Celestion: A Century of Acoustic Innovation
by Sarah Jones
6th May 2024
Sponsored by Celestion
The Celestion team celebrated the company’s centennial at NAMM.
Celestion has been shaping the sound of music for a hundred years. From its legendary guitar speakers that laid the bedrock for the sound of British rock and roll alongside artists like The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix to its pioneering advancements in PA transducers, the company has repeatedly raised the bar for hi-fi, sound reinforcement, and instrument amplification. Today, many iconic amplifier and PA system manufacturers feature Celestion speakers at their core, and generations of players are loyal fans of the company’s speakers, which strike the perfect balance between awesome power and rich tone.
The roots of audio innovation
In 1924, gramophone maker Cyril French, together with his three brothers, founded the Electrical Manufacturing and Plating Company in Hampton Wick on London’s outskirts.
Inventor Eric Mackintosh approached French for help improving his groundbreaking design 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 they dubbed the ethereal Celestion. The next year French and Mackintosh earned a second patent for an improved “clamped-edge” design, and ultimately developed a full range of even better-performing radiogram loudspeakers.
Meanwhile, broadcasting rolled into homes in a welcome wave. The modern wireless—along with the BBC—would soon become a household fixture. The Celestion loudspeaker, an ornate cabinet that doubled as furniture, sold for six pounds ten shillings and came in a choice of wood finishes. Marketed as “The Loud Speaker of Distinction,” it met the exploding demand, and business boomed.
Celestion saw considerable global expansion, and in 1928 the newly incorporated Celestion Ltd. debuted with the motto “The Very Soul of Music.” Now producing several loudspeaker and radiogram cabinet models, Celestion moved to expanded facilities in Kingston-upon-Thames.
The 1930s brought both opportunity and challenges. The Great Depression rippled across the globe, and British industry suffered, hitting Celestion hard. French and Mackintosh left Celestion in the early 1930s. Meanwhile, the market for speakers shifted from large standalone units to small speakers fitted inside radios.
By the early 1930s, the company presented its first permanent-magnet moving-coil speaker, the PPM. Other achievements that decade included a recording gramophone, which came complete with a blank disk and cutting needles. During this time, the British Rola Company—the UK offshoot of the Rola Company of Cleveland, Ohio—was producing loudspeaker products in London. Celestion and Rola competed for both home and export business throughout the 1930s.
World War II restricted both Celestion and British Rola to manufacturing one loudspeaker, the utility “W” type. Celestion was also chosen by the Government Research Establishment (GRE) to produce its Proximity Fuse. Essentially a miniature radar transmitter and receiver operated by a chemical battery, the fuse was capable of detonating an anti-aircraft shell within lethal distance of its target.
After the war, Celestion continued producing speakers for hi-fi, radio, and TV systems, in addition to cinema systems and acoustic instruments for the British military. In 1946, Celestion was purchased by British Rola, and the merged companies were known as Rola Celestion. Production then moved to the Ferry Works factory In Thames Ditton. In 1949, Rola Celestion was bought by Truvox; Rola Celestion thus expanded its Public Address (PA) product portfolio, while continuing to serve the radio and emerging TV market.
The 1950s ushered in audio breakthroughs, including the stereophonic long-playing record and broadcast television. Half of the UK’s radios had a Rola Celestion-branded speaker inside; Celestion now had 400 employees and was producing 30,000 speakers a week. The company experimented with alternative product lines, including a moving-coil microphone and even a holiday production run of toy ducks.
Guitars, G12s, and Greenbacks
Celestion’s most significant innovation came in response to a new demand for amplified guitar music. The iconic Vox AC30, designed to meet the growing need for louder amplifiers, required rugged, reliable loudspeakers. The Celestion G12 speaker, with its alnico magnet, had been in production since it was developed by Rola in the 1930s. Its newest incarnation, the T530, had been modified for use in guitar amps, and toughened to withstand the demands of modern instruments and playing techniques. T530 would come to be known as the Alnico Blue for the distinctive hue of its finish. When combined with Vox’s high-volume tube amps, the speaker offered a uniquely warm and distinctive tone.
