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Founded in 1964, Andertons Music Company has risen from a family-owned guitar shop on the southwestern outskirts of London to an online retail powerhouse whose name is recognized the world over. Their videos are legendary, approaching products with honesty and no small amount of humour, which has grown their YouTube channel to over 805,000 subscribers and millions of views. Third-generation CEO Lee Anderton knows this is a major reason they sell guitars, amps, keyboards, drums, recording gear, and pro audio equipment far beyond the borders of the U.K. He spoke to us about music, the family business, and the passion for products and retail.

What is your favourite album of all time and why?

I will go with Delicate Sound of Thunder by Pink Floyd. It’s a live album and I watched the video before I bought the CD. It was a double album at the time, and one was all the classics, but done with a spectacular sense of sonic and visual production. This was post Roger Waters, with Gilmour pretty much helming everything. I remember watching that and saying, “I need to learn to play the guitar.”

What is the thing that made you want to be part of the audio/music industry? In retail and with this company in particular?

My father and grandfather started Andertons in 1964. So, I had been hanging around the store. I hadn’t found my instrument yet, but I caught this bug off the store because the people in there were so interesting. So, even at 13 or 14 years old, I was trying to help on Saturdays and so forth, but I didn’t really play anything, which obviously limited how useful I was! When I started to play guitar, it gave me more purpose. But the short answer is, I was born into a family of music retailers.

How did Andertons get its start and how did you join the family business?

My grandad was in the London police force and was a jazz drummer part-time. My dad was also drumming but in an early 1960s British pop outfit. He left school at 16 and got a job in a music store in London. Dad worked there for a couple of years, at which point my grandad had worked long enough to claim a lump sum pension from the police. They used that to open Andertons.

Interestingly, at first my dad was against my joining the business. He wanted me to have a proper career like a lawyer. So, I went to college between 16 and 18 years old, but basically lied to my dad about turning up to classes. When it all came out, he was not happy! He said, He said, “If all you want is to work in the shop, here’s a mop and a broom and the minimum salary I can pay you and stay out of my sight.” But I didn’t really want other staff to see me as the owner’s son. I just wanted to be me. I worked super hard and eventually got good at sales. It was destiny, I suppose.

How did your background affect what you brought to the business? The company overall?

I think I was equipped to deal with the change of retail consumer that began in the ’90s. In the 1960s through the ’80s, the customer was most likely a pro or semi-pro. They were happy with this kind of Aladdin’s cave, gate-kept environment.

Then in the ’90s, a lot more people decided to play an instrument for a hobby, and there was this shift in expectations to more the experience you might get shopping for clothes or a home appliance. I think I was able to bring that to the business because I didn’t grow up in the ’60s and ’70s and wasn’t used to doing things in a set way.

The next big breakthrough was at the end of the ’90s when the Internet really came on. I was the right age to go, “Oh, this is really exciting.” Whereas many music store owners saw the Internet as a fad or a nuisance they didn’t want to invest in.

You and your company are legendary in the industry. In your view, what is the main reason for that?

Andertons was one of the early adopters of selling online. That put us in good stead for growth throughout the 2000s, and then later we got into the YouTube thing. That’s really the tipping point where we went from being a well-known local music store to a global brand because so many people watch our YouTube channel.

What product or service do you think is your company’s most innovative? Why?

Certainly, our YouTube videos. At the start, the people I’d seen doing video sales from the U.S. were just going, “Here’s a pedal, I’m going to demo it, and you’re going to want to buy it.” So, I think that we had this sense that we would become the QVC of the music industry. It just didn’t pan out like that. The conversion rates off the videos were miniscule and if I wasn’t having so much fun doing them, I’d probably have given up.

Over time, we learned that video wasn’t simply about touting the features and benefits of a particular product and thereby hoping for more sales of that product. It was about content that built relationships and community. It was about people seeing our personality and going, “Oh, I like Andertons videos. I think I’ll start shopping with them now.” It was about building trust. That has since become the central pillar of our approach to videos and sales in general.

