G12-H differneces

relic245

I have a couple of G12-H 30 70th anniversary speakers in a zilla cab. It sounds good to me but I know there a lot of different versions of the G12-h and wondered about these.

First of all am I right in thinking that in general a G12-H is what used to be called a greenback, when it was green of course. These are kind of cream so I guess they are the creambacks. 

Are the 70th anniversary considered good versions of these speakers and how do they rate in the hierarchy of a good one?

I tend not to use the cab on it's own, I use a blackstar A30 head and for small gigs use the artisan cab loaded with V30's and the 2 cabs together for bigger gigs which sounds fantastic.

No real reason to my question, I'm happy with them - just curious.

Adam_MD

I'm also quite interested in this as speakers are something I'm not that clued up on.

ICBM

"Greenbacks" are actually G12M-25s (and the older/reissue G12M-20s, possibly), despite the H30s having green plastic covers in the early 70s (and as the Heritage reissues do). All of these also came with cream, grey or black backs depending on age and customers, so why "Greenback" has come to mean only a G12M-25, I don't really know.

There are two current versions of the G12H-30, the 70th Anniversary (no magnet cover, Chinese-made, cheaper) and the Heritage (green cover, UK-made, expensive). The Heritage also comes in 75Hz ('lead') and 55Hz ('bass') versions.

To me the 70th Anniversary sounds darker and a bit tighter than the Heritage models, with less bass than the 55Hz and less top-end than either of them. They do sound different but it's not a better/worse thing, they're just slightly different - the Heritage is more open and resonant-sounding, but that doesn't suit all amps and you might actually want a bit more damping with some.

I also have to say I've come across manufacturing defects on two of the expensive UK-made Heritage versions, as opposed to none on the cheaper Chinese ones... so don't automatically assume that a Chinese speaker is 'inferior'.

Dave_Mc

Just to add to what ICBM says, I didn't much like the g12h30 on its own as I found it a bit hard-edged sounding (apart from with my valvepower 18 watt clone, it sounded pretty good with it, i suspect because it has a nice warm vintage type of tone).

Admittedly mine were brand new when i tried them so weren't broken in, but at the same time all the other speakers i tried were similarly new and I didn't have that problem. Obviously that's not foolproof because there's not much point in liking how a speaker sounds out of the box and hating it when it's broken-in, lol.

I do like it combined with other speakers (greenback is the classic example), but on its own I liked the heritage (55Hz) a lot better. I've said this before but I like the tayden great brit for a more heritage-style g12h30-type speaker without paying heritage prices.