By 1962, the newly formed Marshall Amplification had adopted the silver version of the toughened G12 guitar speaker, using it with its very first JTM45 amplifiers. It was the creamy tone produced by the combination of the Celestion speaker and these iconic amplifiers that helped define the British Beat Invasion of the 1960s.
In late 1964, Celestion began to manufacture ceramic-magnet speakers. Offering a more aggressive tone than their alnico counterparts, they achieved the edgy, overdriven guitar sound that emerging rock titans demanded. The following year, Jim Marshall adopted Celestion ceramic speakers, using the T1221, more commonly known as “Greenback” due to its green magnet cover, deploying them in the newly introduced and soon-to-be-iconic 4x12 cabinets.
“Celestion was there at the birth of rock and roll,” says Celestion’s Managing Director, Nigel Wood. “If you look at the classic albums of the Sixties, maybe 90% of them used Celestion speakers somewhere in the mix. Even today, when you listen to the radio the proportion is probably the same: 90% of the guitar sounds are through a Celestion speaker, whether analog or digital. It’s quite a legacy.”
As rock grew louder and audiences grew larger, amplifiers had to become more powerful. Celestion responded with the G12 speaker in a range of magnet sizes to meet the demands of stadium and festival stages. New powerhouse amplifiers, outfitted with Celestion speakers, shaped the sounds of the most iconic artists of the time, including Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton.
Celestion truly hit its stride in the 1960s. The Truvox brand took a back seat as the company marketed a portfolio of industrial and public address products under the Celestion PA sub-brand. Products included re-entrant horn loudspeakers, high-efficiency mid/high-frequency pressure drive units (precursors to modern-day compression horn drivers), and column loudspeaker systems.
Demand for hi-fi systems surged. Celestion responded by launching the Ditton speaker family: first the Ditton 10, with its innovative HF1300 tweeter, followed by the Ditton 15. Featuring one of the earliest commercial examples of an Auxiliary Bass Radiator (ABR), the Ditton 15 became the best-selling bookshelf speaker of its time.
In 1968 production began at a newly acquired factory on Foxhall Road, Ipswich, and in 1970, parent company Truvox Engineering completed a reverse takeover of the publicly listed Weingarten Brothers clothing company to create Celestion Industries as a way of injecting more capital into the business. The company’s brief foray in the garment industry produced some fringe benefits, including Friday factory sales that offered employees discounted ladies’ clothing.
Live sound, PAs, and “The Sound of Rock and Roll”
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” PA, which offered 1,000 watts of power for the 1967 Windsor Jazz & Blues Festival, and 2,500 watts for The Who at the 1969 Isle of Wight Festival.(Warning signs demanded concertgoers stay at least 15 feet away from the system!) A year later the Isle of Wight sound system featured a Celestion speaker in WEM’s groundbreaking parabolic dish system, which could send audio signals over remarkable distances.
In the 1970s, developments in instrument amplification and a nascent sound reinforcement industry led Celestion to establish the Power Range, with various permutations of the G12 at the forefront, as the go-to “heavy duty cone loudspeaker” for high-power applications, be that musical instrument or sound reinforcement.
Thanks to their adoption by most British amp makers—and Celestion’s enduring relationship with Marshall—G12M and G12H speakers became synonymous with the sound of rock and roll for anyone seeking the “British tone.” Legions of legendary players made Celestion part of their sound, including Brian May of Queen, Joe Perry and Brad Whitford of Aerosmith, Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath, Angus Young and Malcolm Young of AC/DC, and Edward Van Halen.