What do you think is the most important technological development of our time in the music industry?

In commercial terms, I’d point to the longevity of the electric guitar — the Fender Strat, the Gibson Les Paul. Fender is the master of spinning out another Strat or Tele year after year and making us all excited about it! Name me another industry that fundamentally hasn’t changed a product in 70 years, but everyone still gets excited about every six months when a new version comes out. It’s freakish.

The most challenging development for us as a retailer was the digital revolution in home recording that occurred throughout the 1990s. The price of having a recording setup went from hundreds of thousands of pounds to ten or 15 thousand and doable if you were really into it. Now it’s hundreds of pounds and accessible to everyone.

This has a downside. Look at how the market for drums has been affected by the fact that someone learned to make very convincing digital drum sounds. As exciting as it is to be a retailer on the early stages of that curve — here’s a new product I can sell! — the ultimate destination for when a thing goes digital is that it’s free or nearly so in an app and there’s no product to sell. Except for the keyboard market, which is interesting. From the ’80s through the mid-2000s, it was about everything going digital and getting cheaper. Then manufacturers started making expensive analog synths again and customers can’t get enough of them!

What accomplishment are you personally most proud of?

At work, people always used to say to me, “Oh you’re Pete Anderton’s son, aren’t you?” I always wanted to flip that and hear them say to him, “Oh, you’re Lee Anderton’s dad!” I’m immensely grateful for the opportunity he gave me, and I do feel like the team have indeed taken the business to a new level. You can go from Outer Mongolia to Los Angeles, and if someone plays the guitar, they’ll go, “Oh yeah, I know Andertons.” That’s completely nuts for a little retailer from Guildford in England.

What is your company culture like and how do you apply that to managing the team?

There are four partners: me and my dad, who are the shareholders, then Stuart and Beverly, who are heavily involved in sales and operations, respectively. That management structure has been the same for 20 years. Somebody told us that we still operate like a “big small” company and we need to start thinking like a “small big” company. That was brilliant. I do believe we need to get better at delegating. But that can be a strength. If there’s a problem, all the most senior people are all over it immediately. We don’t have those big-company silos where two people might not speak to each other for a year.

What do you think the next big developments in the industry will be and how is your company poised to pivot to the future?

The route to market for brands has changed. There are fewer retailers than ever, each commanding a bigger piece of the pie. As those stores become even more dominant, the relationship with the supply chain changes. You have manufacturers increasingly wanting to sell directly to the consumer. You have stores wanting to find their own brands they don’t have to go through the traditional channels to sell. These days, you have private equity companies offering huge sums for retailers. But passion for the products should not be replaced by a passion for spreadsheets. I have this romantic notion that we should all get up in the morning loving that we sell guitars and keyboards and that we can help people along their musical journeys.

Speaking of passion for products, do you have anything to say about Celestion speakers from the standpoint of the most respected guitar retailer in the U.K.?

Celestion are consistently great. We did a video where we replaced the stock driver in a BOSS Katana amp with various Celestion speakers. There’s a huge education piece to do about just how much difference the speaker makes. So many guitar players we encounter focus on the amp head, and we try to point them to a speaker cabinet that sounds great with it, and they go, “Oh no, I’ve already got a cabinet.” That cabinet is responsible for at least 50 percent of the sound. So, there’s a big opportunity for brands like Celestion to educate musicians.

Finally, what music are you listening to right now?

There’s a young, inquisitive music fan inside me reminding me I’ve got to keep looking for the next thing that’s going to get me excited. There’s also an old fart in me that just wants to put on a Led Zeppelin record, and the old fart usually wins. I’d say John Mayer, but he’s mainly putting a new spin on the type of music I’ve always loved. Similarly, I could listen to Greta Van Fleet all day. You’ve given me a mission for today: Go and find a record written this year that I really like so I have something to say when someone asks me this!

