“AlNiCo speakers are unbeatable for guitar.” Discuss. Blue vs Gold vs Cream (vs V30 for reference)
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ก.ค. 2024
- Alex and Lewie are comparing AlNiCo speakers (meaning they are made with magnets containing aluminum, nickel and cobalt) specifically the AlNiCo Blue, Gold and cREAM (with a V30 for reference) and Lewie is playing his PRS SE Silver Sky and the in-house Les Paul (Sire Larry Carlton L7) through an Egnater Tweaker.
0:00 Intro
05:49 Clean
07:00 Speaker breakdown
10:06 Blue vs. Gold overdriven
12:50 Gold vs. Cream clean
15:50 Cream vs. Blue clean
20:23 Strat overdriven
23:19 Les Paul overdriven Blue vs Gold vs Cream
27:53 V30 vs the rest
29:01 Final thoughts
Want more? Check out some of our other content where we define and compare AlNiCo speakers:
The first video to properly explain why AlNiCo, Ferrite and Neo guitar speakers sound different?!!:
• The first video to pro...
Getting heavier! Guitar riffing with a Redback, V30, Cream alnico, and EVH, in Reformer 112.:
• Getting heavier! Guita...
How can a single 10" speaker sound so good? Upsetter 110 with Celestion G10 Gold vs 12" alnicos
• How can a single 10" s...
Ceramic or AlNiCo for guitar? 12" speaker shootout - Part 1. (Celestion Vintage 30 vs Blue vs Ruby):
• Ceramic or AlNiCo for ...
Bored of Vintage 30s? Why not mix it up! V30 bottom, Creamback M65, H75 or Redback top.
• Bored of Vintage 30s? ...
IG: @barefacedaudio / @lewiebonner - เพลง
![[안방1열 풀캠4K] 베이비몬스터 'FOREVER' (BABYMONSTER FullCam)│@SBS Inkigayo 240707](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/_2HL-ogzzBU/mqdefault.jpg)
![ตีสิบเดย์ [FULL] | ครอบครัวสะท้านทุ่ง "นางบี & อ้ายสติ๊ก"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/A1rhYcxxNtA/mqdefault.jpg)
Geez, now you made me want to investigate the Gold speaker. The Gold had a big warmness I really dig. Thanks for putting this together.
i work for a backline company and managed to make my boss pay for an alnico cream on a hot rod deluxe and it's been gigged with more than 10 years now and sounds amazing with many guitar players.
Another really nice comparison.
I really appreciate you put the V30 in context! Originally being an attempt to replicate the Blue (according to some old Celestion infomercial I read)
The Blue definitely had some sweet top end. No wonder it's Brian May's top choice (although from you can see in those rig rundowns, he seems to also use Greenbacks, H30, and whatever).
The Cream was my favourite, though. But honestly, to get that kind sound I'd stay with the more affordable ferromagnetic family of the Greenback.
After this video I kind of stopped regretting not getting a Blue when 4 years ago I could get a new one for ~170 € (short-term offer), it definitely isn't for me. But I kind of started regretting not getting a Creamback when I found them on offer for ~190 €.
Also depends where the angle is hitting your head. One is standing up on an angle and the other one the line of fire. Also after 40 or so we start to hear certain frequency lesser and lesser.
Yes, we talk a lot about polar response in these videos. Regarding HF hearing loss, although there’s an age component to it, it’s more down to cumulative exposure to high SPL - at Barefaced those who’ve gigged more without earplugs have more treble loss even though they may be younger.
Thank you very much for taking the effort to do this. A/B is very useful to listen to👍
This is pretty consistent with what I find in my cabs. I have to say that the blue seems to work really well with these tweed amps and the gold much more so on everything else - the lower mids has that really all encompassing thing happening. I find that I always go back to gold and blue. I am not sure if it's compression or just the cream having a more balanced volume across the spectrum.
I really like the Cream too, especially in Marshall amps. it's got some similarities with the Blue. Blue sounds particularly good with Vox amps too, maybe just because it's the tone we recognise. But I think the Cream and Gold sound good too. Ruby is the one I'm not such a fan of.
