Speaker recommendations please

[NB__England]

Hi All.
I am about one year into my Orange experience, it has been a learning curve!!
Currently gigging a TH30 head through a couple of V30 loaded PPC 2x12 cabs, that's the open back chinese ones. Now I do appreciate this is by no means the best set up Orange has to offer but it is what I could afford. I am now playing an SG, its a covers band from clean to Rock but nothing too heavy. I have struggled to get any tight gain which is what I was after, so I recently bought a Marshall DSL 20 head. To my ears the two amps are not worlds apart, the Marshall has a tighter gain but the Orange is much fuller in the lower regions. After a/b ing them I put a Two Stroke in the Orange f/x loop and managed to get a brighter tone and retaining the fulllness of the low end. I think I have achieved a good compromise between Orange and Marshall.
Therefore, I think the DSL will be returned. The one nagging issue now is the V30's. I think I don't like them too much, there must be something inherent in them that doesn't work for me. I have next to zero experience with speakers and no idea what it is I am hearing in them or what other perhaps generic speakers may sound like with my amp.
Any suggestions?

[Hubaxe]

I'm a big fan of Eminence Wizard speakers. They work very well for me with my TH100 (4X12 aside with Red Coat Governors), and in another 2X12 (Wizard only). But it'a a question of taste.
I found mines in UK (lean business cie). Moreover those us made speakers are not that expensive.

[Jondog]

Eminence Red Fang, Celestion Gold or similar.

[NB__England]

Thank you for the replies so far but what am I likely hear different tonaly?

[Les Paul Lover]

Watford valve have a very helpful section on their website with speakers recording samples.

The V30 offers bite, warmth, fullness. You might want to keep one and change the 2nd speaker only. People have had great success with greenback and G12H30.

I would recommend the G12H30 because of its superb highs. Similar sensitivity too, it would pair up nicely witj the V30.

[lunchbox]

V30's take quite a while to break in to get rid of the harshness. Not sure if that's the problem.

IMO, V30's are the best speaker match for modern Orange amps (or their VOTW speakers).

[caldurham]

V30's take quite a while to break in to get rid of the harshness. Not sure if that's the problem.

i was wondering if that was the problem as well. avatar speakers takes about 15 hours to break their v30's in before they sell them as hellatone 60s. i am sure they are under constant load during that 15 hour period but i dunno how they do do it and they are cheaper than brand new v30's. celestion has an article on their site for advice on breaking their speakers in. http://celestion.com/speakerworld/guita ... r_speaker/

if you had a way to reamp you could automate this process and do others things while the speaker is being broke in. that is if that is the problem. they may already be broken in as it doesn't really take as long as some people assume it does to break in speakers. and of course the speakers will continue to 'break in' or 'warm' up over the years as they are used.

[D|C|M|E]

Hi All.
I am about one year into my Orange experience, it has been a learning curve!!
Currently gigging a TH30 head through a couple of V30 loaded PPC 2x12 cabs, that's the open back chinese ones. Now I do appreciate this is by no means the best set up Orange has to offer but it is what I could afford. I am now playing an SG, its a covers band from clean to Rock but nothing too heavy. I have struggled to get any tight gain which is what I was after, so I recently bought a Marshall DSL 20 head. To my ears the two amps are not worlds apart, the Marshall has a tighter gain but the Orange is much fuller in the lower regions. After a/b ing them I put a Two Stroke in the Orange f/x loop and managed to get a brighter tone and retaining the fulllness of the low end. I think I have achieved a good compromise between Orange and Marshall.
Therefore, I think the DSL will be returned. The one nagging issue now is the V30's. I think I don't like them too much, there must be something inherent in them that doesn't work for me. I have next to zero experience with speakers and no idea what it is I am hearing in them or what other perhaps generic speakers may sound like with my amp.
Any suggestions?

To be honest, there is the very real possibility that your V30's are not quite broken in yet. I had this same problem. It took me nearly a year to break them in on my ppc412 as I never gigged it and have only had sporadic and few instances of being able to blast the speakers with my 100W RV. Now that's a 100W amp that took me nearly a year to break in the speakers with. You're playing a 30W and are attempting to service (4) 12" speakers in a double 2x12" cab format. I think even if you're gigging and practicing with at least 40% volume, you just may not have cracked that first level of break-in on those V30's. I find that I am still hearing new levels of further break-in on mine but the first moment that I noticed it was like a lightning bolt came from the sky and struck my cab and suddenly it was monumentally better in tonality than it had been. I actually thought my speakers were damaged or out of phase or just faulty altogether based on how poorly they sounded before that point but I grossly underestimated the depth of the quality fluctuation that I was in for before the speakers truly broke in and to what extreme depth and quality the speakers' voice would alter after "breaking in." I had read that they needed to break in but I never gave it the level of credence that notion deserved. The reality of it is profound.