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DiMeola. Holdsworth. McLaughlin. Metheny. Scofield. If you were to describe what these great guitarists have in common, it would be that they fused deep jazz scholarship with rock and soul rhythms as well as a borderless appreciation of world music. If you were to name the heir apparent to this legacy, it could only be Oz Noy. Beginning his career in his native Israel, he became a top studio and touring musician in his teens. Arriving in New York City in 1996, he quickly rose to the highest echelon of U.S. musos. His tenth studio album Snapdragon features such luminaries as Dennis Chambers, Dave Weckl, and Zappa alum Vinnie Colaiuta on drums; Will Lee and John Pattituci on bass; and the late Wallace Rooney on trumpet. Through it all, Celestion guitar loudspeakers have been a vital component of Noy’s equipment.

What was your early path to becoming the accomplished musician you are today?

I grew up in Israel and started playing guitar when I was about ten years old. I originally wanted to play drums. A friend who played guitar invited me to see his teacher, and I think the main thing that kept me interested in guitar was The Beatles, whom I really loved when I was a kid. I also liked a lot of Israeli pop. My parents bought me a crappy nylon-string guitar, and my dad bought me this little pickup you glued onto the guitar. Once I realized you could make noises through an amp, I was hooked on the idea of the guitar being electric.

But when realized I wanted to play professionally as a lifetime thing was in the mid-1980s. I was maybe 15 when Pat Metheny came to Israel on the Still Life Talking tour. I went to see Pat play, and after that I basically stopped going to school! [Laughs.]

Who were your formative influences as you were coming up?

When I started to get into jazz, it was mostly John McLaughlin, Al DiMeola, and maybe George Benson. Then I discovered Scott Henderson and Allan Holdsworth. Of course, Pat Metheny and John Scofield. After that, I started to study jazz more deeply and got into Wes Montgomery, Kenny Burrell, and Grant Green — the bebop guys. At the same time, I started appreciating more blues, so Stevie Ray Vaughan was huge in my book. These days, I feel like I’m influenced by everybody!

When were you first aware of Celestion as a “thing” apart from your guitars and amps?

When I was growing up, Celestion speakers were always around. I had a Marshall with a 4×12 [cabinet] that had Celestion G12T-75s in it. I used that cabinet a lot. That and a Fender Twin Reverb were pretty much my main amps in Israel. But the Marshall with the 4×12 was always the main thing.

When I moved here, before I had much money to buy gear, I had several mediocre combo amps at first. Once I was able to afford better equipment, I had a couple of Fenders with Celestion Vintage 30s in the cabinets. That speaker sounds great inside pretty much everything.

After that I had a little Suhr amp, and it always had Celestion — mostly Vintage 30s but I had one cabinet with Greenbacks. You kind of can’t get away from those speakers and that sound. For me, they work in any context.

How has your rig evolved since then?

What I’m using now are Two Rock amps, which I started playing about ten or 12 years ago. They’re a high-end amp on the order of Dumble and things like that. The speakers I mainly use with those are Celestion G12-65s in both 2×12 and 4×12 cabinets. I also still have a cabinet with Greenbacks in it. When I play through my Marshall head, the Greenback is the one speaker that really does it for me.

I also bought an old DeLuxe amp, and I just put a brand new speaker into it, the G12 Ruby. It’s the one with the red chassis and it’s simply fantastic in that amp. Then there’s a recording cabinet I have at home with a G12-65 in it, and sometimes I swap that out for a Vintage 30 depending on the sound I’m after.

What’s your most recent Celestion acquisition and do you like it?

There’s this new speaker that looks like the Alnico Blue but it’s gold and handles a higher wattage. I believe it’s just called the Celestion Gold, and I think it’s excellent. I installed it in my Princeton. The thing about Celestion is, it’s such an iconic sound. If you want that sound, there’s only one way to get it.

Let’s say you got a call for a recording session with a major artist, and it was in an hour. Which setup out of everything you’ve mentioned would you bring into the studio?

