UK V30 in the 4x12?

Junk Yard Dog

Well-known member
Bought a used Friedman 4x12 from GC and finally cracked it open. As I suspected, it doesn’t have V30s
On the bottom. It has Celestion H30s: ugh... GBs on top. It didn’t sound right to me. So now I have the option to buy two UK Marshall V30’s for $100. Yes: good price.

How would the Marshall V30s sound on bottom compared to the Chinese in the Friedman cab?
 
Don’t buy the MARSHALL labeled v30 totally different sounding then a normal v30.. just get 2 chinese or uk v30s
 
I had almost all versions of celestion V30. As mentioned by Dave, the Marshall Vintage speaker is not a vintage 30. It's more of an inbreed between V30 and T75. I HATED it with everything, it just sounded hollow in mids and super bright in treble.

To me - there's little difference between UK Vintage 30s and well broken in chinese V30s. I had a pair of 1994 V30s and could not hear a +100 USD difference compared to a chinese V30. Then I also had some newer V30s which sounded like utter crap, so I guess that was due to them not being there yet.
I'm based in europe and an old UK made V30 goes for like 100Eur@piece. A chinese V30 is 50Eur@piece. The UK ones are not twice better :). The Uk ones sounded a bit sweeter and warm but I would not suspect that was due to their origin, but age mostly.

I also had mesa V30s which were rated at 70w/8Ohm and they have a slightly different voice coil, they almost sound a bit warmer fuller and balanced. But in general i think the 8Ohms just sound different because I could hear the same in a chinese V30s with 8Ohm resistance in an orange 212.
So I guess it wasn't that much about mesa vs non-mesa but a character of the sound that's just familiar one to another.

Then another fun fact - I had an orange 412 with V30s and the other guy in our band also has one that's like 6 years older. I loved his cab and hated mine and the funny thing was - I hated mine even after I swapped all the speakers for Uk V30s/scumback J75s so I guess the speakers were not the problem here :). The grass is always greener.
 
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