Celestion Super 8

8" guitar speaker with paper cone and edge surround rated at 15 watts. This is nothing fancy, stamped frame and smallish magnet.

Actually very good sounding, although unable to play really loud. This is for a practice amp, not a high power PA cabinet. This came standard in a Kustom Tube 12 practice amp. I replaced it with a Celestion Vintage 8, then changed back. I like dthe mellower and more distorted sound of the Super 8, although the Vintage 8 is better with effects and acoustic guitar. The Super 8 gets a warm distorted sound at a lower practice volume and helps the Tube 12 sound like more of a vintage tube amp. To make the Tube 12 sound even more like a vintage tube amp, I wired the output through guitar amp transformers. I bought two Hammond 125E transformers rated at 15W from Angela Instruments. The tone is now freaking awesome. See below for how to wire it up.

You should have no problem within the stated power rating. At 12 watts from the tube 12, it's very dependable.

Keep the power within rated specs, and you'll never need customer support.

This is the recipe for awesome tube amp tone: Tube amp tone is based on a saturated guitar output transformer driving a guitar loudspeaker. A tube amp transformer can't be hooked between a transistor output stage and a speaker, because the impedances are wrong. You don't want a clean audio transformer used in high end audio applications. The following is based on the Hammond 125E, but a similar arrangement will work on bigger transformers for bigger amps. You need two identical transformers to make a single transformer with identical input and output impedances. They are wired back-to-back. Wire the amp output to #6 and #1 taps on the secondary of one transformer. The idea is to go across the entire winding, but you can experiment here if you know what you are doing and follow the winding chart that comes on the box. Hook the blue to blue and red to red wires on the primaries of both transformers. Wire the speaker to #6 and #1 taps on the second transformer like you did the amp to the first transformer. Follow polarity throughout. The first transformer reverses polarity, and the second transformer reverses it again, so that is what's different from using a single transformer. This is mainly important if running several transformers in parallel to prevent phase reversal and cancellation between adjacent speakers. Double transformers give double the transformer saturation distortion, so the Tube 12 finally sounds really tubey, and the Super 8 speaker just adds to the tone. Great freaking vintage tone without going deaf from a 100W Marshall amp. There will be dangerously high voltages on the primaries of the transformers, so insulate everything properly and tuck the transformers in a place not likely to be touched while playing. To get a different input and output impedance, go across different taps on the secondary of one of the transformers. I will not explain that, because if you can't understand what I'm getting at so far, you are not qualified to be messing with high voltage transformers. A qualified person will have no trouble looking at the wiring diagram and chart and adapting it to their own amp of up to 15W or so of power. NOTE: the amount of resistance between secondary taps will tell you what percentage of the entire secondary winding you are using. Use your math and electrical engineering formulas to figure out the rest. If you can't understand that, take this idea to an amp tech, a real one with engineering knowledge and not a vo-tech school dropout that decided to mess around with guitar amps because he can't get a real electrical engineering job.

The Super 8 is an eight inch speaker rated at 15 watts and is fairly efficient at 94 dB for 1 watt. If you look at the frequency responce, the range is 100 to 5000 Hz and is also fairly flat with not many peaks or troughs - which reflects in the overall sound which is natural with good midrange and not too trebly, but due to the small size lacking in bass responce. The target market is budget small amps which it excels at

It has all the right Celestion sound but only in a smaller package. I was looking for a small speaker for a small 1 watt valve practice amp that I am building, which sounder excellent with a Celestion G12M 70 but which is too big. I tried various speakers from TV speakers (terrible) to a cheap chinese PA type - too shrill even with the small "whizzer" cone removed with a razor blade until I ordered this one. The sound I was looking for is here all that smooth overdriven valve sustain but at a low SPL so as not to annoy the neighbours when I play late at night. It does not sound as good as good or as loud as the G12M 70, but that is an unfair comparison. I did not compare it with the Vintage 8 which one reviewer finds superior so I cannot comment

Celestion makes high quality speakers and I am not stressing the speaker - so it should last until the cone crumbles with old age

Very helpful and friendly

Very good sounds per buck - If you want to replace the OE speaker of your small combo to get the right sound - try this one. Lets face it, THE Rock sound = All valve amp + Celestion speaker