Fascinating video. So much maths involved in getting a sound. Be interesting to hear some different combos of these speakers in your 2x12 setups.
Excellent! Thanks!
Good to hear clean as well as dirty sound comparisons. In the Cream/Gold comparison, I thought the fundamental disappeared when switching from the Gold to the Cream, leaving the mid and higher frequencies more exposed. The Gold had more girth, which worked when it was clean, but not so well when dirty. Blue was slightly sweeter than the Cream and had a similar tonal balance. Cream sounded best for me when things got dirty. I thought the V30 had many of the qualities of the Cream and is great value.
After many years of use, the Celestion Alnico Blue speaker in my experience, is definitely capable of use in excess of its conservative 15 watt rating.
Interestingly, some time ago, Fender issued a special edition of its 22 watt '65 Deluxe Reverb amp featuring the Celestion Alnico Blue - this suggests that simply from a warranty perspective, they had confidence it could safely handle the additional power.
I've personally installed and regularly gigged a Celestion Alnico Blue in my Fender Princeton amp that has upgraded power & output transformers + 6L6 tubes to provide it with a 24 watt output and again, no complaints experienced from this wonderful Alnico speaker.
I've also read that the Blue is now manufactured using the G12 former/coil so is good for 25 watts, but this could just be internet gossip as not verified as yet.
Sharing this insight to reasssure anyone who may look at the Alnico Blue's humble 15w rating and ignore, as it really is an excellent sounding speaker.
But perhaps this vid now needs a part 2, featuring the more recent Celestion Alnico Ruby rated @ 35 watts?
Definitely could use a replay featuring Celestion's new 30 Watt G12 100! 🔊
Great INFO. Im a bass player. But I prefer the Cream then GOLD one
Wow. Well after listening in this video the cream is actually really getting my attention.
all i can say is based on what i hear through my computers speakers, i prefer the cream above the rest.
Much bigger variation on the dirty sounds, fascinating
Alex... great, informative video as always. But PLEASE (as previously mentioned), would you & the guitarist use vocal microphones, so we can hear you at a similar volume to when the guitar fires up. Have a listen back to just how much volume mismatch there is between your speech & the guitar cab. Thank you.
Sorry about this issue. The videos have been like this because we're very short of time to make them and it's either a choice of no compression (like this) for the best guitar tone or auto compression (the way we used to do them) for louder speech. In future videos we're going to try splitting the audio track for speech and guitar, normalising both and compressing the speech. We don't need to use separate mics, the room acoustics work fine for speech through this room mic, it's just a level/compression thing.
I don't own any of the 3 speakers but I preferred the Cream overall.
Id say the Gold has more 500-600hz, the Cream more 800-1khz. To me the Blue is about perfect. The V30 has the 1-3 spike the alnicos never had..
For me, the Blue is still sonically the best of the AlNiCos, but its low power handling means that I can't use it. I think the Cream is a very close second to the Blue, the Gold is quite a bit further back, and the Ruby is unusable with anything but an overly bright amp. The Vintage 30 is still a brilliant speaker that sounds as much like a Blue as it is possible to make a ceramic magnet speaker sound, but I do prefer the Cream slightly to the Vintage 30, but I'd take a Vintage 30 over a Gold or Ruby any day of the week. So, since I don't play a low-powered amp, it's the Cream first for me, then the Vintage 30. I wouldn't ever use the Gold or Ruby.
I have no preference of Alnico vs Ceramic regarding speakers or pickups. A lot more goes into a speaker or pickup than the magnet. But I wouldn't knock ceramic which does have certain advantages. I just say trust your ears and don't worry about the magnets. If it sounds good, it is good.
I would generally trust your ears (although with the caveat that it’s your brain’s signal processing equipment that translates the nerve impulses from the inner ear, so the brain can trick itself). However, there’s no doubt that different permanent magnetic materials behave in different ways, which affects the field shape, strength and stiffness, and the shape of the pole pieces, and that affects things like eddy currents and inductance in the system. And all those things affect tone. Following some recent comparisons I’d like to try the G12-65 Heritage vs the V30 vs the Cream and Gold alnico, as we noticed elements of midrange character and detail that felt more like the alnicos than like the other ceramic magnet drivers we were testing.