To be honest, these days I do most of that kind of work from home, because I have everything all hooked up here and technology makes it possible to, you know, record my track and send it back out. Let’s say I did get that call, though. If it was a quick one-off, I’d probably bring my DeLuxe or my Princeton. If it was a bigger deal, I’d also bring one of my Two Rocks.

Do you have any suggestions or wish list items for Celestion?

Yes. More 4-ohm speakers! [Editor’s note: Celestion currently offers three speaker models with a 4-ohm impedance option: the Eight 15, the Copperback, and the Hot 100.]

It’s difficult to pin you down genre-wise, and we mean that as a compliment. How do you identify as a guitarist?

Thank you. I see myself basically as a jazz player, but I’ve played rock and done all kinds of studio work since I was 15. I guess what I did was, I mixed my jazz chops with modern guitar sounds as well as some of the approach of rock, blues, and R&B. So, I guess it’s a mix of things. Some people call it fusion, but that’s kind of a loaded word these days.

Yes, the F-word! Let’s talk about fusion. Has the style and the word gotten a bad rap in your opinion?

I think the problem was that at a certain point in the ’80s, some fusion started being executed in a way that was synthetic and sterile. The soul got sucked out of it. When you think about it, fusion is Miles, it’s McLaughlin, it’s Weather Report, it’s Return to Forever, all those bands — really soulful stuff.

One of the places where fusion is making a comeback is on social media, where a lot of young players are posting what we might call “shred” videos. Many of them share influences with you and some are probably influenced by you. What advice might you give to these players?

My main advice is, you’ve got to get out of the house and play live with other musicians. I recognize that the pandemic has made that hard for everybody. But I’m familiar with this phenomenon of people at home, learning on YouTube, then making their own videos and posting them there or on Instagram or wherever. And some of them blow my mind — they’re very talented and technically skilled.

But it all only exists within those platforms, and I see that as kind of real and not real at the same time. Yes, there’s an audience for it and if you’re good, you will get followers. But it seems like kind of a lonely existence, you know? I’ve been impressed by quite a few of these players and so I tried to look up where they were actually playing a gig so I could go see them — and most of the time I couldn’t find anything.

Recording guitar videos in your room all day is all well and good, and getting likes is all well and good. But what will really make you a better player isn’t staying at home and shredding over existing tracks. It’s being creative on the spot with other human beings. So, get out there and play with a band!

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Our ground-breaking SpeakerMix Pro Plug-in has been nominated for a 2022 SOS Award by the editors of Sound on Sound magazine. 

SpeakerMix Pro is the self-contained studio-grade DAW plug-in which brings stunning levels of detail and realism to guitar and bass speaker tone, for use with Impulse Responses as well as the company’s next-generation Dynamic Speaker Responses (DSRs.) All of these Celestion Digital products are available at CelestionPlus.com.

Celestion Impulse Responses have become the go-to speaker emulation solution in studios and on live rigs of many professional guitarists, bassists and music producers. The SpeakerMix Pro plug-in is much more than just a top-level IR loader and convolution engine for hosting impulse responses—it offers pristine sound, mixes up to six channels of different IRs into a stereo or mono track and even fixes IR sample rate/project mismatches.

As the host program for the new Celestion Dynamic Speaker Responses (DSRs) — the next generation of digital speaker responses that capture the sound and feel of the speaker’s dynamic, non-linear response for even more tonal detail —SpeakerMix Pro presents a genuine next-generation virtual speaker solution.

With SpeakerMix Pro, users can:

• Mix up to six responses together to create the perfect and unique guitar or bass speaker sound.
• Integrate a personal library of Celestion and third-party Impulse Responses to make the most of the tools you’ve spent time and effort curating .
• Add Celestion’s superb room responses (or incorporate your own) into the mix for an authentic ‘live’ sound.
• Deploy the unique Z-curve function to closely model the dynamic electrical coupling between amp and speaker.
• Add a new dimension of sound and feel with Celestion’s proprietary Dynamic Speaker Responses (DSRs), the next generation in Impulse Response technology: stunningly accurate guitar tone that also captures the sound and feel of the speaker’s dynamic, non-linear response for even more detail and realism.
• Use with our new DSRs for the capability to fine-tune the mic position, enabling you to adjust the position of the microphone across the speaker until you’ve found the tone that’s just-right.

