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Post subject: GT-100 speaker change
Posted: Sat Oct 21, 2017 2:02 am
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Last week I decided to change the speaker in my GT-100. I got a Celestion 'Hot 100' in 4 ohms (£69 in the UK). Visually, the Hot 100 is very similar to the stock FSD. Same grey pressed steel chassis and the cone looks the same. The only clue that they are different is that the ceramic magnet on the Hot 100 is ever so slightly bigger. I believe that the voice coil is slightly larger too. It was very easy to do the swap, remove the bottom panel on the back, unscrew the speaker bolts, remove the spade connectors.

I'm not sure what I expected when I switched on and dialed in my favourite tones. Had I had the luxury of testing the stock speaker and Hot 100 in an A/B situation and flicking between the two, the differences might be more obvious but, too be honest, any differences were so subtle as to be meaningless. I tried the new speaker at low volume and at full volume. Was there a slight drop-off in higher frequencies? My old ears could not tell. There was no 'magical' improved guitar voice at any volume.

So, as far as I am concerned, the exercise was a waste of time and money. That is not to say that another speaker might sound 'better', whatever that means, but the choice of 12" 4 ohm guitar speakers is not all that great. Another brand will probably sound 'different' but again, without that A/B testing, it is going to be difficult to compare. Well, I spent £69 so the new speaker MUST sound better. I'll keep repeating that to myself.


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Post subject: Re: GT-100 speaker change
Posted: Sat Oct 21, 2017 3:31 am
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That's really interesting.
My experience with a WGS ET65 was very different.
Instantly noticed a fuller, warmer sound with a tighter bottom end and less harsh top end.
It may just be my subjective personal preference, but for me the difference was significant...... and good.
I don't really play at low volume, so I don't know if that is a factor.


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Post subject: Re: GT-100 speaker change
Posted: Sat Oct 21, 2017 7:03 am
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Thats really odd. Unless my G12T100 (supposedly same as hot 100) being 8 ohms makes a huge difference than i cant even fathom why you don't hear it. But a lifetime of experience hasn't shown the load being off by 50% has ever made the kind of difference I hear between the two because it's nite and day. Maybe your ears do need checking because thats a shocking statement compared to what i am hearing. The top end is more different than i have ever heard between 2 speakers. Plus i have tried 2 others and same thing, nite and day. the stock is brighter and thinner than all of them to a fault. Only thing i can imagine is you play only at home and very low because at low volume before the speaker is even moving enough air to transition between that low volume mush you get till it starts working, most speakers will be much closer to each other. As i have said before, thats where the stock speaker is fine.


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Post subject: Re: GT-100 speaker change
Posted: Sat Oct 21, 2017 7:21 am
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oczad wrote:
Thats really odd. Unless my G12T100 (supposedly same as hot 100) being 8 ohms makes a huge difference than i cant even fathom why you don't hear it. But a lifetime of experience hasn't shown the load being off by 50% has ever made the kind of difference I hear between the two because it's nite and day. Maybe your ears do need checking because thats a shocking statement compared to what i am hearing. The top end is more different than i have ever heard between 2 speakers. Plus i have tried 2 others and same thing, nite and day. the stock is brighter and thinner than all of them to a fault. Only thing i can imagine is you play only at home and very low because at low volume before the speaker is even moving enough air to transition between that low volume mush you get till it starts working, most speakers will be much closer to each other. As i have said before, thats where the stock speaker is fine.


As I said, I had the amp flat out. My house allows me to do this.

Go to the Celestion.com site. Visit the Seventy 80 (which the FDS is supposedly derived from) and Hot 100 pages. Compare the specs and the frequency response graphs. Note that the differences are very small indeed.


