BUILDER PROFILE > TOP HAT AMPS
day difference in the quality of tone. Celestion doesn’t publicly acknowledge that they changed anything, but the glue, parts, and pieces make a huge difference. Gluing the voice coil to the speaker is a critical point, but the spiders [the paper portion that connects the voice coil to the speaker frame] as well as doping around the top edge are different, too. So they improved a number of things, although mostly right around the voice coil—and prob- ably the voice coil material itself. So that advancement, in conjunction with the EZ81 rectifier tube—which came back into production around ’05 or so—allowed us to do the AC15 thing correctly with the Supreme 16. The EZ81 is a big deal because it’s a critical part of feeding the original amount of current to a dual-EL84 amp, which is of course what the AC15 was. That helps things to sag, squish, and breathe right. The amp itself is in an aluminum-chassis head and can be used with a 2x12 cab
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PREMIER GUITAR FEBRUARY 2012 109