It's truly unbelievable but the sucky thing is that you have to put in the time and work to bring those speakers to their vocal fruition and it really is worth it once you get there. If your speakers were brand new when you got them a year ago, I really think this is the crux of your issue with the sound. Once they're pulsing at their full potential they are crunchy, 3 dimensional and mid heavy with plenty of bass and a nice round but still bitey treble response. I really love the pronounced mid frequency they push. In full functionality, I think they may be the best speaker I've ever heard for a guitar amp.

[afjungemann]

I think I understand what you are explaining with not as tight of tone. I have a TH30 and really enjoy it but one thing that kind of bugged me right off was that you can’t make it brighter without bringing in bass and losing mids. Not really a recipe for success if you are trying to get the brightness.

What I found helped tighten things up is to lower your gain and bring the volume up more to get the power tubes saturating. That makes it a lot snappier in mine and actually helps brighten it a little too.

As for your cabs, they are fantastic. I have a couple PPC412s and a 212OB. The OB has a more pleasing sound to my ear but I play in a metal band as well so by definition, a 412 is required. (Sarcasm)

Sounds like you have a really cool setup. Get rid of that Marshall, life’s too short to play those.

[NB__England]

That is very interesting regarding speaker break in, I had overlooked that.
I am gigging on the 15watt setting and always miked so volumes aren't particularly loud, perhaps they really are not broken in yet, now what lol?

[afjungemann]

Well now is the fun part. Turn it up!

[D|C|M|E]

That is very interesting regarding speaker break in, I had overlooked that.
I am gigging on the 15watt setting and always miked so volumes aren't particularly loud, perhaps they really are not broken in yet, now what lol?

My man, its time to hammer those bad boys with some extra high dB levels and some really gnarly settings. The thing about high gain is that it ends up being naturally sort of smooth overall. Oranges do really well to keep a lot of aggressive bite in tact even in the highest gain settings but even that is not as jarring to your speaker's sense of frequency response as a partially broken up tone maxed out on volume or at least 50% volume or higher. I'd leave the amp set to full 30W power and turn the volume gradually up from about 30% and put your gain around 11:00 or so. The more natural tube break-up you can use the better because that already implies that the volume is set high enough to really make an impact on the pulsing of the speaker cone. Try to dial in a setting with shape knob on the drive channel that is nearly equally pushing a lot of bass and treble all at the same time. Find a setting its a bit harsh on your ears and then pick the hell out of a lot standard open chords and bar chords all up the neck and palm mute the chords and pick hard at them but try not to keep your ears right in front of the speaker while doing so. Try blasting the clean channel and I'd say max the treble and bass and alternate one maxed and one lower than max and then max both and play for a while. You may have to do this for a total of around 80 hours. It may take a while. If you have a wah pedal use that while doing this also and sweep the rocker as far up and down as it goes while striking the strings. That stream of frequency alteration at high volume should really give the speakers a romping to get in line.

Other people have had faster methods. I have no experience with those though.

[pedecamp]

Hi All.
I am about one year into my Orange experience, it has been a learning curve!!
Currently gigging a TH30 head through a couple of V30 loaded PPC 2x12 cabs, that's the open back chinese ones. Now I do appreciate this is by no means the best set up Orange has to offer but it is what I could afford. I am now playing an SG, its a covers band from clean to Rock but nothing too heavy. I have struggled to get any tight gain which is what I was after, so I recently bought a Marshall DSL 20 head. To my ears the two amps are not worlds apart, the Marshall has a tighter gain but the Orange is much fuller in the lower regions. After a/b ing them I put a Two Stroke in the Orange f/x loop and managed to get a brighter tone and retaining the fulllness of the low end. I think I have achieved a good compromise between Orange and Marshall.
Therefore, I think the DSL will be returned. The one nagging issue now is the V30's. I think I don't like them too much, there must be something inherent in them that doesn't work for me. I have next to zero experience with speakers and no idea what it is I am hearing in them or what other perhaps generic speakers may sound like with my amp.
Any suggestions?

Get a Boss SD-1 OD pedal and run it as a clean boost out front, set pedal volume max'd and gain off and tone to taste, this will tighten your tone. I'm not a V30 fan either but before you change your speakers try the OD pedal.

[stargazer747]

I have 4 Orange amp heads; Rocker 15 Terror, Jim Root Terror, Dark Terror, and Micro Dark Terror. Although they are plenty loud for my needs, they won't get as loud as the TH30 or other high volume Orange heads, yet I find the Celestion Vintage 30s work the best, I have a custom Marshall 412 and Blackstar modified HT112 both with V30s. Perfectly matched speaker to any Orange head, my opinion, great response and balance, wide frequency range enough for any genre of music, definitely for mine which is 70s & 80s Hard and Classic Rock.

But I also have an EVH5150III 112 cab which comes with the Celestion 70th Anniversary and an Ibanez TSA112 cab that has a Celestion Seventy 80 and both these cabs get great tone as well. I was thinking of building a cab from scratch and getting a Warehouse Veteran 30 and Eminence Patriot speakers giving them a try out. But my favorite guitar speaker will always be Celestion!