In his foreword to A Century of Sound: The Story of Celestion, May remarks on the integral role of Celestion in the history of rock and roll: “Those Celestion Blues were a vital part of the sound…listen to the recordings of the Beatles, The Stones, Clapton, Hendrix, Satriani, Steve Vai…even that old ‘Queen’ group, and what you are listening to is the sound of one of those trusty Celestion G12s vibrating faithfully in tune with the string which vibrated under the guitarist’s finger at that moment when a piece of history was made.”
Global expansion continues
Celestion formed subsidiaries in France, West Germany, and the United States. As production demands grew, the company expanded into a second assembly plant in Ipswich, dedicated to hi-fi. When manufacture of the iconic Ditton 44 and 66s was moved from Thames Ditton, the facility was refurbished in 1976, expanding production capability. That October it was officially re-opened by Her Royal Highness, Princess Margaret. The company changed its name to Celestion International in 1979.
In the 1980s, Celestion’s investments in cutting-edge R&D technologies, like laser doppler interferometry, led to significant breakthroughs in loudspeaker design. Celestion was now a global leader in hi-fi, music-making, and sound reinforcement speakers.
The groundbreaking SL6, with its unique copper dome tweeter, launched in the early 1980s as the first of an extended family of audiophile speakers introduced that decade. Lauded for their sound quality; the series ensured the company remained at the forefront of home audio innovation. The company set a new standard for budget hi-fi loudspeakers with the launch of the Celestion 3 in 1989.
Introduced in 1986 to meet the demands of a new breed of hard rock player, the much-loved Vintage 30 speaker, capable of handling higher power and delivering overdrive, quickly became a favorite of artists and amp and cabinet manufacturers alike, and remains an industry standard today. The Vintage 30 is captured on thousands of recordings by guitar legends like Slash, Steve Stevens, Steve Vai, and Peter Frampton. By the turn of the 21st century it had also become the go-to sound for heavy metal.
“Celestion probably has the world's biggest musician endorsee program, in part because we're at the heart of so many other brands’ products,” says Wood. “With all of our guitar amp customers, all their players are naturally Celestion players, too. From that often comes a genuine endorsement and we’re thankful for that.”
As disco peaked in the 1980s, nightclubs sprouted up all over the landscape; with that came a new demand for scalable PA systems. In 1987 Celestion debuted the SR series, the company’s first serious inroads into portable sound-reinforcement systems. With systems ranging in size from the stylish KR Series to the rugged Road series and powerful CXi Series, Celestion catered to every sound reinforcement niche in the market.
In 1992 Celestion International, along with another British loudspeaker company, KEF, united under the banner of Kinergetics Holdings, Ltd. whose major shareholder was Hong Kong’s Gold Peak. Ultimately the company evolved into GP Acoustics, with the companies both wholly owned by Gold Peak.
Celestion continued to make inroads in pro audio, with thanks to Gold Peak, which invested heavily in R&D and other resources throughout the 1990s and 2000s. This resulted in innovations in compression drivers and pioneering work with neodymium magnet technologies, both fueling Celestion’s growth in the pro audio market.
A shift in strategy
Eventually, Celestion pivoted away from finished cabinet systems, narrowing its focus on transducers. At first centering on guitar speakers for both OEM customer and retailers, Celestion moved high-volume manufacturing to Asia while preserving “designed in the UK” approach, building marquee products in England. The company emphasized sound-reinforcement transducers, developing low-frequency woofers and high-frequency compression drivers for both OEM customers and the retail market.
The company also moved to a brand-new factory on the outskirts of Ipswich, replacing the tired, old industrial environment of Foxhall Road with a smaller facility built to better accommodate research and development.
As the MI side of the business grew, the 2000s saw the launch of Celestion’s Partners in Tone guitar speaker endorsement campaign; today the program boasts a lineup of more than 200 artists and producers, including legends Eric Clapton, Brian May, Robben Ford, Tony Iommi, and Steve Vai.
Celestion continued to expand its portfolio of American guitar and PA clients throughout the 2000s. It was a boom era for guitar gear; during this time Celestion debuted the Heritage Series, which paid homage to the 1960s sound. This was quickly followed by the Gold, a high-powered alnico speaker; the G12 EVH signature speaker for Edward van Halen; and later, the Creamback range of higher-powered range of vintage-sounding guitar speakers.