I was looking for another 10" Alnico speaker for a handbuilt 6L6 powred Champ style combo and after trying all available 10s I was recomended to give an Eminence GA10 sc64 (Ceramic) I use Alnico speakers with a Fender Deluxe reverb and a Princeton but for a 5-10 watt single ended amp this Eminence sounds just like an Alnico, don't know the "Why" but it seems to pull extra mid-range bounce from the Champ ? I hope you chaps get a chance to stuff one of these in a cabinet ( 10" or 12") for us to listen to( I need a 2x10" cab too). Thanks for the demo, they all sound great 2 of the blues in a cab would be perfect for a 20watt Deluxe type amp.
that cream’ll get you heard in a band i think
Great demo. The gold sounds the best imo. How about a gold and greenback combo? Great I believe.
I love the hydraulic oil heads 🤘🏽🤘🏽. I’m thinking the gold is my preference. I’m still waiting for more neodymium drivers for guitar weight matters 👍🏽
Upon further review, I’m thinking a blend of cream and gold in with the cream on top
What cabinets are they mounted in please? Tried putting a blue in Cornford Harlequin Mk1 but there wasn't enough room.. :(
These are in Barefaced AVD guitar cabs!
Thanks! @@BarefacedAudio Would you recommend for home recording or do you think an isolation cab would be a better choice? They look very nice btw
After watching and hearing this video several times and listen to the speakers...I still love the blue. I wish you would have a cabinet with a 60w blue speaker... A 4x12" cabinet is much to heavy for me... The blue is very good for metal. 🔊🔥🙃🤘
I think we could make something very cool with a Blue plus another higher power speaker and a crossover to make sure the Blue isn't hit with too much low frequency power.
Have an Alnico blue in my 5e3 but might have to get a Gold too.
The Ruby is missing. The cabs are right up against the wall too - probably not a good idea for open-backed cabs. Gold or Cream, for me.
They’re not open-backed cabs, they’re AVD cabs. And consequently they work very well at that distance from the wall (they’re a few inches away). Yes, the Ruby is missing from this comparison!
I found out that the celestion G10 should sound similar to the blue 12", but the Gold 10" has 40w...the blue 12" has only 15w. I really would like to hear the difference between these two speakers. How sounds a 2x12" blue in comparison to a 2x G10? 🤔
That's something we'll have to try.
What are those cabinets that look identical you are using ?
They’re Barefaced AVD cabs - Reformer 112 and Usurper 112W. We invented the AVD guitar cab a few years ago, it lets you hear much more of the tone from the speaker all around the room/stage/venue and is also amusingly light in weight and easy to carry.
I love the sound of the Blue but I play 7 string a lot and I want a tight bass response.
Thought about putting 2 of them in a 4x12 and high passing them so they don't fart out in the bass and add 2 other really powerful speakers for the bass response without high pass. Has anybody ever tried something like this?
Yes, I like this idea - but doing it with a 2x12"! Blue plus Redback or Copperback or BN12-300S, with a unique cab and/or crossover.
@@BarefacedAudio Awesome! I thought about the Redback too, should be a good fit. Already have the 4x12 (50 year old Goodmans with roughly MESA OS dimensions that got completely gutted, like sawing random bass ports into the speaker baffle... restoring it right now :)
I don't know that four Creams is not what you want, but if you get an 8X12 cabinet, you can make 8 Ohm speakers yield up a 16 Ohm load. I recently found an 8 hole cabinet, but Celestion is lagging on the supply chain for the new Thirty Watt G12 100. 🤘240 Watts ftw!
You know, I didn't read your post carefully enough. 🤔 I have a couple of Vox UL760 Cabinets with two Twelves, and two Tens in series with a fat Resistor. I don't know what they were trying for, but it seems like maybe they were barking up your tree in 1966.
