History of the Scumbacks
I needed a great sounding speaker to go in my amp line. I'm a fan and lover of the old Celestion Pre Rola speaker, after it's been played for several years, and broken in, as the treble tone has mellowed a bit, has a clear high end, full bodied mids and bass response. I wanted that tone for my amps, and so did my clients.
I bought about 300 old Celestions over the course of five years, from 1999 to 2004. By the time I finally bought the last of my "Celestion Collection" in July 2004, I was up to paying about $350 per speaker for the G12H30 55 hz Pre Rola speakers, as these seemed to be the most popular with my clients for their combo amps. I had already collected the complete line of G12M Pre Rola's, and many cone variations of them, as well as the 20 & 25 watt G12M lead and bass cones, plus the 25 & 30 watt G12H30 lead and bass cones.
I quickly realized that finding any steady, reliable supply of these speakers was hopeless, however, so I decided to see about having a custom speaker built. I approached my local Celestion dealer, OCSR (Orange County Speaker Repair), about custom speakers, but they were only interested in getting off the shelf Celestion cones, making a new voice coil for them to my specs, and assembling it. There wasn't going to be any custom voicing of the speaker, doping, suspension, etc.. That meant I'd pretty much have a G12H30 Reissue, or a G12M RI speaker with a custom name. That wasn't the tone I wanted, so I kept looking.
I then did some more research on who could do this, and I contacted Ted Weber with my idea. Ted was receptive to my goal, but I had a twist for him. What I wanted to do was to send him a "perfect' Pre Rola speaker for each model (lead and bass cone), to use as a "tone target" for a brand new recreation of the old tone I wanted. I enlisted the aid of OCSR to help me find it, so I started bringing in my "collection" (we're talking over 100 speakers at that point), and having OCSR test them. Since OCSR has been in business since 1969 doing only speaker sales, repair, & warranty work, they had the necessary expertise, and testing equipment to test the speakers I brought them. I then brought in what I had, and found out how many I had bought had issues under a high wattage load, such as "cone cry", voice coil rub, vibration noise, etc. Roughly 40% of what I bought off of eBay didn't cut it for their ears. After weeding out the known bad ones, we narrowed down the rest of the speakers to categories of:
- Good, passes tests as a new speaker
- Excellent, passes tests and has superior tone
- Perfect, as close to perfect as they'd ever heard
When I got a perfect one, I marked it, and put it on my speaker shelf for safekeeping (boxed, padded, etc.) I made notes of the date code, Txxxx # and the cone code, date, etc. When I found a perfect one, the next thing was to find a "dead one" with the same markings, date code, etc. to within a few weeks, or a month at most. Back to eBay, Recycler listings, private party ads, schmucks who thought they knew speakers, etc. What a nightmare, and pretty expensive, too. I literally spent a small fortune on the R&D samples to send to Ted (approximately 40k over 5 years was the total...I don't recommend it!)
So, you bid on a speaker on eBay and bid up to $150 to get a "blown speaker" I'm sure the seller is figuring I'm nuts. But I only bought it for the dead cone, and the dates that matched the perfect one it paired up to, just to match it up to my "perfect" speaker.
End result? Both speakers had to have original Pulsonic cones in their frames, and one had to sound perfect, one had to be dead for Ted to autopsy, and then recreate.
When I got the first speaker set, a T1217 G12H30 lead cone with a 102 003 Pulsonic lead cone, I sent it to Ted to recreate in August, 2004. He went through a lot of testing and cone swapping, doping techniques and suspension to match that speaker. It took him about 5 months, and he delivered the first (SA12) H75 (G12H30 lead cone recreation) to me, along with my perfect "tone target" to compare it to in last December, 2004. That speaker is the (SA12) H-75.
I put the two new speakers into a 2x12 closed back cab, then pulled out my original 1969 4x12 Marshall Major (1982 straight cab model with original G12H30's) and had five guitar players come over to do an A/B comparison test. After the test, the comments ranged from "it's so close it's ridiculous", and "we're splitting hairs over the differences" to "I think it sounds better than the Pre Rolas".
After that, I sent Ted my other old G12H30 55hz speaker (bass cone model), and an old G12M lead cone Pre Rola from 1971 to recreate. The 55hz H model he finished in January, 2005, what's known as the (SA12)H-55. He finished the 75 hz M model in May 2005, after a lot of testing, and trial and error. That speaker is the (SA12)M75.
So that's pretty much the whole story. I made the speakers for my amps, and they just turned out to be a very popular tone that other players wanted. I have ten 12" models now, and one 10" model. My site is about to be totally redone, so sound files, clips, and all that will be up somewhere around February 1st.