Ceriatone Forum

My new Celestion Gold arrived yesterday and I have mounted it in the combo open back I have built. Celestion say that it is good to go from brand new. What have you guys that have them recon, some break in period, how long, music, how loud etc, any comments will be appreciated. It seems super sensitive to any playing technique faults, eg string buzz. Not liking it as much as the Celestion G12T-100 ceramic I have been using, which has had a good thrashing

Note from CELESTION:

Important Note! Before breaking it in it's advisable to "warm up" the speaker gently for a few minutes with low-level playing or background hum.

Break in a speaker with a fat, clean tone: turn up the power amp volume to full, and control the level with the preamp gain. Use a level that will be quite loud, but not painful in a normal size room.

Have the bass and mid up full, and the treble at least half. On your guitar, use the middle pick up position (if your guitar has more than one pick up) and play for 10-15 minutes using lots of open chords, and chunky percussive playing. This will get the cone moving, and should excite all the cone modes and get everything to settle in nicely. The speaker will continue to mature over the years, but this will get it 95% of the way to tonal perfection in the shortest time.

Cheers

^^^^ I second that advice.

It will take about 10 hours for the speaker to fully break in. IMO speakers "break in" and sound better over their entire life. But the largest difference is usually within the first 15minutes of playing where the cone loosens up quite a bit and takes away a nasty compression and weak bass that you will probably have for the first 20 minutes or so depending on how loud you play. You want a punchy tone to really thrust that cone out and loosen it up quicker.

Thanks Pickmaster, I didnt think to look on the website, pity they dont put the info in with the speaker. I may have been a bit quick of the mark starting up, not much warm up but a couple of hours playing at a bedroom + level so, should all be ok.  It will get 4 hrs at an open air gig this weekend so that should get me almost there

Thanks for that, will have 10+hrs on it by the weekend

I have an EV12L clone (Emi Kappa Pro) that I bought new 15 years ago, but never used until a year ago, when I build a Thiele cab.

I've been playing it for a year now, about 5 hours a week, but it's only starting to break in now. So that 250 hours of playing!


My Emi speaker is a 'hard cone' speaker - like JBL D120, EV12L, ALTEC 417 etc.. They are all build like tanks with stiff speaker cone, heavy chassis and very large magnets -  and therefore not 1:1 comparable to your Gold Tone.

Celestion speakers generally have softer cones in comparison and pressed steel chassis, but like JD0x0  said, a speaker mature over its entire life circle.

I guess one thing about buying a new speaker is that I can 'train' it the way I want it to sound ;-)  Thanks to all  AJ

I have 2x10 golds hooked to a Carmen ghia head, for me they started out very good and then at about 20 hours of varying volumes, chording and leads, they just blossomed, absolutely stellar sound. Good luck.