I havent finalized it yet but I'm happy with the results so far.
You know, for me personally....I found that my "monkey see - monkey do" approach to using Creambacks, Greenbacks and Vintage 30's was a huge part of my dislike of how my amp's sounded.
My first "outside the Celestion box" speaker experiment was the cheap, imported Electro-Harmonix 12VR75.
I couldn't believe how much better my DSL40C's sounded with this speaker.
With the Cream/Green/Vintage speakers, (aside from the fact I blew them all apart in my pair of DSL40C's) I always struggled to get a bright enough EQ to give me an edge in a live mix with un-mic'd amps on a larger stage.
The 12VR75 changed the entire character of my amps and it became my go-to speaker.
After blowing the voice coils off the cones on my Creambacks, Greenbacks and Vintage 30's, and discovering that there is no guarantee on speakers from Sweetwater, I started looking for a lighter weight speaker.
My first experiment with lighter weight speakers was a Celestion Creamback Neo, but I blew the voice coil and cone apart on that one too.
It was at this point I just stopped doing what everyone else was doing and I started looking elsewhere.
My first success with a Neodymium speaker was with Jensen's Jet 100 watt. It was less than half the weight of a ceramic magnet speaker and it didn't suffer a cone/coil separation at elevated resonance/volume levels.
For the last part of my two years in our band, I was running the Jensen Jet 100 alongside a Jensen Stealth 80 watt Neodymium in my custom 2x12 cabinet. These Italian made speakers were able to handle my extreme resonance and volume levels and kept total weight ofy 2x12 mahogany cabinet less that 30 pounds.
Not long ago, a musical friend told me about a special project that Celestion engineers embarked on to create a speaker that could handle Blackmore's 200 watt Marshall Majors. The project was hush-hush, because they didn't want anyone to know that the average Creambacks and Greenbacks were being blown apart by Blackmore's rig.
(There's a post about this project where my source names name's from Celestion's secret project)
The 250 watt Copperback Neodymium speaker is based on those early experiments and it is by far the best sounding, most neutral speaker I've used to date.
They are not cheap. With tax and shipping, expect to pay $500.00 fir a pair of them. They are ONLY available as a Made In U.K model. There is no Chinese counterpart.
Another speaker in this arena is the 200 watt Eminence EM12-N. Yes, they retail for $269.00 each, but there is nothing that I have found that has the clarity and tenacity of these high quality speakers.
Update: some have said that Sweetwater recently started covering speakers under their in-house, 2 year warranty, but that has not yet been confirmed by Sweetwater.
Back in 2019 and 2021, when i blew these Celestions up, i was told that I would have to go through Celestion to warranty my blown speakers.
I started the warranty process with Celestion and shipped the speakers to Celestion, Claydon Business Park, Great Blakenham, Ipswich, IP6 0NL United Kingdom for examination.
They shipped them back to me saying the warranty doesn't cover "abuse," which is understandable.
I gave all the blown Celestions away to a local fellow who said he could recone/repair them.
