Celestion G12 Rockdriver Vintage

Hi folks,

I'm new to the forum, but not to H&K! I've been using them for a while, first solid state (Still have on my parents an Edition Blue 60), and now an "oldie but goldie" Tube 20 that's still rocking on.

It has a Celestion G12 Rockdriver Vintage, and I'm curious about it, since these must be an special make for H&K, but no much more info on them. Does any have any history on those speakers?

I know that several speakers made for H&K were somewhat branded as Rockdriver.. but this was made in Ispwich Suffolk, England.. so I was curious to have any info.. are they any good? or just a

version of some generic Celestion? I do not know the wattage... only that's 8 Ohms..

Hi Road_King. From your setup of our English address I would guess you are from across the pond? The speaker you have is from Ipswich (the town) in Suffolk (the county). And guess what, that is where the mighty Celestion is based. Your description of them as G12s suggests they are indeed Celestions. However I have come across a post which also says that H&K use Eminence Rockdriver V12s. Eminence out of H&K Are yours clearly labelled "Celestion" or "G12" or could they be those Eminences?

Hi! Yeah, I'm from accross the pond. They are clearly Celestions, labeled G12.

It looks like these are now legacy speakers no longer sold, (as you already knew). H&K does have a background of having speakers specially voiced for them by Celestion. I know they use revoiced Vintage V30s in their 212 cabinets. I would guess these would be the same. They could be nice sounding but it would take stuffing them into a cabinet and trying them out to be able to find out. They don't have massive magnets, which affects efficiency and SPL. However, in tone terms it isn't necessarily a bad thing no matter what people think.

Without attracting someone who is more expert than I am on the historical side of things I can't help any further I'm afraid. Like you I'm sure I found nothing really interesting online. There were only a couple of old ebay adverts and the inevitable Reverb.com stuff which was little help at all.

Anyone else know anything useful about Road_King's drivers?

Thanks for the response!

Basically I found almost nothing online. Some people arguing more or less about if these were the real deal (V30's) or not.. I really do not care too much about if they are re-branded V30's or not..

To my ears, they sound nice for rock, early 80's heavy type music. But wanted to know some history, because, you know, I'm curious..

Haha! Well as we know, "curiosity killed the cat". The bit that no one ever thinks of is "satisfaction brought it back!" Let's see if someone can come up with any other info.

On a side note, I've just retubed the amp. Weird noises and behavior (it had developed) went away.

Probably I'll change the speaker in the near future too. I want to try something in the greenback realm..

Have you tried contacting Celestion Support and asking them about your driver?  They will be able to tell you whether they have anything in common with the modern V30.  If you give them a bit of detail they may also be able to point you at one of their current range which may be more what you are looking for.

Hi Bordonbert, nice reading you
I didn't contact Celestion, and that's a thing I'm going to do, just for informational purpose.
I did contact H&K and they were so kind with me, but they didn't have too much information either.
On the Internet, I saw that this speaker also came with other amps from the brand on that era. But it also seems that this amp also came with a different speaker during that time (the rock driver junior). At least my hunch is that the amp was paired with a speaker on the v30, v-type camp.
I can live with that, but some people say that this amps love greenbacks so probably I'll get one at some point or a g12h30 if I'm able to get them cheap. I've no rush.
I feel that there's plenty of life still to this amp, maybe a recap will be needed due to this age...
I'm also an engineer and loved to read your threads regarding the famous input buffer and all electronics related ones. I think that Marshall also did something similar with the jcm900 series of amps, but I might be wrong..
One thing that I do not like too much about the amp is that when I push the gain up it gets a lot of bass like a classic amp, but that's not to good if you look for a modern sound. So I'm using pedals for that..
Kind regards!