SpeakerMix Pro is available for VST, AU and AAX compatible DAWs, to allow users to achieve the ultimate guitar tone in recording.

Click this link to buy the SpeakerMix Pro plug-in, and to get each user started with the featured Dynamic Speaker Responses, the first ten DSRs are free with the plug-in purchase.

Vote for Celestion SpeakerMix Pro in the 2022 SOS Awards Here. Voting ends at midnight on 30 November 2021.

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The SOS Awards launched in 2010 with a mission to honour and celebrate the finest products in the industry. Now in its 12^th year, each voting category consists of a shortlist of nominations selected by the SOS editorial team, with the Gear of the Year winners selected by the readers. The results will be compiled and announced at the end of January 2022.

Jim Campilongo has been called “an American treasure” by Billboard and the “sultan of twang” in The New Yorker. In 2013, Fender honoured him by releasing the Jim Campilongo Signature Telecaster, a 50-unit reproduction of the 1959 Tele from which he’s been inseparable throughout a lifelong career that has presented opportunities to play with Charlie Hunter, Burning Spear, Cake, Martha Wainright, J.J. Cale, Nels Cline, and of course The Little Willies, a band he co-founded with Norah Jones.

His most recent collaboration, Two Guitars with Luca Benedetti, earned raves from music press across the globe. Speaking of press, he also pens the column “Vinyl Treasures” for Guitar Player magazine. Playing in an inimitable style that can pivot from country-swing to jazz on a dime, he is considered the premier exponent of the Telecaster guitar and all the musical history it represents. Campilongo graciously spent some time with us to discuss the other main ingredient in his signature tone — Celestion loudspeakers — not to mention chronicle his inspirations and offer some must-hear advice on career and practicing.

 

 

When and why did you first know you wanted to play electric guitar?

Well, I’d been listening to things like The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix since I was just a kid. When I was about 15 and growing up in South San Francisco, I was living and breathing guitar, but in the information void of that era. You couldn’t just Google things. My mother told me she worked with a guy who played guitar. I called him and said, “I don’t know what kinds of guitars and amps I like.” I think I was borrowing a Teisco electric at the time and had a Kalamazoo amp.

Did he point you in the right direction?

He asked me what guitarists I liked. At the time, I named Eric Clapton and Cream. I also mentioned Hendrix and Ritchie Blackmore of Deep Purple. This guy goes, “Oh, you’ll like Marshall amps.” Ironically, I’ve never owned one!

What amp did you end up with?

By chance I got a Fender Twin. After two or three more years, I’m getting good enough to play covers like “China Grove” and “Two Tickets to Paradise,” that kind of thing. I went through the trends in the ’80s — Gallien-Krueger, guitar synthesizers — but I always came back to Fender. To me, the Telecaster and a Fender amp just is the sound of the electric guitar. And then there’s Celestion!

Tell us more …

At one point I started playing through a Fender Princeton Reverb amp. I was used to Twins and the Vibrolux, and it felt like it was lacking a little headroom compared to those. It was fine if you miked it. So, I took it down to the Amp Lab, run by an amazing tech named Keith Reinegger. Keith said he really liked putting a Celestion G10 in a Princeton. I said, “Do it!” The next day I had a gig at the Make Out Room in San Francisco, and the amp just became this roaring little animal that had incredible dynamic range. I still have three Princetons with G10s in them.

Your playing is known for a lot of dynamic and stylistic range. Do you find the G10 a good fit in that regard?

What I like about Celestion speakers is first, they sound great right away. There’s no breaking in — they sound great as soon as you hit a note. It’s like you can drive the Indy 500 right away without doing test laps. I did a solo record in 2010 called Orange, and on the eve of a recording day I’d done a gig where I’d blown the stock Fender speaker in my amp. I replaced it with a G10 and many of the tracks on that record feature that amp.

