Now kicking off its second century of excellence, Celestion has made countless breakthroughs in speaker technology and defined the modern guitar speaker, while setting benchmarks in the worlds of hi-fi and sound reinforcement transducers.
Celestion’s story begins in 1924, when gramophone maker Cyril French and his three brothers founded the Electrical Manufacturing and Plating Company just outside London. Eric Mackintosh helped French improve his invention for one of the earliest cone loudspeakers. The pair applied for a patent in 1924 for their revolutionary bamboo-reinforced, moving-armature “free-vibrating edge” speaker, which gave birth to a product named The Celestion.
In the mid-1920s, wireless radio took off with consumers. The Celestion loudspeaker was an ornate cabinet that doubled as furniture, and business boomed, with Celestion Ltd. producing several models of loudspeaker and radiogram cabinets.
The 1930s brought opportunity and challenges. The Great Depression rippled across the globe, and French and Mackintosh both left Celestion. But Celestion innovations continued with the development of PPM permanent-magnet moving-coil speaker and a “recording gramophone,” which included a blank disk and cutting needles.
After years of competing, Celestion was purchased by the British Rola Company, and during World War II, Celestion and British Rola built utility speakers. Celestion also built the Proximity Fuse — a miniature radar transmitter / receiver capable of detonating an anti-aircraft shell when within lethal distance of its target.
In the post-war period, Celestion continued producing speakers for hi-fi, radio, TV and cinema systems, along with acoustic instruments for the British military under the name Rola Celestion. Purchased by P.A. speaker company Truvox in 1949, Rola Celestion focused on P.A. products while serving the radio and new television market.
During the 1950’s, with the rise in stereo LP records and broadcast TV, half the radios in the U.K. were equipped with Rola Celestion branded speakers. Celestion’s 400 employees were producing 30,000 speakers per week, along with a dynamic microphone and holiday toy ducks.
Rock ‘n’ Roll Changes Everything
Responding to the new demand for amplified guitar music, the iconic Vox AC30 required rugged, reliable loudspeakers. In 1959, Celestion chief engineer Les Ward created the T530, a version of the G12 (first developed by Rola in the 1930s) that was tweaked for guitar amps and toughened to handle modern playing techniques.
In Vox amps, the speaker (later known as the Alnico Blue), offered a warm, distinctive tone. In 1962, newly formed Marshall Amplification adopted the silver version of the rock-ready G12 for its first JTM45 amplifiers. The creamy tone of the Celestion speaker and these iconic amps helped define the sound of the 1960s British Beat Invasion.
In 1964, Celestion began making more aggressive ceramic-magnet speakers, which were perfect for the popular edgy, overdriven guitar sound. A year later, Jim Marshall adopted Celestion’s T1221 ceramic speakers (commonly known as “Greenbacks” due to their green magnet cover), deploying them in the soon-to-be-iconic 4×12 cabinets.
Rock grew louder; audiences grew larger; amplifiers became more powerful. Celestion produced the G12 in a range of magnet sizes to meet the demands of stadium and festival stages. New powerhouse amps with Celestion speakers shaped the sounds of the most iconic artists of the time, including Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton.
The Truvox brand took a back seat as the company continued to grow, marketing industrial and public address products under the Celestion P.A. sub-brand. These included re-entrant horn speakers, high-efficiency MF / HF pressure drive units (precursors to today’s compression drivers) and column loudspeakers.
Meanwhile, demand for hi-fi systems surged, and Celestion launched the Ditton speaker family. The Ditton 10, with its innovative HF1300 tweeter, was followed by the Ditton 15, which became the best-selling bookshelf speaker of its time. In 1970, parent company Truvox Engineering created Celestion Industries and injected more capital into the business.
Celestion made inroads into sound reinforcement initially through its relationship with Watkins Electric Music (WEM) during the 1960s. WEM was famous for its “Wall of Sound” P.A., which provided 1,000 watts of power for the 1967 Windsor Jazz & Blues Festival. That was later upgraded to 2,500 watts for The Who at the 1969 Isle of Wight Festival. A year after that, the Isle of Wight system featured a Celestion speaker in WEM’s parabolic dish system, designed to send sound over long distances.