“A modern transformation”
Under the leadership of Nigel Wood, by 2006 Celestion finally exited its PA systems and consumer hi-fi businesses. This was, according to Wood, the “start of the modern transformation of the company.” Celestion centered instead on the design and manufacture of a more comprehensive range of sound-reinforcement transducers alongside the established and successful guitar and bass speakers. This streamlined focus on transducers brought major advances in compression driver technology, including the introduction of the patented deep-drawn diaphragm and maximum modal-suppression phase plug for ultra-low distortion HF performance.
In 2016 Celestion debuted the Axi2050 “axiperiodic” compression driver, a revolutionary high-power, high-output transducer capable of reproducing an ultra-wide frequency range of 300 Hz to 20 kHz without the need for a mid-band crossover.
Throughout the 2000s, Celestion collaborated with leading sound-reinforcement companies, developing cutting-edge, often bespoke pro audio transducers for a broad range of applications. Today, more than two-thirds of the company’s business is in manufacturing of low-frequency, high-frequency, and full-range PA products. Today, Celestion is perhaps the largest branded manufacturer of compression drivers and one of the leading designers of coaxial speakers.
Reacting to the needs of the musical instruments (MI) marketplace, the 2010s saw Celestion diving 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, largely enabled by the impulse response, 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, which represented a major leap forward in guitar speaker tone emulation when used together with a new generation of impulse responses, Dynamic Speaker Responses, developed in-house.
The company’s newest UK-built guitar speaker, produced for the company’s 100th anniversary, is a tribute to the silver alnico speakers of the late ’50s and early ’60s. Named the 100, it’s voiced as close as possible to the speakers that were the inspiration for the original G12 guitar speaker—but boasts a beefier power rating of 30 watts.
Taking Celestion into the future
As Celestion continues to produce iconic speakers like the Alnico Blue, Greenback, and Vintage 30 that have defined its heritage, it further expands into the PA market, focusing on innovations such as the Ten2 (Ten Squared, or TSQ) range of precision low-frequency speakers, designed and manufactured in the UK—and the first range to be built on Celestion’s new robotically assisted production line.
Wood understands that he is a part of a special company that has, for a century, been committed to experimentation and change. “We know that by having these innovations in place, they all won’t be successful—because they never are—but even just two or three will make a big difference,” he says . “That’s one of the key foundations today, and it will continue to be one of the key foundations of our success over the next 100 years.”
Yet the essence of Celestion has not changed from when Eric Mackintosh and Cyril French pioneered one of the world's first cone loudspeakers. “Celestion got it right first time; they still sound best,” says May. “The Celestion speaker has a firm and secure place in the future as well as the past.”
The Celestion team celebrated the company’s centennial at NAMM.
Celestion has been shaping the sound of music for a hundred years. From its legendary guitar speakers that laid the bedrock for the sound of British rock and roll alongside artists like The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix to its pioneering advancements in PA transducers, the company has repeatedly raised the bar for hi-fi, sound reinforcement, and instrument amplification. Today, many iconic amplifier and PA system manufacturers feature Celestion speakers at their core, and generations of players are loyal fans of the company’s speakers, which strike the perfect balance between awesome power and rich tone.
The roots of audio innovation
In 1924, gramophone maker Cyril French, together with his three brothers, founded the Electrical Manufacturing and Plating Company in Hampton Wick on London’s outskirts.
Inventor Eric Mackintosh approached French for help improving his groundbreaking design 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 they dubbed the ethereal Celestion. The next year French and Mackintosh earned a second patent for an improved “clamped-edge” design, and ultimately developed a full range of even better-performing radiogram loudspeakers.
