Tone Tubby Speakers

[omphalopsychos]

This is interesting. I've been really curious about Tone Tubby speakers for a while but their online descriptions are not very informative and they're very expensive. The owner of the business is about a 40 minute drive from me. I emailed him asking for some comparative information to try to pick out the right speaker for my use case.

His response:


He brought me four loaded cabinets to try out. Just dropped them off with me and trusted me to check them out and give them back.

The speakers he brought me were:
- Rosebud
- GMC
- Gold Rush
- Unnamed "vintage" style speaker with a new Alnico magnet formula

I also had on hand:
- 10" 40/40 in a raezers edge cabinet
- Nashville alnico

In response to his generosity I'm going to record some demos comparing these speakers. I'll share here for you all.

One thing to note is that he has been exploring new cone designs for his speakers in the past few years. A lot of people associate hemp cones with very dark tones (e.g. Eminence Cannabis Rex) but none of these is nearly as dark as that speaker was. He has even been making cones with cloth surrounds, which increases the cone's response to lower and higher frequencies. I'm loving the cloth surround speakers, especially the Rosebud.


EDIT: I added a video below. Scroll down to see.

[ThatRhythmMan]

I’ve enjoyed the results of some Tone Tubby speakers. Michael Clark has spoken highly of them.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[omphalopsychos]

Here was my impression of the speakers above:


The GMC and Gold Rush are the same speaker, gold rush is just the low profile mag version of it. They are both great sounding speakers but they just didn’t compare to the Rosebud for me. The rosebud has a much larger magnet and this results in a bigger, louder sound with more bass and treble. I’m trying to maximize headroom so rosebud was the one for me. The gmc and gold rush both sounded great too; I might have picked one up if I were trying to tame a loud amp but I’m not. My low wattage amps all have 10” speakers.


The new vintage alnico was SUPER dark. Not my cup of tea.


I also got a 4240, which is essentially the ceramic version of the rosebud. I got this for my carr sportsman as an alternative to the rwb speaker in there. The sportsman is in the shop so I haven’t tried it yet!


I also have the Nashville, 4040 10”, and silver bullet 10” from previous purchases.


The Nashville is awesome! Loud and rich tone. Not as open sounding as the gold rush. The treble is a little soft but it’s not a dark speaker.


The 4040 10” is a bit darker and has massive bass but I don’t think it’s too dark. It’s very efficient, gotta be like 100 db @1w.


The Nashville and 4040 are both in external cabs that I use with a quilter super block when I’m too lazy to carry a tube amp. The soft treble on these speakers perfectly tames the brittle quilter high end.

Just today I took some time to record 4 of the speakers. There are some timestamps in the video so you know what you're listening to. The video first has the whole head on each speaker. At the end, I alternate among the speakers (switching every 8 bars).

0:00 4040
1:06 4240
2:12 Nashville
3:18 Rosebud
4:24 all (switching every 8 bars)

I can go ahead and give some observations about what I hear.
4040 sounds massive for a 10" but it still has that 10" openness compared to the 12s. It's also in a different cabinet (front loaded, birch ply), which gives it a snappiness that I like.
The 4240 sounds the most different of all of them, to my ears. It seems to have much more upper midrange, kinda has a nice vintage (i mean like 40s) character. It also sounds to me like it's more compressed, which was surprising.
The Rosebud and Nashville sounds pretty similar, I'd say the Nashville is a little fuller in the midrange compared to the more open rosebud.

[Gitfiddler]

I have a great sounding old Tone Tubby (Green Series) 40/40 Ceramic in my 1998 green board, (BillM modded, custom cab) Blues Jr. that sounds great. Fat lows, crisp highs and decent mids (for a Blues Jr.).

It excels for sweet jazz tones, dark and thick, but not muddy. When pushed it sounds even better, especially for funk, blues and other styles.
I tried other speakers but only the Tone Tubby did it for this little rig.

[Rob MacKillop]

4240 for me, please. Very nice.

[Rob MacKillop]

PS Love the playing too!