Second, Celestion speakers are not super expensive, though I’d still use them if they were. I like them that much.

Last but not least, they have a really nice jazz sound but also a full low-end, and I can go from that to pretty twangy. In that respect I think they’re more versatile than, say, a Jensen driver.

It’s interesting that you say their jazz tone is pleasing, because a lot of enthusiasts equate Celestion with British rock and roots rock.

True, but what I think of as a jazz sound is not a Gibson ES-175 through a vintage Ampeg or Roland Jazz Chorus amp. Not to criticize Joe Pass, for crying out loud, but the jazz sound I like has a little more sass to it — like, if Louis Armstrong were a guitarist, he wouldn’t be playing an ES-175. A Princeton with a G10 inside has just the right amount of softness when I want it.

You’re known for being a minimalist about effects and technology …

Pretty much. I like the control of the relationship with my amplifier, particularly in terms of my right hand. If everything gets compressed, as it can with effects pedals, I feel like my pick attack is neutered. With minimal circuitry in between the guitar and amp, I could be set at 10 and get different tones depending on how I play. That’s another thing I like about the Celestion G10 — it’s very touch sensitive. The speaker assimilates my intentions accurately.

Let’s talk about your guitar heroes.

Let me tell you, living in the Italian-Irish suburbs of South San Francisco in the 1970s and discovering Eric Clapton with Cream — that was like striking gold. Now, his body of work was not as pyrotechnic as, say, Jeff Beck. I would listen to Blow by Blow all day then hear it coming from cars when I left the house. It wasn’t just for guitar nerds. But Clapton had such a robust sound, and there was a swing to his playing that isn’t talked about much anymore. That led me to Albert King, Freddie King, and Robert Johnson, which in turn led me to Roy Buchannan. Roy played through a Fender amp, which led to my buying my first one.

What do you think great guitarists have in common, regardless of genre?

When I learned guitar, one of the main priorities was, do you have your own thing? Jimmy Page has a thing. Eric Clapton does. Jeff Beck does. John McLaughlin certainly does. Jesse Ed Davis had his own thing, like on “Doctor My Eyes” with Jackson Browne. You hear it for the first time and go, “Who is that guy?” Whereas I can be in Bed Bath & Beyond and hear yet another invisible guitar solo. There’s a lot of technically proficient material out there that has no personality.

You also teach. What practice guidance do you give your students?

Great question. I have a lot of students who are a little apprehensive at first. Maybe they’re in their 40s, with kids and a job, and trying to get back into playing music. They’ll tell me, “I promise to practice two hours every day, Maestro Jim!” I’ll say, “Well, you can, but why not shoot for five or ten minutes at first?” Some get disappointed that I’m not being a taskmaster, but the best practice is the kind you’ll actually do. Sometimes the devil wakes up before me, and I just want to make a grilled cheese sandwich and watch Black Mirror. But if I commit to even five minutes, every day, at roughly the same time, I often become engaged and a half hour or more goes by and maybe I’ve learned a new section of a song.

How about advice on the career front?

Do one thing for your career every day. Learning a new riff or tune doesn’t count. So, I write for a magazine. I have a Patreon page. I give lessons over Zoom. I book gigs and travel. I organize set lists and get them to bandmates in advance. Let’s say I put a poster for an upcoming gig on Instagram. There — I did my one thing. In a month, you will have done 30 things, despite if you were tired that day, despite if you felt embarrassed about promoting yourself, despite anything.

Above all, have fun. I still remind myself of this if, say, I turn up to a gig and there are only six people in the audience. Having fun opens the door to so many solutions. And if you’re not having fun, what are you doing?

The new Celestion SpeakerMix Pro plugin (VST, AAX, AU) is designed to be a studio-grade application, enabling you to produce stunningly realistic guitar tones in your DAW. Far more than just an IR loader and mixer, SpeakerMix Pro delivers pristine sound, while offering a whole host of features. All with an intuitive and instantly familiar interface.

