After about thirteen years with my #Marshall JCM 2000 DSL 401 (it easily has thirteen more in it) and after a recent project I recorded with it, I finally decided that I have to try another speaker. I've heard many people complain about the stock speaker fizziness over the years and while I agree that it is not the smoothest speaker and does have some harshness at high mids and some booming frequencies at the bottom, I don't think it is such a bad speaker. Maybe its just me, but I am always under the impression that many of the people in gear forums and YouTube talkbacks spend way too much energy convincing themselves that what they have is crap, completely missing the fact that it has nothing to do with what they have or don't have... sorry, I had to get it out of my system...
Back to our topic. So as I said, the trigger was a recent project I recorded, or tried to record with partial success. (if you want to listen to an early version of the guitar sound I got, you can find it in the video that's in my surgical EQ post) I was after a big muscular guitar sound and I struggled with it way too much and was never happy with any of the results I was able to get, no matter what I did. I recorded these rhythm guitars about ten to fifteen times (and it‘s a quad!), tried different single mic techniques with a 57 and a 57 paired with a condenser, but nothing sounded like what I wanted. If you watch that video, you will see how many annoying frequencies I had to filter out to make the sound usable. This happens to me with the DSL stock speaker every time I try to stack multiple tracks of high gain guitars. It never works for me. However, because I don't do that very often, I was able to live with the stock speaker up until now. But thirteen years is enough. It served me well. But I have enough evidence against it and it's time to try something else.
Ok, so I decided to get another speaker. But how do you choose a speaker without hearing it pushed by your amp in your amp cabinet? Well, I'm sorry, I'm afraid I don't have a good answer to that question. My strategy was to listen to as many high quality speaker recordings as possible, concentrating on the ones I had some kind of opinion about already and match my power handling requirement (primarily V30, G12M 65, G12H 75) and then try to think which one better matched my amp, based on my experience with it. So, yes you figured it out - I randomly chose a new speaker for my amp... yes, maybe... but at least I did my best.
Why Not V30?
The V30 is the speaker most people recommend for almost any style and I also read many posts of people saying it works great in the DSL 401. But, when I listen to comparisons between the cream and the V30, I hear a lot of high mids from the V30 and I am under the impression that the DSL has enough of those already, so I decided to go for something smoother.
Why Not G12H 75?
Same reason I decided not to go with the V30. A lot of top end that I just don't think I need more of from that amp.
Why G12M 65?
The #Celestion #Creamback G12M as I imagined it, was just what I needed, because it best complemented what I believed the amp to be. I imagined it would tame the harsh top end of the DSL and provide more of that woodsy sound of Greenbacks in the low mids.
In reality, the first thing I noticed when I started playing through the #Creamback was a significant increase in volume compared to the stock speaker. I was very surprised and upset at the same time, because the last thing I need from that amp is more volume. One of the biggest problems with tube amps is that they need to be played loud to sound the way many of their fans want them to sound, but that is just way too loud for most of us, therefore most of us simply can't unlock their true character. Anyway, I have spent about 30 minutes playing through the speaker using all of my guitars (a Tele, a Strat, a Les Paul and a semi hollow #Duesenberg), and overdrive pedals, and while I could identify several differences, I wasn't very impressed not to say disappointed. But then I started playing with the amp tone knobs and that's when I started to feel that something is severely different in the way the amp reacts to me.
Side note: when you are so used to a piece of gear, you don't put much thought to how you set it up. That is an optimization our brain does in order to save time and effort. You simply remember how to set it up in every situation and you don't have to start over every time - makes sense!
After randomly turning the tone-stack knobs for a minute, I realized that everything I remembered about how to dial in a decent tone with that amp is not relevant anymore and I needed to start from scratch. I turned all the knobs all the way down and started increasing them one at a time to listen to each band separately. I was absolutely amazed to hear the middle band alone. I have spent a few long minutes playing the amp with the middle all the way up and treble and bass at zero. That couldn't have happened with the stock speaker, because it just doesn't sound good in that range at all. The #Creamback mid range is extremely balanced compared to the stock and sounds almost full for guitar, if you don't have a reference. The low mids are woodsy as I expected and sound particularly well clean with single coil pickups - my Telecaster neck pickup especially shines through that speaker. I couldn't put that Tele down...
The bass frequencies of the Creamback are less pronounced compared to the stock speaker. Not only that the cream reproduces less low end, it also won't go as low as the stock speaker and it is not as tight. Less bass is generally a good thing for recording, unless you are recording only the guitar and looking to occupy as much of the frequency spectrum as possible - not the case for most people.
In the top end the difference was less obvious at first, but as I tried different guitars and pedals, it became obvious that the Creamback is more detailed and much smoother at the top end as well. It took me a while to realize, but with the Creamback, the amp clean headroom seems to be significantly higher. I know that smoother speakers tend to sound less distorted, but I'm talking about a very significant change here. I'm not 100% sure, but if I understand how electricity works, the higher your resistance is, the harder the amp is going to work to produce the same amount of amplification. So following that logic, it makes sense that with a 16 ohm speaker you need to push the master volume further compared to with an 8 ohm speaker to get the same amount of volume and that can explain the volume and gain/headroom change I noticed.
Overall
Overall the Creamback sounds smoother, more detailed and vocal compared to the stock speaker. It excels in the mid range, which is where most of your guitar signal normally lives. I will have to give the speaker some time to open up, get used to it and then I will start recording it to see how that goes. With that said, I can already tell that for general purpose metal rhythm a V30 would probably be a much better choice, but for me personally, I think the Creamback is a better choice. I tend to find V30s a bit harsh on the high mids, although they are great speakers regardless.
[UPDATE: two week with the Creamback]
One last thing I have to mention here is that I really think that anyone who owns a DSL 401 (and probably other mid-high priced amps) must experiment with different speakers! After spending about two weeks with the new speaker, after I got used to it and allowed it to open up a bit, my amp sounds much richer, more detailed, cleaner and warmer. It changed the way I play my guitars and overall gave me more possibilities.
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Now go play!