I thought the conversation towards the end about matching the Speaker Wattage Rating vs Amp Power Rating vs Speaker dB Output is one that needs to be expanded on.
For instance, if I really only want one Speaker Cab for a variety of Sub-50 Watt Amp Heads (1w, 5w, 20w, 35w, etc), what speaker(s) watt rating should be used to get the most tone potential of each head? Is this just not possible? (At least not possible to get the most out of each head: either the higher pwr or lower pwr head will suffer depending on Speaker Rating?)
That's actually a myth. The rating of a speaker tells you how many watts (power) it can't take (dissipate through heat), not how much acoustic power it can «produce» (SPL, sound pressure level). The sensitivity (expressed in dB) tells you the SPL, or how loud that speaker would be.
It's true heat affects how a magnet reacts, and the voice coil is close enough to the speaker magnet to affect it. Paper cones would also react differently if you approach the power rating of the speaker. But honestly, thanks to tests other people made and published, I don't think the difference is big enough to risk blowing the speaker (which means melting the voice coil, an expensive repair that will alter the speaker's sound). All modern speakers generally sound good enough regardless of the power they're being fed, the effect of not hearing bass at low volumes is mainly due to psychoacustics, it tends to disappear once you start recording the speaker, most typically using close miking.
This was the best example of feeding different levels o power to a speaker I could think of: th-cam.com/video/DsSE-dSaJak/w-d-xo.html
The rule of thumb is that the the speaker needs twice the watt rating compared to the amp. Well, i never went by that rule. The blue holds up pretty well with a tweed which has a similar watt rating. The Vox ac30 is 30w and has two blues. No problem. So, for me, anything over 15w you would need at least the Gold. Also, watts = low frequencies. That's where they go. I never much cared for that. Lows f guitar are overrated imo. You always need more mids to cut so my rule is to turn the bass and treble down. The way the speaker's frequency response couples w the amp is a different story. Plenty of classic rock w the blue. Even stephen unlike the other ones who colour the sound more. The thing w amps is: crank them and the mids come through. So, for me, the blue rules as i can get nicely rounded clean sounds on lower volume levels. And overdrives/distortion and boost pedals (Rory G/ Brian M) work really well. To me the mids of the gold are in the wrong spot.
@@riangarianga Thanks for the comment and the link to Johan. Based on them, you are saying the speaker wattage rating is about its ability to dissipate heat and not how loud it will be heard. So then meaning that if I have a true 50 watt power amp cranked to 100% output, and I have two speakers rated @100dB of sensitivity (The Blue & The Gold), but the Blue is rated @15watt power handling and the Gold is rated 50w power handling; you are saying that individually the 15w blue will play just as loud (without any premature distortion) as the 50w Gold because they are rated @100dB sensitivity. The only difference will be that the 15w Blue will only last a few minutes @50w of amp output (hypothetically) where the Gold (in theory) should be able to play all night long @50watts of amp output. Is that accurate? (I did not mention Ohm or RMS to keep it simple)
@@all4u405 Correct, that's the basic math, without going deeper into further complexities (paper cones, formers, and so on are also tuner to certain power limits, as it was mentioned in the video).
@@egoncorneliscallery9535 Thanks for your comment. I'm 100% agreement with you on low being overrated for guitar and needing more mids. This makes it much more defined and easier to shape into the mix. I'm still not "scientifically" sure how to couple the proper match between the speaker power rating and the amp output rating. I feel this is import, mainly because it is expensive to just experiment until you happen to find the right match but, when using tube amps everyone seems to be in agreement that the best tones on any given amp are achieved at max or near max output (even if maximum sound volume (SPL) is not the goal). Its is rare today to need that much SPL from the amp'd speakers themselves.
