Ceramic Or Alnico Guitar Speakers

Alnico speakers compress at high volumes.

Ceramic or alnico guitar speakers.

An alloy comprising aluminum nickel and cobalt alnico demagnetizes relatively easily which gives a smooth response with compression at higher average volumes. Early examples employed big alnico magnets although ev s most famous guitar driver the evm 12l was a ceramic magnet speaker that came to fame in many mesa boogies and other big rock amps of the 80s. We are proud to offer the world s best hand built speakers for guitar amplifiers built one at a time for the very best quality so you can focus on what. If you are comparing speakers that have the same magnetic flux but generated from different magnet compositions you probably won t notice a difference in tonality.

Ceramics do not alnico speaker breakup quicker that ceramic i e. Alnico is commonly thought to produce the most vintage tone and has a reputation for sounding compressed. Ceramic speaker have more headroom ceramic speakers tend to have smoother breakup alnico speaker sound warmer and slightly darker. Alnico is nice and warm and great for blues.

Alnico vs ceramic magnets. The first crop of speakers in the early 1950s used alnico magnets which is why some people say they sound more vintage than speakers built with ceramic magnets. Ceramic is the cheapest and most common material. Alnico seems to be the popular favorite but on the other hand there is no shortage of popular recordings that feature ceramic pickups.

To crown a winner in our alnico vs ceramic magnets shootout we would need a way to accurately compare the two which is not an easy task. Two other makers of advanced modern styled american speakers electro voice and altec started popping up in guitar amps in the 1960s.