Vox Blue speakers

richardhomer

A friend of mine used to own a vintage AC30 with a pair of factory 'Blues'. It was a remarkable sounding thing....

Bygone_Tones

NervousJohn said:

spark240;294738" said:

the date stamp is 15KH and 14KH which suggests they are Nov 1963 Blues I think?

Can anyone confirm?

Thanks,.

From the rather excellent Stephen Grosvenor's Service Engineer's guide to AC-30s the date codes are the 14th and 15th October 1963. "I" wasn't used between 1963 and 1967.

As @ICBM says keep them somewhere dry for i.e. indoors for a while and run them up gently.

"I" was never used in my opinion. Just an oversight made by Michael Doyle when he wrote his celestion date code chart based on one oddball speaker he found.

Regarding value - Ive seen this happening a lot lately on different forums. People finding vintage speakers in old cabs and coming to the conclusion they are instantly super valuable. Sorry but in the real world this is not usually the case.

For vintage speakers to be valuable their condition has to be right up there (mint), and only a very small percentage of vintage speakers are actually like that thesedays. They have to be 100% original - so if they have been reconed you can forget the high price tag. Also the cones have to be perfect and they have to work properly. Coil rub, failing glue, and damaged cones are all very common on old celestions. Here are some checks you can perform:

http://www.bygonetones.com/blog/how-to-test-vintage-guitar-speakers

The vox blues with pulsonic cones stamped H1777 or 003 are the most sought after and valuable. The ones with the RIC stamped cones, less so. They are likely to have pulsonic cones in 63, assuming they havent been reconed.

Do you have any photos showing the fronts of the cones?

spark240

Speaker pics ...I tried most of the checks...seem fine. 

http://s1290.photobucket.com/user/spark240v/library/Vox Blues

Bygone_Tones

they do look in very good condition actually.

so long as they really do pass the coil rub check (move the cones by hand and it should be a silent movement) and they are not dead circuit. you should be good to go.

spark240

Yep ...tried the coil rub, very slight noise, then ok after a few moves, they have sat still for the last 25 yrs !

I tried them at quite low volume, all seems good.