About a year ago I picked up a Celestion Creamback (75 W, 8 Ohm) speaker for a good price because it was a demo unit at Sweetwater. I sprung for it because of the price, and because I figured buying a demo speaker saves me from needing to break it in. But it has sat in my gear closet ever since then and I never did anything with it.
So the other day I ordered an (empty) Seismic 1x12 cab. It’s their “Contemporary Luke” model in black tolex and a wheat grill. It arrived this morning, so I installed the speaker and got it set up.
I’ve been trying it out with different amps. At the moment all of my amps are combos, which isn’t ideal for a separate 8 ohm cab, but I made it work. This cab is a pretty good deal. It’s not the nicest cab ever, but it’s solidly made of birch plywood, and has metal corner protectors, dual input jacks on the (closed) back, and was ready for immediate speaker installation: connect the wires and screw the speaker in. I front-loaded the speaker, but it looks like you could rear-load it too.
Both of the amps you see in the picture (a white Marshall DSL40 on the left, and a Fender Blues Jr III on the right) sound awesome through this Creamback-loaded cab. (In both cases I had the amp running only through the cab, not through their built-in speakers.) It really transforms the Blues Jr. I’m super pleased. And I think the Marshall sounded better through the Creamback (compared to its stock Seventy 80 speaker). To test the Marshall I ran it through the Captor X you can see sitting on top of the new cab. Lets me get the tubes cooking without crazy volume that might get the cops called to my house. (That’s only one of the Captor X’s functions. It’s a great piece of gear if you have tube amps.)
Anyway, if you’re looking for a relatively inexpensive cab that will get the job done, I think this Seismic will fit the bill.
Now I’m going to have to start looking at amp heads…