Who is building Scumback Speakers now?

[fillmore nyc]

fillmore: you're cracking me up here!

+1

LOL Fill...that was great!

Muchas gracias, señores!!

[Mr. Mullard]

Hi Jim...was curious why a G12M-70 cannot be reconed with your G12M replacement parts (to make it into a Greenback etc...) Is magnet diameter different? I just so happen to have a coneless frame lurking about . Thx.
Dave

[Scumback Speakers]

Hi Jim...was curious why a G12M-70 cannot be reconed with your G12M replacement parts (to make it into a Greenback etc...) Is magnet diameter different? I just so happen to have a coneless frame lurking about . Thx.
Dave

Dave,
The G12M-70 uses a 1.5" voice coil, not a 1.75". The 1.5" coil isn't the correct pre rola era type coil, overheats easier, and doesn't have the right tone. So that's why a G12M-70 can't be rebuilt or reconed with my specs.

I don't want you to feel bad about this, though. Ted Weber had never heard or seen a genuine pre rola speaker when I contacted him about manufacturing the Scumbacks for me. In fact, when I approached him about doing the 003 cone G12M tonal recreation in 2004 here was his reply to my email.

_____________________________________________________

From: Ted Weber <ted@webervst.com>
Date: Monday, October 11, 2004 8:31 PM
To: Jim Seavall <scumbag@scumbagamps.com>
Subject: Re: G12M question

>Ted,
>I forgot to mention that I also have some G12M 102 003 coned speakers from
>the early 70's. Of course the 102 003 cone is the Pre Rola type cone, and
>I'd imagine you've already had access to this one and it's been cloned
>already.

I'm really not at all familiar with all the cones and the era they were
used in. I just get old ones and do analysis on the cone and other
materials and then attempt to clone it.

The G12M's that I have seen are the 1-1/2" voice coil rather than the
standard 1-3/4" coil that are used on most Celestions.


Thanks very much,
Ted
_____________________________________________________

The only 1.5" voice coil G12M I know of is the G12M-70, which came out in 1982 (or later). Obviously the G12M-70 is very different from what I offer tonally, and doesn't employ any of the old doping/cone treatments, either.

So if you want your G12M-70 rebuilt, I'm not going to be able to help you with it, since I don't have the parts to fit it. Due to it's design, it can't be converted to the regular 1.75" voice coil model, either. Sorry!

[Mr. Mullard]

Oh well...I've been using it as a door stop...looks like it will continue to serve this purpose until it ends up in a scrap-metal bin LOL

[Scumback Speakers]

Yeah, they didn't have good tone, and that's why they were discontinued.

[Jeff West]

"I'm really not at all familiar with all the cones and the era they were
used in. I just get old ones and do analysis on the cone and other
materials and then attempt to clone it."


Yes, in 1998 Ted said that he'd never measured the specs of an original greenback, but would like to. I offered to loan him one and eventually this was done, and he ran the plots:

http://www.webervst.com/spkrcalc/g_back.htm

He said they were surprised at the high end response, relatively extended and even, given the G12M reputation.

That particular greenback measured is a T1221 from mid-1972 and has 102 3 cone. I sent it because I knew it was working well, sounded typical and great, and to my knowledge had not been played a whole lot.

I've still got it and have played it a lot more over the past decade, and it sounds better than ever. In fact, one thought I've had before would be to see if they could re-run the plots on this one under identical conditions, to see if there is any discernible difference in measured response we might be tempted to attribute to extended "break-in". I don't know however what the "test-retest variance" of the set up is even without changes in the speaker, may be difficult to duplicate conditions exactly.

Jeff

[neikeel]

"I'm really not at all familiar with all the cones and the era they were
used in. I just get old ones and do analysis on the cone and other
materials and then attempt to clone it."


Yes, in 1998 Ted said that he'd never measured the specs of an original greenback, but would like to. I offered to loan him one and eventually this was done, and he ran the plots:

http://www.webervst.com/spkrcalc/g_back.htm


He said they were surprised at the high end response, relatively extended and even, given the G12M reputation.

That particular greenback measured is a T1221 from mid-1972 and has 102 3 cone. I sent it because I knew it was working well, sounded typical and great, and to my knowledge had not been played a whole lot.

I've still got it and have played it a lot more over the past decade, and it sounds better than ever. In fact, one thought I've had before would be to see if they could re-run the plots on this one under identical conditions, to see if there is any discernible difference in measured response we might be tempted to attribute to extended "break-in". I don't know however what the "test-retest variance" of the set up is even without changes in the speaker, may be difficult to duplicate conditions exactly.

Jeff

I like this, some science being added to the vintage speaker voodoo

[Scumback Speakers]

Someone on the TGP forum asked what the difference was between the previous manufacturer's Scumnico cone and the new production cone, so I figured the Metro crew might want to know as well, so I've posted my reply from there over here to make this easy.

TD_Madden: That pic is of a prototype? Having never seen the original Scumnico cone,
what's the difference (if any)?"

