mixing speakers - V30s & CL 80s in PPC412?

[Dave Sloven]

I kind of feel that I already have as much fizz as I can take ... I get the feeling that the CL80 is less fizzy, less scooped, and in general just more 'neutral' (lets the amp character through more) than the T75.  If I can get a cheap cab with one or the other though - e.g. a $300 blackstar or line 6 rather than a Marshall - I could then do a swap and either sell one cab or keep it in the garage and only use it for band practice and gigs and leave the pretty Orange one in the house.  It would also be broken in.  That would be the cheapest way to do it.  Otherwise I could get a Marshall T75 cab and do the same thing and then sell it on, as long as I don't pay too much

[dave_mc]

^ yeah i'd say that sounds like a reasonable comparison. if you don't want more fizz, avoid the t75. the t75 is almost a bit like a more vintage CL80s- its bass isn't as tight and has a little more of that vintage-celestion type of tone than the CL80 which is much more modern-sounding. The CL80 is chunkier and tighter and more neutral, as you said.

[Dave Sloven]

Cheers.

I found out that the blackstar htv-412A cab has SeventyEighty speakers in it, which I definitely want to avoid. I will probably order a pair of new CL80s while the prices are in the reasonable (rather than the usual ridiculous) price range here.  Both CL80s and T75s seem hard to find used here, unless one gets T75s in a Marshall cab but most of them are pretty poor condition under $800

[Dave Sloven]

I removed the back cover on my Orange PPC412 today and had a look at the speakers.

They are 444 stamped cones, 16ohm, made in China V30s.  None of them are twisted or anything.

I found the screws incredibly difficult to remove at at least one screw has been burred out in the process. I'm thinking that I should run a small drill (mounted in my Tamiya hobby drill with the 9V battery) down the screw holes as it seems that while the back cover was drilled the screws were then driven into the wood with an electrical screwdriver with a fair amount of force applied.  Hopefully this will make the back easier to remove and replace later.  As it stands I am having trouble replacing the screws

EDIT: Here are some pretty photos

[dave_mc]

nice pics :)

It's ages since I've tried 70/80s, but I remember not being too fussed. I'd avoid them, too.

[fps_dean]

I put 4 Classic Leads into a Marshall 4x12 cabinet.

The Classic Leads are very good speakers with a massive amount of mids, and a tone much smoother than any other speakers I've used.  A few things worth noting is you won't get classic tones out of them where you will out of V30s as they're more modernly voiced.  They also have less presence than other speakers, so you will want to turn your presence up a little higher than normal.

I would say the V30s are the best do-everything speakers I am familiar with but the Classic Leads are my favorite.

I would probably put the classic leads on the bottom because they have a lot better low end than V30s but only if you're playing a large room.  In smaller rooms, an X shape might be the way to go.

For what it's worth, I absolutely hate T75s with their scooped mids and fizzy highs and lows that sounds someone has bad gas (the best I can describe it).  If you think V30s are fizzy, the best advice I can give is to skip right over them.  Personally there was not one tone I'd ever want that they did remotely decently, and that's not something I say lightly -- they're just that bad.  And for what it's worth, most of my guitars and amps are very middy, I'd time the mids and it would still sound rather scooped.  The highs are fizzy, but weren't extremely overkill either, just fizzy.

I'm not too familiar with Eminence speakers so I can't get a good cross reference.

[fps_dean]

Hey I have an A/B for you I did a while ago...

take1 is all t75s.  That was as good as I could get it with those speakers....

take2 is the same rhythm but the lead is on the classic leads.

tone tweak was me fooling around at the end of the take2 lead track on classic leads... closest I did to a rhythm the same day with the same setup on the classic leads

The difference would be much more pronounced if I had better microphones at the time.... or tripping over wires at the time too, which affected my playing.

[Dave Sloven]

Cheers for the comments and clips ... the T75s sound rather 'fartastic' and not what I want at all ... my GAS for new speakers has calmed a little not because the V30s are sounding better (they still haven't finished breaking in as far as I can tell, maybe I should borrow my mate's bass and play Venom bass licks through them all day?) so much as I've found other things to spend money on ... I definitely want to balance out the mid-spike in the cab and reduce the fizzies a bit still, so maybe in a few weeks time.

On the cab, it seems that while the back board was drilled the screws are simply forced through the cab frame.  Behind every screw was a broken layer of ply where the screws had been forced in with a power screwdriver.  That's what counts for 'hand-made' these days ... anyway I drilled each hole right through and made sure that while each screw was a firm fit that they could actually be removed by hand with a screwdriver without chewing out the screw heads in future.  One of the screws could only be removed with multi-grips!  The head on that one is a bit chewed out so I made one of the holes along the top a little looser than the others and installed that one there.  I also vacuumed out the sawdust that result from all my drilling.  Now the back of the cabinet can be removed and reinstalled without extreme force.

The chuck on the Tamiya drill was too small for the drill I had to use.  I used a regular cordless drill

[fps_dean]

Hope the clips were somewhat useful.

Honestly, I hope your cabinet repair solves your problem.  I was quite surprised to hear you had issues with the V30s sounding fizzy.  I don't find them to be fizzy speakers at all, they're just not as smooth as the Classic Leads.  But they're also very multi-purpose.  There's been many times that I wish I got the V30s, mainly for the vintage tones they're capable of mainly for my Marshall Major.  But at some point I will replace the speakers in my straight cabinet with V30s and have both options to choose from.

I also have a modified JCM 900 SL-X and that's a really sweet match with the classic leads.

[Dave Sloven]

It might just be that I'm not giving them enough to break them in.  Like I said, I might need to run a bass through them to soften them up a bit.

I mainly pulled the back off the cab to check exactly what I had in there before I did anything, and because I read somewhere about someone finding an over-tightened and distorted basket in an Orange cab after their warranty expired.  This cab is still only four months old or something and it still hasn't been outside the house yet, which limits chances to play it loud enough to break anything in.  When I've played the Peavey elsewhere I've borrowed a cab rather than haul this 50kg monster.

I'm glad though that I checked everything and that I fixed the screw holes.  I'll give the V30s more time to break in before changing anything.  Thanks