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I just want some cool, old speakers without breaking the bank on hundreds of pounds' worth of celestions
Generally speaking, the larger the magnet the more 'thick and syrupy' they will sound. Also I normally half the power rating when using them. So treat a 50 watter like a 25 watter. The reason for that is because they dont tend to like being pushed hard and will start flabbing in my experience.
Bargains are out there but the key to buying good vintage speakers is to collect them in person and test them yourself before forking out any money. It avoids them getting trashed in the post, and saves you buying coil rubbing horrible sounding speakers.
There are some nice Goodmans out there too.
Unlike Celestions, Fanes do not like being pushed hard and their ratings are much less conservative than Celestion's - half is about right if you're going to overdrive the amp, and it's probably why Hiwatt used to label their 4x12"s with four 50W Fanes as 150W, not 200W - so they didn't get used with a 200W amp. Even a DR103 is pushing them pretty far when it's cranked up.
Goodmans even more so… they can be lovely-sounding speakers, but they're very fragile - the ratings are more like hi-fi in the sense that they're rated for maximum clean power only, and they're easy to blow. As a result they had a terrible reputation for being poor quality, but actually they're just rated in a totally different way. If you've got one of the more desirable old Alnico models it's certainly not wise to run it with an amp of more than half the speaker rating, and possibly even less.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Regarding the try-before-you-buy thing... I can't do that most of the time, so I might just have to rely on buyer's protection if they don't work as advertised.
I will sleep on it and see how I feel about it all tomorrow. Part of me's thinking I should just get decent new speakers, I don't believe in mojo and I wouldn't even be using a particularly old amp with them...
Too much choice.
what amp are you using? if its something powerful like a 50 watter you might want to step up the magnet size to a G12M or G12H.
I'd like projection without overwhelming dB's, which these might actually be good for. I was thinking I'd just go with Heritage G12Ms but another one of these for a good price would be a lot cheaper!
But sometimes just buying new is a safer way to spend your money, or at least something made in the last 10 years. Most of the vintage speakers on ebay are in poor condition and worth nowhere near the asking prices, despite what the people selling them claim, and then there is the gauntlet of having them shipped.