Anyway, I moved the WGS speaker that I had in to my Fender Blues Jr. So I looked around for the right speaker to replace it. The hard part was finding a speaker that wasn't too loud. Modern 12 inch speakers are made for such high volumes that it makes finding a low wattage one difficult.
So I was looking at gear on Reverb.com when I came across something interesting. There's a company that takes old roughed up speakers, and re-cones them as well as updating them. The seller had a 1962 Rola, Pre-Celestion Alnico speaker for sale. It was only 40 watts so that made it perfect for my 5 watt amp.
So I bought it, and it arrived today. I dropped it right in my combo amp, and cranked it up. Since the company's name is Hemppopotamus Speakers, I suspect the cone is a hemp cone. That means it takes a while to break in due to having such a strong cone. I turned it up all the way, and noticed it was doing the "speaker fart" when I played the low notes. However, after I played for about 15 minutes it stopped doing it.
I know a lot of players say that speakers need 20 hours of playing time on them before they start to break in. I could hear just how "tight" this speaker sounded, and figure it will take at least that long. However, the longer I played it the more it started to break in.
I can hear how the speaker doesn't have that modern aggression to it, and it has to be cranked to really get great overdrive to come out of it. But I can understand how musicians say that Alnico speakers have a "sweet" sound to them. It's very smooth and early Fender-ish sound.
He has a few more up for sale on Reverb.com. If it's something you may be interested in, I'd say give it a try. His cost is much more fair than the modern Alnico speakers. In fact, his are the only Alnico speakers that I could actually afford. I'll see about getting some sound clips up in a future blog. But I want to break the speaker cone in first.
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