Nostalgic Distortion
New member
So about a month ago now I bought a Blackstar HT-20 head, mostly because it was on clearance & stupid cheap!!! Anyhow when I got it home I stuck it on top of my V-30 loaded 1x12 to try it out which is the only cabinet I keep out all the time. I keep the rest of them in storage because we don't have a lot of space in the house. The head sounded alright I suppose, decent dirt & awful spiky cleans which is pretty much exactly what I expected so no real surprises there?
That should have been the end of it but I had to nitpick! For anyone who is not familiar with them the HT-20 comes ridiculously large cabinet for a 20W head. I know it's got EL34's instead of EL84's but still, it just doesn't need to be that large. Furthermore it looked kinda silly hanging off the ends on my 1x12 so I set about trying to do something about this....
Off the top of my head I figured a narrow panel 1x12 would be great for this particular head & since they aren't that big but unfortunately I didn't have one of those. However I did have a broken Princeton Chorus 2x10 in the shed that was more or less the same size. I pulled out the chassis, refinished the cabinet, & then bought a couple 50W Eminence Red Fang 10's to go in it. On paper this all seemed like exactly what I was after but when I got the 10's hooked up I found them to be lacking in low end. Keep in mind they are new & still quite stiff which I'm sure is exasperating this effect to some extent? I will say this for them though, they have fantastically punchy mids, & some serious cut to them!!
Now since the Fangs do have some qualities that I really enjoyed, & since speakers are non returnable, I started thinking about how I could make them work. The first thing I tried was converting the open back to a 3/4 open back. This actually made a pretty good difference & helped to project the low end that was there through the front of the cabinet but I still wasn't satisfied!!! The only other thing I could think of at this point was to run the R.F. 2X10 with another 16 ohm cabinet, preferably with a 12in driver that could compensate for the 2x10's shortcomings.
In a perfect world I would have been able to just use the 1x12 cabinet & V-30 speaker I already had out but unfortunately the Vintage 30 in it is a 8 ohm driver. Furthermore I had the exact same issue with my G12T-100, Greenbacks, ALNICO Weber, Eminence Cannabis Rex & just about every other 12 inch speaker I've got on hand!!! After digging through boxes & my larger cabinets I came to the sad realization that the only 16 ohm 12 inch speaker that I had was a Seventy/80 that I'd pulled out of my DSL40C years ago. Probably not the ideal speaker for what I was trying to do but it was what I had & I really had nothing to lose at that point? Running the 70/80 with the now mostly closed back 2x10 was a major improvement!!! When all three speakers we going I still got those great mids as well as cut but now the bass was nice, tight, & thick!!!
Now it's a lot better than what it was originally & my 10's are starting to get broken in just a bit but it's still not where I'd like it to be likely because of that stupid 70/80!!! So I said to myself "Self, you know what would be absolutely perfect with them 10's? A gosh darn 75W Celestion Creamback!!!" So I tracked a 16 ohm version of one of those today & hopefully it will be the end of all this!!!
Oh, LOL, while all this was going on I was also able to scoop up another broken S.S. Fender combo for nothing from a kid down the street but this time it was a old Stage 1000 & came in a 1x12 cabinet. This was great news because it is exactly the same size as the 2X10!!! So once I've crammed the Creamback into it Ill be able to stack them on top of each other effectively giving me a three speaker, two cabinet, 20W Blackstar HT-20 full stack!!!
LOL, THERE WAS A TIME WHEN I COULD REALLY CARE LESS ABOUT SPEAKERS, THEN I FOUND OUT HOW MUCH OF YOUR TONE IS ATTRIBUTED TO THEM & NOW I OBSESS OVER THE DAM THINGS!!!!
That should have been the end of it but I had to nitpick! For anyone who is not familiar with them the HT-20 comes ridiculously large cabinet for a 20W head. I know it's got EL34's instead of EL84's but still, it just doesn't need to be that large. Furthermore it looked kinda silly hanging off the ends on my 1x12 so I set about trying to do something about this....
Off the top of my head I figured a narrow panel 1x12 would be great for this particular head & since they aren't that big but unfortunately I didn't have one of those. However I did have a broken Princeton Chorus 2x10 in the shed that was more or less the same size. I pulled out the chassis, refinished the cabinet, & then bought a couple 50W Eminence Red Fang 10's to go in it. On paper this all seemed like exactly what I was after but when I got the 10's hooked up I found them to be lacking in low end. Keep in mind they are new & still quite stiff which I'm sure is exasperating this effect to some extent? I will say this for them though, they have fantastically punchy mids, & some serious cut to them!!
Now since the Fangs do have some qualities that I really enjoyed, & since speakers are non returnable, I started thinking about how I could make them work. The first thing I tried was converting the open back to a 3/4 open back. This actually made a pretty good difference & helped to project the low end that was there through the front of the cabinet but I still wasn't satisfied!!! The only other thing I could think of at this point was to run the R.F. 2X10 with another 16 ohm cabinet, preferably with a 12in driver that could compensate for the 2x10's shortcomings.
In a perfect world I would have been able to just use the 1x12 cabinet & V-30 speaker I already had out but unfortunately the Vintage 30 in it is a 8 ohm driver. Furthermore I had the exact same issue with my G12T-100, Greenbacks, ALNICO Weber, Eminence Cannabis Rex & just about every other 12 inch speaker I've got on hand!!! After digging through boxes & my larger cabinets I came to the sad realization that the only 16 ohm 12 inch speaker that I had was a Seventy/80 that I'd pulled out of my DSL40C years ago. Probably not the ideal speaker for what I was trying to do but it was what I had & I really had nothing to lose at that point? Running the 70/80 with the now mostly closed back 2x10 was a major improvement!!! When all three speakers we going I still got those great mids as well as cut but now the bass was nice, tight, & thick!!!
Now it's a lot better than what it was originally & my 10's are starting to get broken in just a bit but it's still not where I'd like it to be likely because of that stupid 70/80!!! So I said to myself "Self, you know what would be absolutely perfect with them 10's? A gosh darn 75W Celestion Creamback!!!" So I tracked a 16 ohm version of one of those today & hopefully it will be the end of all this!!!
Oh, LOL, while all this was going on I was also able to scoop up another broken S.S. Fender combo for nothing from a kid down the street but this time it was a old Stage 1000 & came in a 1x12 cabinet. This was great news because it is exactly the same size as the 2X10!!! So once I've crammed the Creamback into it Ill be able to stack them on top of each other effectively giving me a three speaker, two cabinet, 20W Blackstar HT-20 full stack!!!
LOL, THERE WAS A TIME WHEN I COULD REALLY CARE LESS ABOUT SPEAKERS, THEN I FOUND OUT HOW MUCH OF YOUR TONE IS ATTRIBUTED TO THEM & NOW I OBSESS OVER THE DAM THINGS!!!!
