L’histoire des G12-65 Heritage et de l’Eminence Tonker par l’ancien technicien de Robben (Daved), qu’il avait racontée sur le défunt forum consacré à Robben.
Citation:
Mikka,
A brief Tonker/Celstion G12 history:
I started with Robben in October of 1998. At that time he had just finished the recording of "Supernatural" but had not yet released it, so I was not involved in any way with it's creation.
However, what I CAN say now, as I think back, is that when I hired on, Robben's standard rig was the Dumble O/D Special w/ Dumble 2-12 cab, loaded with reconed Celestion G12-65's... so this is what I would imagine was one of his primary studio rigs for the "Supernatural" recording.
(Though, having worked many recording sessions with him since, for his personal studio albums I know he does also enjoy mixing in a variety of other amps if he has them readily at hand and feels they will provide a special sound or character that he has playing around in his head.)
In those days, although actual production of the speakers themselves had already been discontinued by Celestion, one could still find new speakers here and there, if you knew where to look, and we often reconed his worn out Celestion's as there were some very good companies at hand for that kind of thing and correct & proper rebuild kits were still available.
But over the next few years the search started to get a bit frantic when the rebuilds were coming back "not quite right" as original kits were getting scarce and secondary or alternate or modified kits were starting to be installed. Now they may have worked sufficiently enough for many players, but not for Robben, as he was starting to NOT hear whatever that "thing he hears" was, that he used to hear. icon_eek.gif
The correct Celestion G12-65's that Robben loved were rapidly entering extinction.
Then, at one point, the Celestion people contacted me for information as they were hoping to reissue the 65's that Robben had always loved and market them as exactly that.
In their research they found that the speakers had drifted rapidly thru a variety of minor modifications in the final days of it's run, (duh, I could have told them that..,. LOL) and they were looking for the details to get the RF model correct.
Soon they sent us a test pair of their newly launched line to evaluate, but after literally playing 3 or 4 chords Robben immediately stopped and said they were totally unusable for him. When he explained to me that there was a whole layer of low end that was missing and played again, I instantly heard what he meant.
Celestion quickly discontinued the line and slipped back into their laboratory.
Then, the Eminence speaker folks contacted me. I clearly remember... take a deep breath, here we goooo.... we were at a hotel in Japan with a bunch of other artists and bands that were performing over this festival weekend, and we were all sorta stuck in the hotel (hangin' out in the lobby and restaurant) 'cause the weather had gone to monsoon, and Dal (Robben's manager) gave me an envelope he had received with a letter from Eminence in which the rep (who turned out to be the head of the design and development department) introduced himself, mentioned that the Eminence factory had a bunch of Robben fans working there and that the company would love the oportunity to try to develop a "Robben Ford" model speaker, if we were interested, and included some brocheres and cataloges.
This peaked my interest and I got in touch with them.
I gave them samples of some of our retired "good" speakers for reference and we started a 2 -3 year process of trying to come up with the perfect RF model speaker, and they came damn close... seriously.
But Robben by this time was starting to get frustrated with and burnt out on the whole project. And at about this same time, Eminence was completly reworking their catalogue of products into their 'USA / UK lines' sales campaign, out of which emerged the "Tonker" which, I believe, was the speaker that accounted for much of the characteristics and tones that Eminence had dealt with during the 'perfect RF speaker' project.
And a damn fine speaker "The Tonker" turned out to be.
They were not 'perfect' to Robben's ears, but they WERE close enough to be usable and to give Robben a certain amount of comfort, pleasure, and satisfaction. He used them heavily, sometimes in combination with other speakers, over the next couple of years.
Then one day, in a phone conversation with Alfonso Hermida at Hermida Audio, Alf told me that the Celestion folk had been in touch with him trying to find a way to contact me and he wondered if I minded his passing on my phone number.
Long story shortened a bit...
Celestion had reworked their company and retooled their production and now felt they had finally nailed the RFG12-65. They hoped that Robben would be interested in trying and evaluating them again.
We set up a test day at Robben's storage in North Hollywood and I invited the SoCal Celestion rep to join us for the A/B-ing.
Robben loved them instantly, agreed to an endorsement right there and has been using them whenever possible since.
Robben also likes the Tonkers and considers them to be a fine speaker. We still have some in Robben's storage, and use them on occasion... sometimes on the road and often in the studio, in the same way he uses amps other than his Dumble... when he is looking for that "certain thing" he's hearing for special purposes and occasions.
