American Welterweight Match: Vintage Jensen C12Q vs, WGS G12C !

Last year I sold my early 1965 (pre CBS) Deluxe Reverb.  My amp had a factory Jensen C12Q in it, and it totally kicked butt on the vintage DR’s with the factory Oxfords.  On several occasions I’ve wished I had kept that amp long enough to compare it’s Jensen to the WGS G12C.  I actually have both a vintage P12Q (Alnico) and C12Q, but both are blown, and alas, their inch and a quarter voice coils have rendered them tough to recone.  That’s a problem with the old Jensen’s, they were never very high-wattage speakers to begin with, and after 30-50 years of service, many have thrown up the white flag and surrendered.  But last week a buddy brought me a pair of fully functioning 1965 Jensen C12Q’s.  At last the moment had come to finally do the direct A/B comparison between my old flame and the new girl.  So, for the results of the Jensen C12Q vs. WGS G12C, READ ON!

Okay, so this time I did the playing and my buddy Brad Sample shot the video.  We were using my Burriss Royal Bluesman set just on the crusp of break-up, with the tone straight-up to noon.  Both speakers were in Burriss DC cabs running in full open-back mode.  I apologize that we did not take the time to set up proper recording mics.  The video at the end of this blog simply employs the mics in my little guerrilla-recording flip-cam.  Okay, so with those details out of the way, here is my summery of the differences:

Volume:The G12C was quite a bit louder than the Jensen C12Q (the camera's built-in auto-gain-limiting makes this impossible to hear on the video).  We didn’t take measurements, but it felt about 5-6 dB hotter overall.

Tone: The G12C had a lot more beef in the bottom, and not as much upper-mid spike.  Both had an ample amount of high-end sparkle, but the Jensen’s bite and sparkle were not balanced with any appreciable low end, as was the case with the WGS G12C.

Touch-sensitivity: Both really excelled here; with 45 years under her belt, the old Jensen may have just won this one, but the WGS G12 only has a few playing hours on it, so it is probably still just a tad stiffer then it will be in another dozen or so playing hours ... let alone 45 years!

Over-all feel and playability:  Honestly, we haven’t found a speaker yet that actually sounds downright BAD when mated with the Royal Blue, and this test was no exception.  The Jensen sounded a bit overly-bright, but still very respectable and magical in a vintage way.  However, the G12 was clearly a better sounding speaker overall, much more full and balanced sounding, and much more gigable in terms of volume and clean headroom.   Again, I apologize for the poor audio on the demo video, maybe next time I’ll just invite ya all over to the house when we do this.  Sound good?

At any rate, here’s ya a good-old country boy video.  See ya next week.

emailvaughn     About Vaughn Skow