Speakers. The last opportunity to modify your tone. Unlike hi-fi speakers which attempt to create sounds that are true to the musical source fed them, guitar speakers impart their own tone.
Your amp/cabinet pretty much determines three things about what speaker to select; speaker size, impedance and power rating. (See our tech corner article on Speaker Impedance, Power Handling and Wiring). But the tone is up to you! Speaker replacement is probably the easiest mod you can perform.
The C8R is the little gem in the Jensen Vintage series. It delivers a solid compact tone that defies its size. Extremely versatile, it finds application in small home and student amplifiers; but with a microphone in front, it is capable of transferring on tape some of the biggest tones ever. Not by chance, the vintage Fender® Champ® amplifiers produced with the C8R speaker are treasured by many players as a great studio tool.
The Mod 8-20 is a 8" ferrite speaker with 20 watts of power. Straightforward tone with smooth highs and more predominant lows. It responds to overdrive distortion with a mellow fuzz overdrive.
The Mod 10-50 is a 10" ferrite speaker with 50 watts of power. Warm, straightforward tone and tight bass frequencies. When presented with overdrive distortion, it exhibits a colorful fuzz edge.
While not strictly a vintage reissue, the C12K is the first design that Jensen developed in the early ‘90s. It is tonally inspired by the classic vintage ceramic Jensen, but with a substantially stronger voice, full bass and smooth top end. The C12K became one of the speakers of choice for Fender®, used in a myriad of world-selling models. Vintage tone with modern power handling and dynamics are the key virtues of the C12K.
The C12N is one of the most important speakers in Jensen’s history. It is the top 12” speaker of the ‘Blackface Era, used by many American manufacturers in the mid ‘60s for their upper range models when the price of AlNiCo became unsustainable for the manufacturers. Clear highs, solid mids, and powerful basses, it epitomizes the tone of that decade, from the surf, the rock n’ roll, the electric blues and the West Coast inspired music. It was used in Twin, Bassmanä and Bandmasterä style amps, and many others.
The P10R is very important in the history of Jensen speakers. Its shimmering, yet throaty and vibrant tone is one of the signatures of the Tweed era and inspired the start-up of the British tones. It was the first speaker reissued by Jensen, presented to a restricted panel of partners at the 1999 Summer NAMM show. The P10R is the speaker that contributed to the magical tone of the 4x10 Bassman® Tweed amps, the 4x10 Super Tweed Amps and the equally mythical 3x10 Bandmaster® amps.
One of the archetypical speakers in the range, the P8R has been installed in thousands of Champ and Princeton style amps for decades. Slightly clearer sounding than the C8R, its ceramic cousin, the P8R shines in clean and slightly crunch applications, where the typical chime of the AlNiCo magnets helps the sparkling harmonics to bloom.
A very successful and versatile 10”, the Falcon 10 adds a new dimension of openness to the classic, fat and warm tone of its 12” version. The seamed cone membrane delivers an unexpected bass response for its 10” size and it is balanced perfectly with its sweet, yet cutting and present high end.
Adopted primarily in the Vibrolux® and Vibroverb® amps of the Brownface and Blackface era, the C10Q is a very easy to drive speaker that breaks up nicely with straightforward biting character. It was also very common in many Silvertone® and Valco® amps. It loves the 2x10 configuration and the floating baffles.
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