EV Speakers for Guitar Amps? Why Not?

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soundchaser59

Reluctant Commander
In all my forum surfing, I see tons of banter almost exclusively about Celestion, Weber, and Eminence......but I never see any recommends for EV speakers for guitar amps!

Why is that? I wouldn't mind trying an EV driver, but I'm not sure where to start researching and evaluating them! Which ones are best for guitar amps? etc....

Any clues?
 
My old guitar player put them in one of his Marshall 4/12 cabinets (The slant cab,I think). Sounded great. No better, no worse than the Celestions, just different.
EV makes good shit.
 
They are great speakers but with the cast frame and HUGE magnet they are extremely heavy. LOUD, CLEAN, and HEAVY. I think you could say they do not impart much of their own character to a guitar amp.

The SRO-12, 12L and Force 12 were common for guitar, but they're no longer made as far as I recall.

Not sure what models might currently be available.
 
Plus I just found out the ridiculous high price EV is charging for their drivers.

For the price of one EV Black Label I can get 3 Webers, 3 Eminence, or 2 top shelf Celestions....

That's crazy! I guess they dont want us commoners to buy their stuff......
 
The EV speakers are much cleaner than celestions. You end up getting more of what your amp is putting out, but that isn't always a good thing. They are expensive because they are technically better speakers. Celestions aren't great speakers, they just sound good for guitar.
 
I got a reconditioned EV 12 the same as you'll find in the SX300 PA cabs for £40 & it's been in my musicman 112RD ever since LOUD & VERY CLEAN

awesome reproduction of sound

except when they (rarely) blow :p :p
 
PA speakers are designed to accurately reproduce a sound.
Bass speakers are also typically designed to accurately reproduce sound.
EV speakers are known for handling both of these applications well.
Guitar speakers are designed to sound good with guitar amps, and do not typically reproduce sound accurately.
Weber builds speakers that are closely based on retro classic EV speakers that may have been OEM speakers in some amps.
 
EV guitar amp usage

Whoa I geuss you never heard of Jimmy or Stevie Ray Vaughn both of whom are well known to use EV's in their Fender amps..
 
Very clean but very heavy speaker. 18 or so lbs. Ina 1960 cab you are going to portage 72 lbs of speaker plus cab weight. I love the 12l it works well and is very durable yet very heavy. I own a single Mesa B extension cab with ev 12 and it is a great sounding combination with low wattage amps as well as higher powered rigs; I use it when I want to hear the sound of the amp (as stated above) versus the amplifier speaker combination.
 
I have 3 1x12 cabs in the studio, an old greenback Celestion open back, EV12L in a Mitchell small Thiele and a PV BlackWidow 1202/8 sealed box all 8 ohm. I like that EV speakers are faithful to the amp not imparting additional color and they are as bullet proof as any speaker can be but it is heavy especially in the Mitchell box that it's in. BTW I also use that for recoding bass some times with great results.
 
Back In The Day™ a very common upgrade for Fender Twin Reverb amps was to replace the stock drivers with Electro-Voice SRO's...at least until the immense weight of the SRO magnets led to premature destruction of the pine baffles in those old Twins.

More recently -- meaning only ~25 years ago, rather than >35 -- some guitarists who used extensive signal processing would put EVM12L's in their cabinets, because these had a more neutral sound than the more common Emminence, Celestion, et al...and these tech-heads felt that a more neutral speaker would better translate all the tone-shaping they were attempting upstream.

I think the reason you don't see them so much nowadays is that guitarists have gone back to either A) favoring a more simple signal chain; and/or B) recognizing that a bandwidth-limited driver can be an inherant part of an iconic guitar sound. In my experience, SRO's sounded great for guitar, but EVM's sounded a bit boring.

YMMV.
 
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