An often overlooked part of the electric guitar player's arsenal, but an extremely important part of anyone's tone.
Celestion
Celestion offers pretty much the seminal guitar amp speaker range and come as standard equipment in many quality amps.
Here's a quick summary of what the Celestion speakr range offers:
- Celestion greenback (G12M): rated initially at 20W and later 25W this speaker gives you the seminal rock/blues tone, has a mid emphasis;
- Celestion G12H: modern version of the G12M with more upper mids/top end;
- Celestion G12T-75 (often called the GT75): mid scooped with emphasized top and to a lesser extent bottom. Good with more transparent power tubes like KT88s or 6550s;
- Celestion Custom 90: Also known as a Black Shadow Speaker, the C90 provides a tight & controlled low-end, with strong high bass / low mid punch, aggressive mid range attack and a singing top-end. Great in a open back cabinet;
- Celestion Vintage 30: has very distinct mid emphasis. If you don't like the "scooped" feel of the G12T-75, then this is complete opposite. A mixture of G12-T75's and Vintage 30's in a cross pattern in a quad box can offer the best of both worlds and produce a really nice fat, across the board tone.
Closed/open back cabinets
You can't really talk about speakers without mentioning the cabinets used to house them. The cabinets and their design can/do make a big difference in sound as well. Whole books have been written on the subject and there are huge forum threads arguing about such things. Here's a couple of fairly non-contentious points that can assist in deciding on a cabinet:
- closed back cab: punchier/tighter, more mid range focused sound. Good projection of sound out the front of cab. Sealed cab will provide more support for the speaker, so less efficient;
- open back cab: generally broader range of frequencies and less mid-range emphasis. Sound comes out of the cab from all directions so will "fill the room" better.