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Post subject: Re: GT-100 speaker change
Posted: Sat Oct 21, 2017 9:33 am
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Aspiring Musician
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First of all, specs mean little compared to what you actually hear. You can find similar specs all day long with many speakers that sound quite different. But maybe the hot 100 is different, or maybe your ears just aren't as sensitive, i dunno. All i know is i've been playing for a 1/2 century and spent much of that time on stages and i do know what i'm hearing and itl;s not what you are. Why you aren't hearing the same is anyone's guess, but so far everyone who's changed the speaker has felt the same improvement i talk about and i hear it regardless of what speaker i use. Even the EV which is quite bright sounds nowhere near as piercing as the stock speaker. Not to mention the stock has the stiffest feel by far of compared to the other 3 i've tried and thats the worse part IMO.


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Post subject: Re: GT-100 speaker change
Posted: Sat Oct 21, 2017 2:14 pm
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oczad wrote:
All i know is i've been playing for a 1/2 century and spent much of that time on stages and i do know what i'm hearing and itl;s not what you are.


That can do a lot of damage to your hearing. :D


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Post subject: Re: GT-100 speaker change
Posted: Sat Oct 21, 2017 2:31 pm
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Aspiring Musician
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We're talking RELATIVE hearing here, but the fact is it would be the one who DOESN'T hear the different who would have damage, not the one who can.


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Post subject: Re: GT-100 speaker change
Posted: Mon Oct 23, 2017 6:54 pm
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Don't get crucified brining up the speaker change again on this thread there are troll afoot!!

Anywho lol, I find this all interesting I was about to go for the hot 100, but I loved the sound of WGS ET-90 I think it was, although the video didn't show the speaker in a GT, I did think the 90 had a tighter lower end the 65 seemed a little thin, but I try and remind myself its a youtube video theres only so much you can gather. The Rex is another speaker I hear a lot of people getting. Idk I played a Fender Hot Rod NOS 15 watt I believe it was the other day and I loved it, I loved the warm tone of the speaker, what is the NOS version of the fender amps? Are they still celestion? "excuse me if I misspelled that" haha,


Im still stuck waiting for others to report back their findings on swapping speakers the EQ update has helped push this speaker a lot I think, its allows more low end but the top highs are a little shrill, I just love the attack pickup that fender nos had, it was such a nice warm tone. I wonder with that speaker could I dial in that tone or is that the tubed doing the work, the older I get the more its seeming like I neglected speaker choice so much in the past and always focused on tubes when speaker choice can be just as important.


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Post subject: Re: GT-100 speaker change
Posted: Thu Oct 26, 2017 1:13 pm
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I have reverted to the Fender stock speaker. The Celestion Hot 100 just didn't have the sparkle that my Telecaster provides. Yes, I could have messed around with the new EQ facilities but I knew that if I want a clean Telecaster twang, the Hot 100 just wasn't going to go there.


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Post subject: Re: GT-100 speaker change
Posted: Thu Oct 26, 2017 5:42 pm
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Yeah, I really actually don't think the stock speaker is that bad anymore, I just don't think the GT had anything on board that could properly push it to make the air move the speaker is actually really loud I fully believe its a 100 watt amp, I really think they saved themselves by adding the EQs, don't get me wrong, I think an actual guitar speaker depending on which one obviously would do better then the stock one, but I think we all never had a tool to really make the speaker move and coordinate it how we wanted its actually pretty impressive as a two way speaker how now sounds with streaming and decent guitar tone. I guess I don't rely on the GT live to do high gain stuff, I still think replicating true gain is hard for the digital world, hell some stompboxes that are unbelievably over priced sound like crap to my ears so to each his own but I ABY another small amp in my live rig for high gain songs, but I use the GT more for cleans and moderate distortion like playing the dead an putting a Ts9 from the GT in front of the Fender Twin patch with and Eq is solid, for a growing gigging musician, I can get some pretty quality cleans and crunch for the money I spent, I still think the high dollar tube amps are the best selection but until your band or whatever gets roadies and sponsorships the GT is solid and has really started making strides at getting the rep of the amp up, like I said in previous post yank off the Fender sign on the amp and I bet people listen to the amp and think much more highly of it. Not to mention almost any preset you download on Tone app is better then the onboard stuff, and the new patches with the Eqs are getting really nice tones out of them. I may very well just stick with this speaker.


