Hi guys
I'm a sound engineer since 20 years now and very often I had to face the truth of guitarists ignorance on speakers. So I decided to handmade cabinets for the players I was working for (always been the soundguy, live and studio, for europeans and americans bands, no venues or audio rentals).
I found my favorite guitar cab to be an orange 4x12" (hiwatt too) so I made a replica of it, not with maple as the original but with poplar and a very rigid african wood for the scheleton. At the time the only choice in my mind was the g12h 30watts made in england and I was really really happy with the results!!
I worked with so many guitar players from noise to blues from avantgarde to rock n roll and hard rock etc and all agreed that my cab was great. And the key was mainly the g12h30. It wasn't my major business just a kind of hobby to expand my knowledge, to help friends with their tone research and to do better sounds with better sources eheheh.
For years I haven't built anything more but recently with new generations of musicians I kinda had to do the same. The major issue is that the new celestions are made in china and they sound poor and the heritage series is very expensive (for a ceramic).
So my only choice right now if I wanna make the same cab is to use a celestion heritage g12h 30w (75hz), but I want to explore new possibilities and WGS seems to be a good choice.
I live in Italy and the wgs is very well served in europe (from uk and france), scumback here are crazy expensive 230€ (310$!!!!!) each, weber speakers only had a uk dealers with poor choices, so I think after a week days and nights of listening on my computer all the comparisons, I'm gonna buy some different speakers and I'll decide.
You did a wonderful job with american vintage speakers I had to admit but my heart is more close to british tone and here my favorites right now are et65, reaper and invader (fane and g12h) considering you as a source. The problem with wgs vs other speakers is that all those youtube videos are not in hd and some mid and hi frequencies are mixed with noise from mp3 codec compression, and that's generate super confusion to judge the tone. I agree that for mosts is perfectly fine and it's better to listen speakers live but I think should be better to have also that hd 720p plus recording with a ribbon (only mic to reproduce real feel for guitars cab in my opinion).
I saw a lot of datas about speakers on wgs website but I would like to know for every speaker simply the magnet weight in oz. and the frequency response. I found very confusing considering the reaper a "clone" for g12h with that very different resonant frequency 107 vs 75, the deep bass response is one key of that speaker. The 55hz version doesn't seems nearly as close to a rola celestion 55hz but really dark and muddy and the resonance is declared as 75hz (????). It is my opinion that the hp version is closer to the g12h30 than the reaper 30w. As you already said the reaper is british+american (kind of alnico too), maybe more a standalone product itself. Could we have a comparison between reaper (and reaper hp) with heritage g12h (75hz)? and with Scumback h75?
I hope this can be considering as costructive criticism because I really love companies like yours, especially because they are more open to suggestions ;))
The Best
Your arrogant Gianluca
Hi and thank you for your input. Welcome to the WGS family ... if you like "real" (made in England) Celestions, you are going to LOVE the WGS speakers! That's what WGS's reputation is built on.
The Reaper is very similar to a G12H30 Heritage. Please don't confuse the resonant frequency of the raw cone with the resonant frequency of the compleated speaker! Celestion uses the raw cone frequency ... for instance, a "75 Hz" cone only resonates at 75Hz BEFORE it's built into a speaker!
Please read: http://wgs4.com/truth-about-75hz-vs-55hz-guitar-speaker-cones
Ok thanx for the explanation, so the 75hz c/s on celestion is just the raw cone resonant frequency? Now I see how can some manufacters trick you.
What about the magnet weight for the reaper?
I pulled a G12T-75 from an Ampeg V60. I replaced with ET 65. I didn't have high expecations. I bought the amp used so maybe the speaker was abused. I don't know.
But I can only say the difference was night and day. It sounded like a brand new Amp. The sounds emanating from the speaker is absolute classic. It's reputation does country, blues and classic rock. It does so, in spades.
I also have a 4X12 which I built with ET 65/ Vet 30 combo.
I have an old Peavey Deuce which I'm going to replace the "epic" Black Widows. I never thought I'd be willing to do so. I am looking forward to lighting up the Amp with noise. I was thinking of getting rid of the amp. Now its going to be a modern classic. Thinking of Liberator/Retro combo.