A couple years ago I had an early 90s RI Tweed Bassman with the Eminence Blue Frames. It was a great amp, and one of the first things I noticed was how much snap it had, as well as quintessential Jimi hammer-on papery sound. While I overall really liked the amp, I lucked out in acquiring a handmade Tungsten 5F6A Tweed Deluxe, that was just on another level of touch responsiveness, 3D depth, and the way it breaks up was just perfect. But even with that, I still was missing a bit of that open papery snap from the early 90s bassman with the blue frames, so I decided I was going to eventually try out some different alnico 10” speakers. The amp originally came with 2 Tungsten T10Q’s (Weber manufactured similar to an old Jensen P10Q that Adam from tungsten had), an Eminence 1028K (kapton former), and an Eminence made Alessandro GA10-SC54 (paper former). The latter were supposed to be similar to the early blue frames, all emulating a Jensen P10-R which would’ve been the stock speaker in most tweed bassman’s up until late 59 or 60 when they started putting in P10-Q’s as well. Suffice it to say, I was expecting to like the 1028k but found it a bit dark. The Alessandro had a nice papery sound and snap, but was a bit too honky in the upper mids around 1-2kHZ (at least to my ears). The T10Q was closest to the sound I was going for, but was higher output and something kinda sharp on the top end that I tend to find with all of the Weber made Alnico Jensen style speakers I’ve tried. I finally took the plunge to try out some more Jupiter speakers, being that I’ve been happy with my 12LA in my tweed deluxe. Let me just say, as soon as I plugged in the 10SA-P, it was immediately evident this was the exact speaker I was going for. It has that exact Jimi papery hammer on sound you hear in the long form version of voodoo chile, and just has the absolute sweetest snap and compression, while retaining a very balanced frequency spectrum. I know that like many of you other tone geeks, you’ve watched the millstap bassman videos of him playing Hendrix style riffs, and how close his sound is to perfection. Suffice it to say, the 10SA-P was the missing ingredient for me to achieve that quintessential sound. I’m waxing poetic, and had a similar reaction to the 8SA-P in my SF vibro champ, but suffice to say that Jupiter’s small magnet alnico speakers with a paper voice coil former is truly perfection! Not only am I loading up the tungsten bassman with 4 of the 10SA-P’s, I’m honestly now contemplating swapping my 12LA in my tungsten 5D3 tweed deluxe for a 12LA-P! Def a fan! For American Jensen style speakers, I think Jupiter is where it’s at! Thanks Chris for taking the time explain the differences between these all!!
