Jensen Blackbird - what I reckon

knuckleberryfinn

I finished building a tweed Bassman clone a few months ago and was wondering what speaker to put in it.  I decided on a Jensen Blackbird because I wanted an alnico speaker which could handle the power output and more.  I'm glad I opted for something that could take more than the Bassman throws out as I'm now looking to get a higher powered blackface head, but don't really want another cab.  This in itself should give a fair impression of how much I like this speaker.

Anyway, in the thread I posted a while back about which speaker to get, @pickerg requested that I post a follow-up with my verdict on the Blackbird.  So here it is. 

Before using the Blackbird, I had 4 x 8" Celestions (the Eight-15s) in a solid oak cab.  It put out a very tight and powerful bass, and it never got ice-picky, but there was a horrible woofiness in the mids when hitting the guitar hard which was very fatiguing for the ear.  This was more apparent the cleaner the tone.  Getting rid of this was a priority.

So the Jensen...I've played through it at about ten gigs now, and at various volumes.  At one gig, in a large hall, I had the amp running flat out and it sounded just incredible.  At any volume the tight powerful bass is still there, though with some compression, the highs are never too much (unlike with the Jensen ceramics I've used in the past, which are stupidly trebley) and the woofiness is gone.  There is still a lot of attack on tap (I'm used to playing through a 5E3 Deluxe, which doesn't have the dynamic range of the Bassman) but the compression inherent in the speaker makes it a more useable amp for me.  I just now tried comparing it to the speaker in the 5E3 (a G12-H30) but it was pretty meaningless owing to the different cabs and the low volume I was playing at.  The Blackbird definitely likes being pushed.

I recorded a song the other day using it pretty clean with a Strat with a Classic '57 in the bridge.  Sounds okay, but sounds better with the volume at 5+.  Here it is (the top one): http://space-eagle.com/listen/

Anyway, not much of a review, but hopefully it will be helpful to someone.

pickerg

Just came across this after being away and stuff, thanks for the review, that's really helpful. 'Woofy' is a good way of describing the sound I seem to get at certain volumes with my vintage 30 g12h30 mix for my 5f6a and was wanting to try something alnico that will take the power of the bassman. Something to think about. Like your sound clips too, cheers.