Weber C12CA Review

From xchil–(at)–al-pc.org Thu Apr 2 23:31:00 CST 1998
From: ElRon XChile
Newsgroups: alt.guitar.amps
Subject: Weber C12CA – Blues Deluxe
Date: Thu, 02 Apr 1998 22:41:45 -0600
Reply-To: xchil–(at)–al-pc.org
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Xref: geraldo.cc.utexas.edu alt.guitar.amps:95544

Hey there!

Just want to give a (not so)brief rundown of my experience with a
WeberVST C12CA speaker that I installed in my Fender Blues Deluxe.

First of all, I knew that this amp needed somethin’ as it was not
sounding all that hot. Tone was bass-heavy and the reverb was sounding
like it came from Radio Shack. I was not getting a clean enough sound
>from the clean channel(more on that in a minute). As this is a -new-
Fender purchased about 2 years ago, it essentially had gone to shit
pretty damn fast(although most new Fenders seem to be doing that).

I called Ted Weber, who was very friendly, and ordered a C12CA which is
the high powered 12′ speaker (80 Watts); it is the California model
which is the cleanest of the three models. Although these speakers
weren’t supposed to be available until May sometime, Ted had some frames
and paper(advanced sample) and put one together for me and it arrived in
about two weeks time.

The BD is a 40 Watt amp, but as I am an extremely heavy-handed Blues
player(I play with Guitar Slim at Billy Blues in Houston, Texas on
Tuesday nights) I knew that the 30% margin above 40 Watts would be
covered by this speaker.

I had to take the–(at)–$#&%# amp apart to get the C12CA in there, but it
went in with no problem.

As an intial test, I raked a pick across the strings to see if I had a
signal going to the speaker or if I needed to go back and do it again.

I immediately noticed that the Reverb was working like it never had
before! The tailing off of the signal went on forever!

The speaker rendered changes to the amp that were out of this world. The
bass response was much tighter, the mids weren’t so honkey and the
treble was sparkling like a real Fender(heh, heh). The amp was much
louder, but had much more balance. The dynamics increased to the point
where turning down my Strat to 2-3 yielded a ‘string’ sound that was
sweet(and not muggy or lackluster as it had been) while letting it rip
at full volume produced a pleasing, slightly compressed singing tone
very good for clean Blues or Jazz. The overdrive channel no longer
sounded like a fuzz pedel, it sounded like an overdriven Fender amp!

Now, I am not going to waste the money on NOS tubes (I’m running with
Sovteks across the board) as this amp has to like prove itself like my
’62 Fender Super Amp has before I treat it that good, but the Weber sure
did keep me from drop-kicking it into the store window of my local
Fender dealer!

All-in-all, the C12CA was more that worth the money and I am looking
forward to replacing the 8′ speaker in my ’65 Vibro Champ soon! Good
job, Ted!

—
ElRon XChile
xchil–(at)–al-pc.org