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Item
12' Guitar Speaker
Price Paid
$50+$12S&H (NOS)
Features

Some basics:  120 watts. Ceramic magnet. 8 or 16 ohms. Frequency range 70Hz to 5.5kHz. Resonance Frequency 91Hz. Sensitivity 102dB.

This is the guitar speaker that can be heard utilized on Chris Poland's OHM - Circus Of Sound album, and that tone is a pretty good indicator of what this speaker is about.

Pros

I replaced the Celestion Vintage 30 in my Marshall DSL 401 combo a few weeks ago with the Man O War.  To my ears and from my personal perspective, I would describe the tone as follows:

Clean:  This is the first speaker that I've had in my Marshall combo where it produced clean tone without even a hint of break-up for my humbucker equipped guitars with the volume rangin from 1-5/6.  There is a natural mid-range bump while the lows where tight but not anally so.  The highs had a very nice shimmer to them, but retained a warm open sound without being harsh at all.  Now even though my speaker experience is definitely not on the same level as inmyhands, tonestack or some of the other gurus around here, I will have to say that this is one of the few speakers that has a certain depth and 3-D character to it that I have not found in other Celestions speakers with the exception of the Alnico Blue.

Distorted:  I use a bit more gain and distortion than currently Poland does (perhaps the closest comparison would be Doug Aldrich's tone from Live In the Shadow of the Blues).  I found that this speaker naturally emphasizes the weighty mid-range but with a bright-yet-warm voicing.  With its 120 watt rating, you're not going to get speaker break-up.  However, this speaker allows the amp and your guitar to come shining through with just a hint of that mid-range colouration.  Individual notes rang out on chords with nice harmonic overtones of saturated EL84's.  Single notes were defined all over the neck--notes in the upper register were bright but warm without being thin or tinny.  Kicking in the TS9 gave my solos a nice sizzle but not overly searing. 

Cons

I don't believe that this speaker does that cranked, non-master volume, speaker break-up, AC/DC-type in-your-face tone very well.  It's not raunchy and rude so it probably won't do the nastiest ZZ Top as well either.  Pantera type brutality?  Probably not.  Kirk Hammett Cali smile scooped, mousey type tone--not for a second.

Summary

This is not a nasty, raunchy or rude-sounding speaker.  If you're into Painkiller-era JP tones, RTL Metallica or even BLS, then this might not be the speaker for you.  It can do brown-sound and it can do Dino very well, but in a slightly more rounded manner.  So if you love Chris Poland's (with OHM or during his Megadeth days), Eric Johnson's, Brian May's or even Tony Iommi's current tones/sound, then you owe it to yourself to check this speaker out.

Condition
Used