I've said it before the fender hot rod amp
does sound so good especially with a boost and an overdrive going into the
front end with a little bit of eq it can sound
very growly but i'm not even sure that accurately describes it
but it's a sound i like very much, i wonder though
if i can make it sound any better...
this... sorry.... this is the celestian creamback g12m it's a
12 inch 8 ohm 65 watt speaker and in this video
i'm going to put it in my fender hot rod amp so feel free to skip around by
hovering over the timeline and this video includes the full install
it's a service i provide so let's crack on... first thing you'll
need to do is unplug the hot rod from the wall and
then switch it on what this does is then drains the capacitors
and now obviously unbox the speaker what would an install video be without an
unboxing so here it is...
okay you've got six screws on the back of the hot rod
and two screws that hold that cage on that protects the power tubes
the two screws for the cage are shorter screws
so just be aware of that
now we need to remove the back panel it can be a little sticky on there
so try not to use too much force but it will come off
now we've got six screws that hold the amp section in
two on either side of the amp and two on top of the amp
so what i did is lay the amp face down and then take the screws
the two screws either side of the amp out first
then remove the two screws from the top of the amp something to be aware of
though if you remove both of these screws without supporting it
the amp is going to drop inside the case so make sure you give it enough support
there is a retaining clip that you'll need to remove as well
so just unscrew that and put that to one side
now what i did is i got the amp and i just rested it on
each corner of the cabinet whilst i undid the screws for the speaker
there are two wires here one positive and one negative the positive wire
is red and black and the negative wire is just black
and they're clearly marked on the back of the speaker so you can't go wrong
and now there are just four screws that hold this speaker in
by putting the amp on the corner of the cabinet allows me access to these two
screws and then what i'll do i'll grab the amp
put it onto the other corner of the cabinet
which will allow me access to the other two screws in the speaker
it's also a little sticky so there you go
and now we just get the cream back speaker and install everything in
reverse one tip that i've got for you is that
when you put the screws in don't screw them all the way up only put
them halfway in and this will allow you enough movement in the speaker to be
able to get the other screws in i made that mistake here
there you go any minute now i'm going to realize that the first screw that i put
in i screwed it all the way in and that's
not going to allow me enough movement in the speaker to get the other screws in
and there we go then once again once we've got those
screws halfway in just shift the amp onto the other side
of the cabinet allowing you to put the other two screws
in when you put these screws in you can screw them all the way up
because remember we've got the other two screws on the other side
only in halfway
and now we'll just reconnect the speaker wires and remember our black and red was
positive and our black was negative again on the
celestian g12m they're clearly marked
one last shift of the amp over to the other side of the cabinet
allows me to tighten the last two screws up
okay so that's the speaker installed and we just need to reinstall the amp
now you're going to need to support it as you put it into the cabinet
in order to get at least one screw either side of the amp
so that it supports itself
once those four screws are in don't forget your retaining clip as well
another good tip is in order to get these top screws in i found it better to
have the amp upright otherwise for some reason it
just became a little bit tricky and now let's reinstall the back plate
remember we've got six screws at the top and we've got two screws that hold the
cage on i'll put the cage in first and the cage uses those smaller screws
and here goes the genius again trying to figure out which way this cage went
round i actually had to look back further in the video
to figure that out but i got there in the end
so this uses those two small screws
once that's done just reinstall those other longer six screws
and then finally we can reconnect the speaker
into the amp
don't forget now to switch the amp back off before you plug it into the wall
and we are now good to go...
Now in order to make this kind of video and give an honest opinion it takes a
few weeks because i'm used to the sound of the
original speaker in the hot rod and have sculpted it to sound well in my
opinion amazing so i had to have the crane back in there
for a while to get used to it to get used to the new sound and see what it
can do
so it's certainly a different sound sounds
cleaner but more prone to earlier breakup and
the speaker swap is something i've wanted to do for a while now
to try and achieve a more i don't know boutique tone
whatever boutique means it does though give me a reduced mid hump which is what
i was after i did watch many videos using headphones
to try and establish what kind of speaker i was after and i
know it's not an exact science especially through youtube but it did
give me an indication of the kind of tone i could achieve but
of course you never really know till you install
it in your environment but if you're in the market for a
speaker swap in your hot rod or any other amp give it a go
it's really straightforward and it'll give you a different sound from your amp
brings your amp alive leave your comments below
and i'll see you down there cheers