Looking for a high-wattage British-sounding 10"

[glasshand]

I recently acquired a 2x10 cabinet, because it's smaller and lighter than the 2x12 I had, and that's important to me because I live in a 4th floor walkup. But it was designed as a bass cabinet, and kind of a cheap one at that, so I'd rather use it as a guitar cabinet. Anybody got any experience with or recommendations for high-wattage 10" speakers with a "British" (i.e. Celestion) sound? My main amp is an Orange CR120H, so I'm looking for speakers with good power handling, at least 60 watts. It would be nice if I could use the cab for bass in a pinch. I'm specifically thinking of:

- Celestion G10 Vintage Hey, if you want a Celestion sound, might as well go to the source, right? Has the lowest power handling, lowest sensitivity, and highest price of the three.

- Eminence Ramrod Gets a lot of good press. Highest sensitivity of the three.

- Jensen MOD10-70 Not as much info to be found about these, but they get some good reviews. The lowest priced of the three. The only one of the three that claims to be usable as a bass speaker too.

Honestly I'm thinking I might order all of them from somewhere with a good return policy and do a shootout if I can...

[glasshand]

Followup: I don't think I will be needing these after all! I started tearing into the cabinet the other day to see how much work would be involved in fixing it up, and after putting it back together it sounded about ten times better, so I think the previous owner not only made a dog's breakfast of the tolex, but he screwed up the wiring too. It's actually perfectly cromulent now, so I don't think I'd get much value from replacing the speakers.

[Houblues]

I gave your post a "like" just for using the word "cromulent"....

[andrewsrea]

^ Word of the day. I had to look it up!

[tlarson58]

^ Me too.

Do you talk like that all of the time? I can't even figure out if I should have typed "Me, too" with a comma.

[ronnx]

So did I. This word is not in my 1965 Webster's. I had to Google it. (showing my age I suppose)

[glasshand]

I think the universe is laughing at me. The other day I went to test a different amp with this cab, and got no sound at all. I would have figured that it was something with the amp, but something said to me "test the cab with other amps." Hey, maybe I had a bad instrument cable or speaker cable. So I tried swapping everything else out, and still nothing.

The next day I opened up the cab, took the speakers out, and tested them. Sure enough, one of them is dead as a doornail. Infinite resistance on the multimeter. No sound at all from it. (The other one shows the expected resistance and makes noises when you put voltage across it.) So I think I am looking for new speakers.

I have no idea how it could have died. It was working fine the last time I used it, it didn't get dropped or anything, it didn't get played too hard, nothing. It looks and smells fine. Just one of those things, I guess.

[deeaa]

Whatever you get, I'd get two different ones, or only replace the faulty one. I've always swapped some speaker(s) in all my cabs that had two same ones originally.
Like now I have a Marshall 1936 with two G65 speakers, which are good, but a lot better with a little bitier Eminence Governor mixed in. I still have the 65 and will keep that too, just in case.

I played a T75/V30 cab for a while and that was also a superb combo.

And in my 4x12" I had two greenbacks and then the other 2 were both different, about the same 25-30W wattage, but different, and it was a terrific sounding cabinet.

[redman]

In the early 70's I played through a Sunn Concert Lead with a 4X10 cabinet and really liked the sound of those 10's I'm still using a 10" my Super Champ XD has a Ragin Cajun in it and sounds great.

[glasshand]

Whatever you get, I'd get two different ones, or only replace the faulty one. I've always swapped some speaker(s) in all my cabs that had two same ones originally.

Not a bad idea, maybe I will try that. I'd prefer to only replace the dead one, but these speakers are 4Ω, and it's very hard to find guitar speakers with that impedance, particularly high-wattage ones. That would make my options:

• replace both

• use a lower-wattage replacement and live dangerously

• look for a bass speaker that can double on guitar

Have you ever had any issues with mixing speakers of different sensitivities?

[deeaa]

No, a few dB sensitivity difference won't hurt, nor will 5-10W difference in output apparently.
At the mo, the governor is 16ohm, 102dB, 75W and the G12-65 is 15ohm, 97dB and 65W.

It really brings the 65 alive to add some more biting top end with the Eminence there, two 65's makes for rather an 80's dark toned cab.