Scumback Speakers (reply):

Quite a bit. These are the pics of the Scumnico prototype before it was
rebuilt. This is how I received it out of the box.

Cone:


Doping on cone surround (uneven/lumpy).


Dust cap showing exposed voice coil lead wire (on left) and the uneven doping around the dust cap.


A big glop/run of black super glue down the back of the cone. This came
from the same location as the exposed coil wire. My guess is the hole for the
voice coil wire was enlarged too far and this ran through onto the back of
the cone.


Rotated view of the dust cap showing the uneven doping around the dust cap, and doping slopped onto the dust cap.


And here's what it looks like now.


I hope this answers your question.

[jbzoso2002]

Not long ago the Weber/Scumbak speakers were the greatest thing since sliced
bread. The very best vintage sound one could get thats current mfg.

Now their junk, Im very confused.

Jimmy

[somethin'else]

I don't think they're "junk", but I've seen some junky dope in them way before Jim's post here with pics.
Still they sounded funking fantabulous! Which the new ones should as well.
Hell, I've thought about pickin' up a quad of Chinese GBs and sending 'em to Jim for recones!

Those new dope pics are tres swanky, Jim.

[Scumback Speakers]

Not long ago the Weber/Scumbak speakers were the greatest thing since sliced
bread. The very best vintage sound one could get thats current mfg.

Now their junk, Im very confused.

Jimmy

Jimmy, well the problems with QC were always there, I just didn't let clients know how many I had to fix the doping on, or send back to be rebuilt (DOA out of the box with voice coil rub/damage/etc). Weber has sent me out doping to fix the speakers on four occasions since 2005. There were usually three bottles of dope per box, which was good for a bunch of speakers to touch up/fix.

Around 18 months ago my orders really increased a lot, and Weber had problems keeping up. Then the QC started to go downhill badly, too. I once received 14 Scumnico 16 ohms that were actually 8 ohm versions. That cost a lot of shipping money to fix (four were in Europe). Since then I've had to do way more QC on my part than I felt was right, but I did it.

Sadly, I found it was needed, and returns to Weber increased due to it. Several speakers failed FBI, even though I used their break in instructions, which didn't happen for the first three years I did it. In one instance I had four 30w speakers in the FBI box, and one of them just plain old caught on fire (yes I have pics), but the other three were fine. Weber blamed me for that, but couldn't explain the other three being fine.

Then there were accusations that my clients did this and they didn't know what they were doing, using Ted's instructions. Then they told me I shouldn't do the FBI thing anymore, even though it had been fine for the previous 3 years, using the same instructions.

There's way more to it than this, though, these are just small items on my gripe list. As I've said before, when I can post everything that happened with the proof to back it up, you'll all be pretty disgusted...like I am. In any business deal/agreement/proprietary speaker relationship there are the occasional problems that need to be addressed. It seems I was the only one who wanted them ironed out.

Frankly, I wish I didn't know now, what I didn't know then, I would have hung onto Weber as a manufacturer. But in light of recent developments, I now understand they were not a viable option going forward.

[Scumback Speakers]

I don't think they're "junk", but I've seen some junky dope in them way before Jim's post here with pics.
Still they sounded funking fantabulous! Which the new ones should as well.
Hell, I've thought about pickin' up a quad of Chinese GBs and sending 'em to Jim for recones!

Those new dope pics are tres swanky, Jim.

T'hanks very much. This is the type of doping I kept asking for from Weber and they said they couldn't supply/do it. After doing some research it turns out this doping is readily available (I have a bunch of it coming in soon), and is the era correct doping for the old pre rola Celestions.

So I checked around and found out that several reconers have it, including OCSR (Orange County Speaker Repair) and that it's easy to get. Why Weber used that goopy/lumpy/sticky doping is beyond me. And I've had to redope a number of speakers they sent out to get them right in the past so they'd pass my QC specs.

Oh well, recones are going well. Another five came in today, that makes about 15 that have showed up in the last four days. Hell, at this rate I'll be doing 50-60 recones per month besides production speakers.

So if you've got some old G12H/G12M frames to be rebuilt, you can get the Scumback tone for less $$.

[frenchie]

maybe weber even screwed up voluntarily the production cuz they wanted to have "their" design back and make their own bucks on them , disagreements created out of thin air ( like " oh my what a pressure you're putting on my tiny tiny working force with all your orders and requirements , don't you have empathy at times ? " with depressive beaten dog eyes ) are convenient when you don't wanna appear like a buck hungry shark , ya know more like the good ol' family buisness with the santa claus looking grey bearded "honest citizen" behind the counter you could entrust any amount of money eyes closed ..... this wouldn't surprise me at all heh after all it's what they did precisely no ?

[Scumback Speakers]

frenchie, as much as I'd like to divulge all that I know, cooler heads than mine tell me I have to wait, so I can't answer your question...yet.

[Mars Hall]

Jim, I take it you're confident that you'll be able to keep up with demand, with a 2 man crew and yourself. Are you gonna be active in building or more like you were doing before, QC and the whole marketing end?