1925’s patented improved cone design
Celestion saw considerable global expansion, and in 1928 the newly incorporated Celestion Ltd. debuted with the motto “The Very Soul of Music.” Now producing several loudspeaker and radiogram cabinet models, Celestion moved to expanded facilities in Kingston-upon-Thames.
The 1930s brought both opportunity and challenges. The Great Depression rippled across the globe, and British industry suffered, hitting Celestion hard. French and Mackintosh left Celestion in the early 1930s. Meanwhile, the market for speakers shifted from large standalone units to small speakers fitted inside radios.
By the early 1930s, the company presented its first permanent-magnet moving-coil speaker, the PPM. Other achievements that decade included a recording gramophone, which came complete with a blank disk and cutting needles. During this time, the British Rola Company—the UK offshoot of the Rola Company of Cleveland, Ohio—was producing loudspeaker products in London. Celestion and Rola competed for both home and export business throughout the 1930s.
World War II restricted both Celestion and British Rola to manufacturing one loudspeaker, the utility “W” type. Celestion was also chosen by the Government Research Establishment (GRE) to produce its Proximity Fuse. Essentially a miniature radar transmitter and receiver operated by a chemical battery, the fuse was capable of detonating an anti-aircraft shell within lethal distance of its target.
After the war, Celestion continued producing speakers for hi-fi, radio, and TV systems, in addition to cinema systems and acoustic instruments for the British military. In 1946, Celestion was purchased by British Rola, and the merged companies were known as Rola Celestion. Production then moved to the Ferry Works factory In Thames Ditton. In 1949, Rola Celestion was bought by Truvox; Rola Celestion thus expanded its Public Address (PA) product portfolio, while continuing to serve the radio and emerging TV market.
The Ferry Works factory in Thames Ditton
Guitars, G12s, and Greenbacks
Celestion’s most significant innovation came in response to a new demand for amplified guitar music. The iconic Vox AC30, designed to meet the growing need for louder amplifiers, required rugged, reliable loudspeakers. The Celestion G12 speaker, with its alnico magnet, had been in production since it was developed by Rola in the 1930s. Its newest incarnation, the T530, had been modified for use in guitar amps, and toughened to withstand the demands of modern instruments and playing techniques. T530 would come to be known as the Alnico Blue for the distinctive hue of its finish. When combined with Vox’s high-volume tube amps, the speaker offered a uniquely warm and distinctive tone.
By 1962, the newly formed Marshall Amplification had adopted the silver version of the toughened G12 guitar speaker, using it with its very first JTM45 amplifiers. It was the creamy tone produced by the combination of the Celestion speaker and these iconic amplifiers that helped define the British Beat Invasion of the 1960s.
In late 1964, Celestion began to manufacture ceramic-magnet speakers. Offering a more aggressive tone than their alnico counterparts, they achieved the edgy, overdriven guitar sound that emerging rock titans demanded. The following year, Jim Marshall adopted Celestion ceramic speakers, using the T1221, more commonly known as “Greenback” due to its green magnet cover, deploying them in the newly introduced and soon-to-be-iconic 4x12 cabinets.
1962 Marshall offset 4x12 with silver alnico guitar speakers
As rock grew louder and audiences grew larger, amplifiers had to become more powerful. Celestion responded with the G12 speaker in a range of magnet sizes to meet the demands of stadium and festival stages. New powerhouse amplifiers, outfitted with Celestion speakers, shaped the sounds of the most iconic artists of the time, including Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton.
Celestion truly hit its stride in the 1960s. The Truvox brand took a back seat as the company marketed a portfolio of industrial and public address products under the Celestion PA sub-brand. Products included re-entrant horn loudspeakers, high-efficiency mid/high-frequency pressure drive units (precursors to modern-day compression horn drivers), and column loudspeaker systems.
Demand for hi-fi systems surged. Celestion responded by launching the Ditton speaker family: first the Ditton 10, with its innovative HF1300 tweeter, followed by the Ditton 15. Featuring one of the earliest commercial examples of an Auxiliary Bass Radiator (ABR), the Ditton 15 became the best-selling bookshelf speaker of its time.