With the 1970s, Celestion’s heavy-duty G12M and G12H speakers became synonymous for rock ‘n’ roll’s famed “British tone,” as guitar legends including Brian May (Queen), Joe Perry and Brad Whitford (Aerosmith), Tony Iommi (Black Sabbath), Angus and Malcolm Young (AC/DC) and Eddie Van Halen made Celestion part of their sound.
Going Global
Celestion expanded in the 1970s, forming subsidiaries in France, Germany and the USA. Reflecting its global outlook, the company changed its name to Celestion International in 1979.
By the 1980s, Celestion’s investments in cutting-edge R&D technologies like laser doppler interferometry led to significant breakthroughs in loudspeaker design, as the company emerged as a leader in hi-fi, music and sound reinforcement speakers. The SL6 bookshelf speakers with their unique copper dome tweeters launched an extended family of audiophile speakers. The company also created a mass-market hi-fi brand with its Celestion 3 in 1989.
Introduced for a new breed of hard rock player, 1986’s much-loved Vintage 30 speaker handled higher power and overdrive, becoming a fave of artists and amp manufacturers. It’s still an industry standard to this day, captured on thousands of recordings by guitar legends like Slash, Steve Stevens, Steve Vai and Peter Frampton, and by the turn of the 21st century, it also become the go-to sound for heavy metal.
As disco peaked in the 1980s, demand rose for scalable P.A. systems, and in 1987 Celestion debuted the SR series, its first serious inroad into portable sound-reinforcement systems.
In 1992, Celestion International evolved into GP Acoustics, wholly owned by Hong Kong’s Gold Peak. An infusion of capital then led to significant innovations in compression drivers and pioneering work with neodymium magnet technologies. The company tilted more toward transducers and away from finished cabinet systems. Initially the focus was guitar speakers for OEM customer and retailers, moving high-volume manufacturing to Asia while building marquee products in England. More emphasis was placed on sound-reinforcement transducers, with the development of drivers for both OEM and retail customers.
Back to the Future
By 2006, under the leadership of Nigel Wood, Celestion focused on designing and manufacturing a wider range of sound reinforcement transducers alongside the successful guitar and bass speakers.
Throughout the 2000s, the company collaborated with leading sound-reinforcement companies, developing innovative pro audio transducers for a broad range of applications. Today, more than two-thirds of the company’s business is in this market segment: manufacturing LF, HF and full-range PA products. Celestion is perhaps the largest branded manufacturer of compression drivers and a leading designer of coaxial speakers, making the company a serious force in pro audio.
Reacting to the MI marketplace, Celestion dove deep into digital technologies. Digital modelers evolved from simple combo amps with built-in EQ and effects into sophisticated, standalone computing devices featuring sophisticated DSP, enabled by the impulse response (IR), a digitized “snapshot” of an acoustic space or a piece of equipment’s acoustic behavior.
In 2017, Celestion launched CelestionPlus.com, offering Celestion guitar speaker and bass speaker tones as downloadable impulse responses, and in 2020 the company introduced the SpeakerMix Pro plug-in, representing a major advancement in speaker tone emulation.
While production of iconic speakers like the Alnico Blue, Greenback and Vintage 30 have defined its heritage, Celestion further expands into the P.A. market, focusing on new driver innovations. A recent breakthrough is the prestige Ten2 (Ten Squared, or TSQ) range of precision LF drivers speakers, designed and built in the UK on Celestion’s new robotically assisted production line.
Much has changed at Celestion over the past 100 years. Ownership and leadership have transitioned; markets have shifted, yet the company’s essence remains the same as it was when Eric Mackintosh and Cyril French pioneered one of the world’s first cone loudspeakers. Through its pursuit of sonic perfection and innovation, Celestion has left an indelible imprint on the landscape of sound technology with a legacy that resonates across generations of musicians and industry pros alike. Congrats!
More info at www.celestion.com
