Alnico's

[Jered]

I'm looking to get a pair of alnico 12" speakers for a Vox Night Train. On ebay there are a lot of 60's Magnavox, CTS, Heppner, etc. alnicosat very affordable prices.
Would these sound good or are they just a wasted of money. Thanks

[Leo_Gnardo]

I'm looking to get a pair of alnico 12" speakers for a Vox Night Train. On ebay there are a lot of 60's Magnavox, CTS, Heppner, etc. alnicosat very affordable prices.
Would these sound good or are they just a wasted of money. Thanks

Buying speakers unseen & unheard on ebay is a pig in a poke. Then there's the matter of does does your speaker sound good, assuming it's working. That's subjective, AKA in the ear of the beholder.

So you can throw a dart, maybe hit a good speaker, maybe not.

Or pay a bit more for brand-new but as you know, alnico's sell at a premium. FWIW my ear tells my wallet ceramic magnet speakers sound perfectly good. If you're looking for bargain prices Jensen's MOD speakers are about the cheapest decent speakers you'll find, and for a little more $$ the C12x series satisfies a lot of ears. For light-medium duty use I like their C12Q.

[johnnyreece]

Weber has been auctioning a lot of speakers on eBay lately. Some have been good deals; some have gone for almost new prices.

[Phil_S]

On ebay there are a lot of 60's Magnavox, CTS, Heppner, etc. alnicos at very affordable prices.

I gonna guess you get what you pay for. OTOH, are you feeling lucky?

[cbass]

Some of them sound good some of them dont

[Jered]

Ok thanks guys. If I do pull the trigger on any I will let you know my findings.

[Stevem]

I have got many a 12 and 15" Big Alinco magnet Utah and Magnavox dead driver off of the bay and had them rebuilt and in the end even with shipping saved at least 100 bucks as opposed to buying a new one!
The last two 12 inch Utah's I picked up have a massive 4 lb Alinco magnet with a total magnet structure of 15lb!
I am looking forward to getting these done up soon!
Back when Eminence came out with the Red Fang driver and it cost at that time only 125 I should have picked up 5 or 6 of them at that price!
They are getting hard to find on the bay, but if you can turn up a Utah 1950s driver with the green frame / bell cover ( gold lable) and a stamping number of P12g with a felt dust cover that still works they sound great and will hold up to a 20 watt rms amp as is and are the = to a Jensen P12N.
Another great and cheap 50s Utah Alinco magnet 12" driver is the green frame P12P with the built in Tweeter strapped across it as it has the same good size magnet, remove that tweeter and it's good to go!

[rp]

Shipping speakers is hit or miss too, they really don't like to travel unless they are in a factory fitted box. I once got a '60s Canadian EMI Jensen C15N crammed into a cardboard supermarket banana box with just wadded newspaper and taped up to close up as best as possible. From Canada, long journey and arrived fine much to my astonishment. Guess the post offices didn't want to bruise the bananas!

[WRC34]

I went way outside the curve once and spent $30 on a pair of 16 ohm, 25 watt Japanese made Pioneer 12" Alnico speakers that were never intended for use w/guitar. They sounded OK for guitar w/certain amps, not so great w/others, but at that price they were a mega bargain.
And then...I had them in storage in the basement and done gd chipmunks or something chowed the hell out of the cones - now Im going to use them as an experiment in learning to recone speakers, at least they only cost $30.

Please do report your findings!