In 1968 production began at a newly acquired factory on Foxhall Road, Ipswich, and in 1970, parent company Truvox Engineering completed a reverse takeover of the publicly listed Weingarten Brothers clothing company to create Celestion Industries as a way of injecting more capital into the business. The company’s brief foray in the garment industry produced some fringe benefits, including Friday factory sales that offered employees discounted ladies’ clothing.
Live sound, PAs, and “The Sound of Rock and Roll”
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” PA, which offered 1,000 watts of power for the 1967 Windsor Jazz & Blues Festival, and 2,500 watts for The Who at the 1969 Isle of Wight Festival.(Warning signs demanded concertgoers stay at least 15 feet away from the system!) A year later the Isle of Wight sound system featured a Celestion speaker in WEM’s groundbreaking parabolic dish system, which could send audio signals over remarkable distances.
In the 1970s, developments in instrument amplification and a nascent sound reinforcement industry led Celestion to establish the Power Range, with various permutations of the G12 at the forefront, as the go-to “heavy duty cone loudspeaker” for high-power applications, be that musical instrument or sound reinforcement.
Celestion’s Production Manager, Dee Potter, Reflects on a Half-Century of Service
In 1974 Dee Potter left school at 16 to join her mother on Celestion’s production line. What began as a teenage escape from the drudgery of classes became a 50-year passion that only deepened as Celestion continued its evolution from home hi-fi to transducers for guitar cabinets and pro audio PA systems—what Dee lovingly refers to as “big power.” On the eve of her retirement, Dee shared a few insights from 50 years on the job.
Let’s go way back! Tell us how you got started.
In those days, you could leave school early if you had a job. On the first day, they put me in hi-fi and PA (public address). Then I got a chance to move to the power side (speakers for guitar amps and the growing sound reinforcement market). I spent a day in there and thought, yep, this is for me! I took over the line, the heavy power side (15-inch woofers and larger). Somebody must have seen something in me.
How would you describe the evolution of your work over the years?
When we began mass producing and the heavy power line, we weren't really the preferred customer, if you like—because all the emphasis at the time was on hi-fi and public address speakers. I thought, well, I'm not having that! So I made sure we always made a profit.
If the line broke down, I'd move hell and high water to get that all fixed. I'd shout at people and tell them to get down there. I probably didn't make myself very popular at times, but I got the job done. And then we were just getting busier and busier.
I made sure that we always got the orders out. We were always on time and all that just to try and say, “Hello, power is here!” You know, you're not going to ignore us. So that's basically what I carried on doing until I went part-time last November. I've always joked that I’ve been there 50 years, and I ain't worked out what I want to do yet!
You sound like you were born for this job.
I'll take charge of any situation. It doesn't matter what I've got to do to try and help people. I just loved working there. I love the people I was working with.
How are you going to celebrate your last day?
I probably won't be there by six that morning. But I will go around and say hi and thanks to everybody. Because you're only as good as the team you have around you. I've always had a fantastic team, and I know they'll carry it through.
In 1974 Dee Potter left school at 16 to join her mother on Celestion’s production line. What began as a teenage escape from the drudgery of classes became a 50-year passion that only deepened as Celestion continued its evolution from home hi-fi to transducers for guitar cabinets and pro audio PA systems—what Dee lovingly refers to as “big power.” On the eve of her retirement, Dee shared a few insights from 50 years on the job.
Let’s go way back! Tell us how you got started.
In those days, you could leave school early if you had a job. On the first day, they put me in hi-fi and PA (public address). Then I got a chance to move to the power side (speakers for guitar amps and the growing sound reinforcement market). I spent a day in there and thought, yep, this is for me! I took over the line, the heavy power side (15-inch woofers and larger). Somebody must have seen something in me.
How would you describe the evolution of your work over the years?