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Post subject: Re: GT-100 speaker change
Posted: Thu Oct 26, 2017 10:15 pm
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Aspiring Musician
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It's not that I think the stock speaker is totally useless. It sounds good low. But as you turn up theres a lot more hi mids that are just thin and piercing. I'm using a celestion 100 along with a EV as i said, but the EV is bright too tho not in the same range. I have a feeling the stock along with a darker speaker might be a good thing. It's similar to what i'm doing now because the celestion 100 is darker and the EV is brighter. they work good together like that. But the EV is a bit hard in the attack in a way i normally am good with but not so much on this amp. So i think what i may try is putting my WGS in the ext cab where the EV is now and put the stock speaker back in the GT. It may actually be a good combination and take advantage of the WGS's dark full sound to balance out the stock speakers hi mid push. The only drag is I will have to wire them in series and it'll be 8 ohms rather than the optimal 4. Right now with the EV and g12t100 i'm at 4 ohms. But hell, it's almost as loud at 8 ohms and with a EQ at he end of the chain can jack up the gain and get a higher signal to the power section if need be.


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Post subject: Re: GT-100 speaker change
Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2017 10:00 am
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Aspiring Musician
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Experiment done ! I was really surprised at a few things. What i did was as i said i would above, put the stock speaker back in the GT and use it with the WGS ET90 in an extention cab just as i had been doing for a few weeks now with a EV in the ext cab and a G12T100 like in the old mustang in the GT. But i had to wire the ext jack differently so they'd be in series since the speakers i've been using were 8 ohm paralleled to give the nominal 4 ohm load. With the stock and WGS i''m at 8 ohms which is not optimal and may in part have to do with what i heard. What i did was make a dummy plug with the ground and hot shorted that when inserted into the EXT jack on place of the WGS cab would allow the stock speaker to be used alone.

The findings....great tone ! The WGS and stock speaker together are much sweeter then the G12T100 and EV, which by comparison are harsh. The EV is responsible for that. With other amps i love them but in this amp the EV just has a sort of harsh and hard feeling top that i sorta noticed but not till i tried this today did i realize how much. The WGS/stock combo is beautiful. It gives that light feeling of your fingers on the strings and makes playing easier and more fluid feeling/sounding. Then i plugged the jack with the dummy plug to try the stock speaker alone and see what i could do with the new EQ's to eliminate what i don't like about it at higher volumes. I could not get close at all to the big full sweetness of the stock and WGS together. Itls so different no amount of EQ i could find at least made the 2 secnarios sound remotely close. I COULD get the stock alone to sound much better with the EQ than without. But this all has me wondering how much of that huge difference i hear between stock along and WGS.+stock is caused by the load difference? I assume the higher 8 ohm load of the combined speakers give it that smoother sound. It totally removes that nasty high end spike in the stock speaker and together they just sing. But is that ONLY the result of those speakers together or also partially due to the less than optimal load?

All i know at this point is this is the best sound i've gotten out of it to date. And the stock alone if i ever need to downsize or leave my ext cab somewhere and have no access to it is perfectly usable with the EQ. I wasn't able to find the exact offending frequency center with the available EQ's but close enough.(its a higher freq than i had anticipated too) It's staying like this for now. If i knew the load mismatch was NOT responsible for a lot of what i'm hearing i'd be tempted to buy a 8 ohm celestion 70/80 speaker (supposedly same as the GT's stock but 80 watts instead of 100) and sell the WGS an get another ET90 in 8 ohms so i could use them both at the nominal 4 ohms. Anyways, in the end this combo really sounds great and is the best sounding speaker setup to date. (to me...YMMV)


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