GA-45 RVT Speakers?

Kind of a boring first post for my account, but it's an important one for me! I bought a GA-45 RVT Saturn a couple of months ago, and I love it. Pop a Tube Screamer up front to force overdrive at volumes that won't get you stink-eyes from the sound guy, and they're beautiful.

That said.

I started noticing a buzzing noise recently. Then, the last gig, had a sound guy mic up the left side speaker, and come back up stage to tell me "Your speaker is shooting craps, man. I'll swap to the other one, but get it checked out." I pulled it the next day, and sure enough. The cone had a circumferential tear it had developed, probably 2/3rds of the way around at the rim of the cone, and a separate set halfway up the cone that was about 1/2 of the circumference. Bummer.

I did the tissue paper and diluted glue method, but I keep blowing those out and getting more buzz as soon as I drive the amp up past 4 or 5, where I can get the hints of breakup. (And let's not talk about the extra hole I gave it trying to finangle it back into place and poking a hole with one of the screws for mounting :laugh2

Does anybody have any recommendations on repairs that will actually hold on this major of a blow-out of a speaker? Single layer tissue paper and water+elmer's glue isn't doing the trick. Or, MUCH more likely, recommendations on a good speaker to replace these? Trolling Reverb has yielded me zero results on these Gibson "Ultrasonic" speakers for sale, unfortunately.

You could try adding more layers to the repair, building it up by allowing one layer to dry then adding more, a single layer is unlikely to hold. To be honest though with a tear that big you are probably fighting a loosing battle so either a re-cone or a replacement speaker is probably the only realistic option. I believe the Gibson Ultrasonic badged speakers were made by Jensen, not sure which Jensen model they were based on but if you are looking for a replacement with the same "character" then a Jensen style speaker may be the thing to look for.

If the speakers are stock my guess is they are CTS speakers. You see a lot of CTS with mid to later 60's Gibson amps.

Reads like your only viable options are replacing or reconing. It might be cheaper to buy slightly used, as speaker flipping is very common in the guitar world.

sonar said:

If the speakers are stock my guess is they are CTS speakers.

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Yes, I stand corrected, I think you are right. Not sure where I got the idea from that they were Jensen's (probably read it on a forum somewhere!!) but a quick google seems to confirm they are likely to be CTS.

Thanks guys. That helps me broaden the search a lot to where I might find something that's actually correct! The ones with the Gibson sticker on the back seem to rarely pop up for sale.