Eminence - Man O War

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.