When we began mass producing and the heavy power line, we weren't really the preferred customer, if you like—because all the emphasis at the time was on hi-fi and public address speakers. I thought, well, I'm not having that! So I made sure we always made a profit.
If the line broke down, I'd move hell and high water to get that all fixed. I'd shout at people and tell them to get down there. I probably didn't make myself very popular at times, but I got the job done. And then we were just getting busier and busier.
I made sure that we always got the orders out. We were always on time and all that just to try and say, “Hello, power is here!” You know, you're not going to ignore us. So that's basically what I carried on doing until I went part-time last November. I've always joked that I’ve been there 50 years, and I ain't worked out what I want to do yet!
You sound like you were born for this job.
I'll take charge of any situation. It doesn't matter what I've got to do to try and help people. I just loved working there. I love the people I was working with.
How are you going to celebrate your last day?
I probably won't be there by six that morning. But I will go around and say hi and thanks to everybody. Because you're only as good as the team you have around you. I've always had a fantastic team, and I know they'll carry it through.
An early Celestion PA system onboard the Queen Elizabeth 2
In his foreword to A Century of Sound: The Story of Celestion, May remarks on the integral role of Celestion in the history of rock and roll: “Those Celestion Blues were a vital part of the sound…listen to the recordings of the Beatles, The Stones, Clapton, Hendrix, Satriani, Steve Vai…even that old ‘Queen’ group, and what you are listening to is the sound of one of those trusty Celestion G12s vibrating faithfully in tune with the string which vibrated under the guitarist’s finger at that moment when a piece of history was made.”
Global expansion continues
Celestion formed subsidiaries in France, West Germany, and the United States. As production demands grew, the company expanded into a second assembly plant in Ipswich, dedicated to hi-fi. When manufacture of the iconic Ditton 44 and 66s was moved from Thames Ditton, the facility was refurbished in 1976, expanding production capability. That October it was officially re-opened by Her Royal Highness, Princess Margaret. The company changed its name to Celestion International in 1979.
Her Royal Highness, Princess Margaret, opens the factory
The groundbreaking SL6, with its unique copper dome tweeter, launched in the early 1980s as the first of an extended family of audiophile speakers introduced that decade. Lauded for their sound quality; the series ensured the company remained at the forefront of home audio innovation. The company set a new standard for budget hi-fi loudspeakers with the launch of the Celestion 3 in 1989.
Introduced in 1986 to meet the demands of a new breed of hard rock player, the much-loved Vintage 30 speaker, capable of handling higher power and delivering overdrive, quickly became a favorite of artists and amp and cabinet manufacturers alike, and remains an industry standard today. The Vintage 30 is captured on thousands of recordings by guitar legends like Slash, Steve Stevens, Steve Vai, and Peter Frampton. By the turn of the 21st century it had also become the go-to sound for heavy metal.
“Celestion probably has the world's biggest musician endorsee program, in part because we're at the heart of so many other brands’ products,” says Wood. “With all of our guitar amp customers, all their players are naturally Celestion players, too. From that often comes a genuine endorsement and we’re thankful for that.”
As disco peaked in the 1980s, nightclubs sprouted up all over the landscape; with that came a new demand for scalable PA systems. In 1987 Celestion debuted the SR series, the company’s first serious inroads into portable sound-reinforcement systems. With systems ranging in size from the stylish KR Series to the rugged Road series and powerful CXi Series, Celestion catered to every sound reinforcement niche in the market.
In 1992 Celestion International, along with another British loudspeaker company, KEF, united under the banner of Kinergetics Holdings, Ltd. whose major shareholder was Hong Kong’s Gold Peak. Ultimately the company evolved into GP Acoustics, with the companies both wholly owned by Gold Peak.
Celestion continued to make inroads in pro audio, with thanks to Gold Peak, which invested heavily in R&D and other resources throughout the 1990s and 2000s. This resulted in innovations in compression drivers and pioneering work with neodymium magnet technologies, both fueling Celestion’s growth in the pro audio market.
