Retro 30 mix was fairly decent to my ears. Again it felt like it was mostly the Greyhound I was hearing, but the Retro 30 added some low & low-mid girth plus a bit of aggression. I also felt like the Retro 30 took away from the great clarity of the Greyhound. This combo seems like it would work well at lower band volumes. But once you started needing to push everything to get over a loud drummer the cohesion would start to fall apart. In this context I think a Greyhound would work much better with an actual V30 than a tweaked clone.
- Last was mixing with the ET65. This mix didn't work out well at all. There was too much of a contrast between the two and it seemed more like the speakers were fighting each other than trying to work together. I think the ET65 is somewhat of a clone of a Celestion G12-65 so I don't know if mixing it with the Celestion would have similar results or work better with a Greyhound. Either way attempting that mix is well off my radar now.
