The Celestion F12-X200 is the world’s first Full Range LIVE Response guitar speaker!
For the thousands of guitar players and musicians around the world who use modelling and profiling amps, an FRFR (full range flat response) loudspeaker has become essential for delivering the output of your emulated set-up in all its glory. It will deliver a wideband output signal so you can be sure that all elements of the tone you have modelled: the guitar signal itself, effects and room characteristics (as well as any other instruments and contributing parts to the arrangement). The FRFR speaker will also ensure that the output is more-or-less neutral, so the transducer won’t add any additional colouration to the signal.
If there is a downside to this kind of device, it’s the fact that the very attributes enabling the speaker to perform in this neutral-sounding way can also render it somewhat lifeless sounding; removing a degree of musicality from the finished performance that make it less appealing both to play and to listen to.
When playing through FRFR speakers, they can often lack the physicality, as well as the tactile and auditory feedback you get from playing through a guitar speaker. The upshot is that while the tone of IRs are nearly identical to playing through a real speaker, playing them through the FRFR speaker feels different; a little colder or more sterile perhaps.
The current crop of FRFR speakers are essentially pro-audio drivers; manufactured to offer as neutral and linear output as possible. In this way, they are very different from guitar speakers, which are purpose-designed to break-up into harmonic resonances. Guitar speakers are designed to produce musical sounding distortion and other desirable tonal colouration by using thinner cones together with other sympathetic materials and design techniques.
Bringing Contrasting Characteristics Together
The Celestion F12-X200 Full Range Live Response speaker brings these two contrasting characteristics together in one loudspeaker. It truly is a full range driver: delivering a frequency response from 60Hz all the way up to 20kHz. The higher frequency part of the signal is reproduced using a Celestion compression driver which has been integrated with a high-quality crossover circuit. This enables the F12-X200 to reproduce the full spectrum of audible frequencies for the most accurate output possible, whatever environment and set-up you might be emulating.
The F12-X200’s response is purposely very neutral, with Celestion technology built-in to ensure there is no unwanted colouration that can overpower the input signal. The X200 has been built with a ceramic magnet, two-inch voice coil and, in common with the construction of a Celestion guitar speaker, a lighter moving mass and thinner, straighter-sided cone. This gives the F12-X200 much more of the feel of a traditional guitar speaker.
The whole response of the speaker is LIVE, delivering all the physical response and tactile feedback you’d to expect from playing a traditional guitarist’s set-up. The Celestion F12-X200 doesn’t just sound like you’re playing a guitar through a guitar speaker – it feels like it too!
Use the Celestion F12-X200 guitar speaker anywhere you are using a modelling amp with Impulse Responses: in a backline cab or a monitor wedge on stage at home or in the studio.
Specifications
Nominal diameter: 12”
Power rating: 200W
Impedance: 8Ω
Sensitivity: 96dB
Chassis type: Pressed steel
Voice coil diameter: 2”
Magnet type: Ceramic
Frequency Range: 60 – 20,000Hz
The Celestion F12-X200 is available NOW!
What’s more, when you buy the F12-X200 guitar speaker, to celebrate its delayed release (and by way of apology for keeping you waiting!), you will receive a FREE copy of our popular ‘Gods of Thunder’ IR Mix! Perfect for using with your new F12-X200 speaker!
To create this iconic IR mix, three spot mics (a Shure SM57, a Royer R-121 and a Sennheiser MD421) were ‘simultaneously’ located in position ‘Dark 2’ of a G12-65 4×12 cab and mixed together to deliver a tone of colossal weight and thrilling detail!
We then took the mix to another level with the addition of a Royer 121 mic on a G12H-75 Creamback 4×12 cab – again in Dark 2 position – adding supplementary low-end and turning the G12-65 darkness into rolling thunder! As if that wasn’t enough, an SM57 placed at the rear of a Creamback H 1×12 cab and a G12-65 4×12 room mic complete the mix by adding ambience, space and the three-dimensional complexity for a tone big enough to fill the halls of Valhalla!
This Gods of Thunder Mix is available to download for FREE from the F12-X200 page here.
Check out our buddy, musician, guitarist, producer and composer-extraordinaire Michael Nielsen’s great demo of the Celestion F12-X200 here: