NSD's...Hemp content...

[212Mavguy]

I purchased three Tone Tubby 12 inch speakers last week,  a very expensive purchase...One was for my RedPlate Blues Machine 1/12 combo, the other two were for a 2/12 Seismic Luke cab.   I was pretty happy with the JBL MI-12 in it, that speaker had a girthy, well detailed tone set.  It was an 8 ohm speaker, the amp has an oversized Mercury Magnetics output transformer that could work with a huge variety with different speaker setups, it has 2, 4, 8, and 16 ohm secondaries!  On the RedPlate, the main and auxiliary speaker jacks have the same impedance, there is a knob nearby to set the desired value.  I rarely have seen a guitar amp that offered so many impedance selections.  

Earlier, I had the opportunity to witness a Tone Tubby speaker shootout at a recording studio that featured several of their speakers in the same room for folks to try.  I first heard the Nashville ceramic there.  I liked the tone of that speaker a lot.  I ended up buying one in a 16 ohm rating to install in the RedPlate Blues Machine combo.  In the past I had tried some hemp cone speakers from a custom builder on eBay, spent a lot of money on those, and they ended up being too dark and compressed after breakin, they sit unused now.  

The Nashville is a very fast, tight speaker with a very articulate tone set!  There is a lot of treble content, but the top end is never nasty sounding, it stays sweet even with the gain cranked up into the Marshall-y face ripping category!  The low end is very big and has a lot of punch a well.  This speaker will reward a player with a great sense of touch on the strings, and will expose every thing that a sloppy player does as well.  It is a very honest speaker.  I loved both the clean and dirty tones!   There is a great amount of harmonic detail, great sounding clean and dirty.  It worked perfectly in the RedPlate, I'm absolutely thrilled!

The pair of Purple Haze speakers I purchased for the Luke cabinet were 8 ohms, to be wired in series to replace the JBL G125's in it, a true favorite guitar speaker of mine for it's huge sound and versatility in different gain settings, all sounding great.  A lot if not most guitar speakers sound great either played with clean, or dirty tones, but not both.  The JBL's did both very, very well and can be used in both low and high wattage amplification scenarios, they are incredibly versatile.  Buuut...they have huge heavy magnets, close to 13 pounds for the magnet alone per speaker.  So that cab was heavy to move around, even on casters.  

It was a huge leap of faith to choose to purchase the Purple Haze alnico speakers.  They are among the most expensive guitar speakers made today.  I had an idea how they might sound both from the description of construction as well as a few reviews.  They absolutely met those subjective descriptions of how they sound, right out of the box with zero break in time.  Earlier, when I listened to the TT Red alnico speaker, it had a big bottom end and a decent amount of top end, with plenty of mids to boot.  Compared to the Nashville ceramic, the red had plenty of bottom end, but it was more loose, not as articulate and "fast" in it's response to pick touch.  I actually preferred the ceramic Nashville sound over the alnico red, even though the red was more expensive. 

What set the Purple Haze speaker apart from other TT models was that the PH has a thinner, lighter cone.  So the voice coil has less mass to move back and forth, the result is a more responsive, detailed tone set.   I found the same kind of tight bottom end and quick response that the Nashville ceramic had!  There a nearly as much punch in agressie pick attack as well!  In addition, when playing the neck pickup, I could hear details in the mids that I never heard out of other guitar speakers, stunning!  This was particularly true when playing a guitar with TV Jones classic and powertron humbuckers, Throback PAF's and HRW's would also benefit.  What ever the fingers or pick was doing to the strings, that came out of the speaker.  The level of detail was more than the JBL's and both clean and dirty tones exhibited an incredibly amount of detail as well.  I have some alnico speakers that sounded farlu detailed clean, and very smooth almost to the point of being muddy when distorted.  Not the Purple Haze!   I would not hesitate to play a Marshall or especially a Hiwatt through these, I seriously doubt that even the revered purple cone Fanes sound as good as the Purple Haze does, we have a new winner!  In addition, both of these Tone Tubby models need no tone knob tweaking between living room volumes and high sound pressure levels when the amp is cranked.  That linear quality is like a holy grail for speaker building, both of these Tone Tubby models had no problems in doing just that.  

Both of these speakers deliver holy grail tones, the Purple Haze gave me the tones I have been imagining in my head, for the first time ever simply the best, most pleasing guitar speaker these ears have EVER heard.   The Nashville is right there too.  Strat and Tele heaven, the ceramic Nashville is!   

I have a collection of a few hundred vintage tubes, more than a dozen nice handwired tube amps, from six to 100 watts, and I have learned from repeated experiences that the output tranny and speaker choice deliver more impact to the amp tone than the tubes do.  YMMV, but I am hugely satisfied with these Tone tubby speakers. The tone sets are versatile, linear, wonderful sounding and personally WORTH EVERY DAMN  PENNY SPENT!  The better the amp is, the more difference these speakers deliver, if you have a good set of ears, they will be more than amply rewarded!

Boutique amps for boutique guitars!

Boutique guitars for boutique amps!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Steiner]

Back in the day, when tone tubby was made by "A Brown Soun," you'd mix a ceramic with an alnico.  They called it an atom bomb.  It's still my favorite 2x12, right up with the Vox TBX and Soldano Combo with alnico blues.

43 minutes ago, 212Mavguy said:

Boutique amps for boutique guitars!

Boutique guitars for boutique amps!

Hurrumph!

[Genericmusic]

 Thanks for the post. Good useful information.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[212Mavguy]

@Steiner...That combo was the H-bomb...and it used the older design speakers, the 40/40 ceramic and red alnico.  Today you can use the new models to do the same thing, the 75 watt Nashville comes in both ceramic and alnico constructions, the Winterland ceramic should pair well with the Purple Haze alnico. 

It looks like Tone Tubby took a page out of the James Bullough Lansing speaker design book, they have a new model of alnico called the Green Monster Crush, in regular and low profile versions, 50 watts, it uses a double roll cloth surround attached to their hemp cone a la JBL and Altec.  That one is supposed to be their brightest speaker yet. Another new model is called the Double D black.  The cone has been dipped twice in a hardening agent for a brighter tone as well.   Have to say that the ceramic Nashville is a viable replacement for the very heavy to carry (18 pound magnet) EVM 12l.  My Purple Haze pair really gets singing and sustaining like no other I have heard when the gain is cranked up a bit.  And that's befor breaking in... These speakers are  just amazing.  They have kicked some incredible speakers out of the cabs that were installed before.  I have a pair of JBL MI-12's,  four g125's, and an Altec labeled EVM 12 S to get rid of now, and those in their own right are fantastic sounding guitar or bass speakers.  Such a dilemma!  (wink)

[Steiner]

You're right.  H-Bomb.  I've since found combining alnico and ceramic works well with varied styles.  Celestion, A Bron Sound, JBL.  It's all good!

[rockabilly69]

Hey Mav, when we ran into each other last weekend I was going to tell you that I was considering putting a Purple Haze into my VOX AC15HW (16Ohm), but I don't know how much room is in that sealed cab (never had it opened).