A shift in strategy
Eventually, Celestion pivoted away from finished cabinet systems, narrowing its focus on transducers. At first centering on guitar speakers for both OEM customer and retailers, Celestion moved high-volume manufacturing to Asia while preserving “designed in the UK” approach, building marquee products in England. The company emphasized sound-reinforcement transducers, developing low-frequency woofers and high-frequency compression drivers for both OEM customers and the retail market.
The company also moved to a brand-new factory on the outskirts of Ipswich, replacing the tired, old industrial environment of Foxhall Road with a smaller facility built to better accommodate research and development.
As the MI side of the business grew, the 2000s saw the launch of Celestion’s Partners in Tone guitar speaker endorsement campaign; today the program boasts a lineup of more than 200 artists and producers, including legends Eric Clapton, Brian May, Robben Ford, Tony Iommi, and Steve Vai.
Celestion continued to expand its portfolio of American guitar and PA clients throughout the 2000s. It was a boom era for guitar gear; during this time Celestion debuted the Heritage Series, which paid homage to the 1960s sound. This was quickly followed by the Gold, a high-powered alnico speaker; the G12 EVH signature speaker for Edward van Halen; and later, the Creamback range of higher-powered range of vintage-sounding guitar speakers.
An advertisement for the G12EVH
Under the leadership of Nigel Wood, by 2006 Celestion finally exited its PA systems and consumer hi-fi businesses. This was, according to Wood, the “start of the modern transformation of the company.” Celestion centered instead on the design and manufacture of a more comprehensive range of sound-reinforcement transducers alongside the established and successful guitar and bass speakers. This streamlined focus on transducers brought major advances in compression driver technology, including the introduction of the patented deep-drawn diaphragm and maximum modal-suppression phase plug for ultra-low distortion HF performance.
In 2016 Celestion debuted the Axi2050 “axiperiodic” compression driver, a revolutionary high-power, high-output transducer capable of reproducing an ultra-wide frequency range of 300 Hz to 20 kHz without the need for a mid-band crossover.
Throughout the 2000s, Celestion collaborated with leading sound-reinforcement companies, developing cutting-edge, often bespoke pro audio transducers for a broad range of applications. Today, more than two-thirds of the company’s business is in manufacturing of low-frequency, high-frequency, and full-range PA products. Today, Celestion is perhaps the largest branded manufacturer of compression drivers and one of the leading designers of coaxial speakers.
Reacting to the needs of the musical instruments (MI) marketplace, the 2010s saw Celestion diving 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, largely enabled by the impulse response, 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, which represented a major leap forward in guitar speaker tone emulation when used together with a new generation of impulse responses, Dynamic Speaker Responses, developed in-house.
The company’s newest UK-built guitar speaker, produced for the company’s 100th anniversary, is a tribute to the silver alnico speakers of the late ’50s and early ’60s. Named the 100, it’s voiced as close as possible to the speakers that were the inspiration for the original G12 guitar speaker—but boasts a beefier power rating of 30 watts.
Celestion 2024 G12 100 100th Anniversary Guitar Loudspeaker
As Celestion continues to produce iconic speakers like the Alnico Blue, Greenback, and Vintage 30 that have defined its heritage, it further expands into the PA market, focusing on innovations such as the Ten2 (Ten Squared, or TSQ) range of precision low-frequency speakers, designed and manufactured in the UK—and the first range to be built on Celestion’s new robotically assisted production line.
Wood understands that he is a part of a special company that has, for a century, been committed to experimentation and change. “We know that by having these innovations in place, they all won’t be successful—because they never are—but even just two or three will make a big difference,” he says . “That’s one of the key foundations today, and it will continue to be one of the key foundations of our success over the next 100 years.”
Yet the essence of Celestion has not changed from when Eric Mackintosh and Cyril French pioneered one of the world's first cone loudspeakers. “Celestion got it right first time; they still sound best,” says May. “The Celestion speaker has a firm and secure place in the future as well as the past.”