So with my Vox AC4C1 (the tube 4watt 10" combo) hypothetically, what would happen if I could find the same model speaker with same ohm and sensitivity but, one was 15 watts and the other was 30 watts, what would be the difference? Would it just be the heat dissipation like @Rianga Rianga is explaining in his comment. Which won't matter for either speaker with a 4 watt amp (I'm not going to find a 5 watt speaker). Will each move as much air (cone excursion), sound just as loud (SPL), and achieve speaker breakup appropriately as the other because, all else is the same? These are questions I have. @Barefaced Audio Alex is talking briefly about this at 17:30 in the video. It would be good to know if is just strictly the heat dissipation and no other bearing on audible tone performance.
The alnico magnet weights are all the same? Did i hear that correctly?
Yes, that's correct with the Celestion 12"s. The Gold 10 is quite a bit lighter so I think it's a lighter magnet, which would make sense with the specs and sound.
Have you done some comparison with 2x12 mixing gold/cream, gold/blue, cream/blue, with a Marshall (say a JCM800) ?
We haven’t, that would be interesting. However with a JCM800 if you get LOUD then there’s a pretty high risk of blowing drivers in a 2x12” unless they’re higher rated, so of the alnicos I’d only want to use a pair of Creams with a 100W amp. Maybe two Golds or a Gold+Cream with someone playing cleaner, but not for heavier or dirtier or downtuning. With the lower power Marshalls, yes all those combinations would be cool to try!
Thank you for your reply!!!
I happen to have a JCM800 studio (5 and 20W) and it comes with the G12 V which seem to be the cheaper version of the G12M cream back.
I have a VOX hand wired with 2 alnico blue and really like them.
I did a little research and decided to get a gold and a cream alnico 16 ohms in the 2x12 of the JCM 800 studio and they are being shipped as we speak.
Then I started watching your channel and now I am not sure if the gold + cream alnico in a closed can will give the typical AC/DC tone I am after.
I guess I should have simply gotten 2 G12M cream back ?
The V-type (I think that's what you mean by the G12V) isn't a cheaper version of the M65 Creamback, it's more like a hybrid between the V30 and the M65 Creamback. It's a good driver, a nice middle ground. I wouldn't expect the Gold or Cream to get an AC/DC sound, I'd lean more towards the M65 Creamback or EVH for that. JCM800 Studio on a Usurper 112W with an EVH would be perfect.
@@BarefacedAudio Few people are aware that a JCM 800 actually puts out about 114 watts. Same for the '100-watt' Plexis too.
so... could i mix the 15w blue and the 90w cream in the same cab?
Yes, potentially - what amp would you be using?
@@BarefacedAudio I was hoping one cab for all amps - from a Two Rocks Studio Signature through to a Bogner Uberschall MK2 Ultra!
@@malthus101 I’d be a bit hesitant about the Blue in a 2x12” with a 100W head. Email us and we’ll go through the details, discuss your current and past cabs etc, and figure out what you need.
I really don’t hear a lot of difference between them,subtle, but not huge. I would stick with the V30.
It seems like you are blocking the blue with your boards. I thought the same thing on a previous video. Even with the microphone above the camera I could detect a difference when you moved the board. Otherwise the comparison was stellar.
I’ve certainly tried to avoid that but I may have messed up on earlier videos like this - note that the camera mic is quite a lot higher than the camera lens though!
The Cream sounds more mid forward on my phone. But basically they all sound the same. You shouod try the Redback
The Redback is in another video!
Clean, the Blue and Cream are really close. Driven, the Cream has more of a high mid bump, the Blue is known for being very flat frequency and full frequency. The Cream definitely has a slight bump, the Gold has a bigger mid bump, just at a lower frequency. The gold really worked well with the single coils, with the Humbuckers it was getting nasal. I like the blue the best, the cream second, the V30 and the Gold the least.
Why not just play through the Amp? No pedals or anything else needed. The speakers should speak for themselves. Why doesn't anyone get this?? But Thanks P.S. I think they all sound much the same. It boils down to how much money does one want to spend on a speaker and/or how loud/much power does one want to apply to it. IMO
"they all sound much the same" - are you deaf?
cream
That’s what Prince said!
Too much talking
There are links to the different bits of the video so you can skip the speech and get to the sounds! Up there, in the description bit.
I enjoyed the conversation. Very interesting @@BarefacedAudio