Fully compatible with your personal library of Celestion and third party (.wav) Impulse Responses, you can mix up to six channels (each with individual parametric EQ functionality) of different speaker responses into a stereo or mono track. The software also fixes sample rate/project mismatches.

SpeakerMix Pro gives you ample opportunity to further enhance and finesse your speaker responses. Deploy the unique Z-curve function to closely model the dynamic electrical coupling between amp and speaker for ultimate accuracy and feel. Add Celestion’s outstanding room responses (included) or incorporate your own into the mix for a superb ‘live’ sound.

Perhaps most significantly, it’s as the host program for Celestion’s proprietary new Dynamic Speaker Responses where SpeakerMix Pro represents a genuine Next Generation virtual speaker solution.

So What Is a Dynamic Speaker Response and What Does It Do?

Celestion Impulse Responses have become the go-to speaker emulation solution in the studios and live rigs of many top professional guitarists, bassists, and music producers. Looking to define the next generation in digital tone with greater accuracy and realism, we have developed the Dynamic Speaker Response (DSR).

A traditional speaker IR captures the performance of that speaker in a specific cabinet with a particular microphone in a certain position, at a pre-determined level. But there are an additional factors at play when it comes to speaker tonality: the cone of a speaker played very quietly barely moves, the cone of the same speaker played loud does move: it ‘ripples’ and ‘shakes’ in a non-linear way. This adds additional harmonic complexity and character to the sound: it’s part of the reason why loud amps sound so exciting.

The IRs that we’ve been successfully using for several years represents the speaker’s frequency response captured at a single, optimum level. A Dynamic Speaker Response goes a step further, it reacts to the signal level. The DSR models the speaker’s sonic characteristic dynamically, shifting in response dependent on changes in the input level, for a more natural, ‘analog’ feeling and sounding output.

Benefit from a More Intuitive Workflow

When using Impulse Responses in the standard way, if we want to “move” or “change” the microphone we need to find a different IR that was recorded with our new mic in the new position;  that’s quite easy, simply scroll through an IR library and find the file that gives the sound that we want to hear. It’s not quite as intuitive as moving a microphone on a stand but it has worked very well for several years now and produced a lot of fine performances and recordings as well as having the well-documented advantages of convenience and repeatability.

Use DSRs with SpeakerMix Pro to provide a fast, simple and intuitive way to select microphone, speaker, and cabinet type with just a few clicks. The graphical interface enables rapid selection of speaker, cab and mic, as well as pinpoint positioning of the microphone across the speaker cone. What’s great is that this can be done while listening to the changes in sound as we make the adjustments, just like in the traditional physical studio.

For an additional bonus, we can also adjust the dynamic electrical coupling between the output stage of an amplifier (the Z-curve function) and the DSRs —or IRs, which are fully compatible with this function—and mix in room sound together with the speaker response to fine-tune the final sound of the performance.

Enhance Tone with a Highly Comprehensive Toolset

Celestion’s SpeakerMix Pro plug-in is designed to be a highly sophisticated and intuitive guitar speaker tone engine. It enables you to rapidly load your existing IR library into your DAW, while offering a comprehensive set of invaluable tools designed to make the most of your virtual speaker tone.

Beyond that Celestion have also integrated into the plug-in the next generation of speaker response, the Dynamic Speaker Response (DSR). Not only is it an accurate replica of a speaker’s frequency response in the digital realm that’s easy to use providing consistency and repeatability in the recording process. The DSR also responds to a player’s ‘attitude’ and playing intensity as well as the relationship between the amplifier and the speaker, capturing these subtle but important real-time nuances and injecting digital tone with true analogue realism.

SpeakerMix Pro – click here to buy now from our online shop

Browse our range of Dynamic Speaker Responses here

Find out how you can shape your perfect guitar tone with Robbie Miller’s demo of SpeakerMix Pro and our DSRs.