I’ve been looking to replace a speaker of my evh 5150 iii 50 watt combo so my clean tones won’t start to break early, so which speaker do you guys think would be the best for warm cleans? And i also read that if you don’t want your clean tones to break early look for higher wattage speaker.
Thanks for the help and time
If you need more headroom, you need a more powerful amp – not a different speaker! Yes, you may be able to find a more efficient speaker that allows you to turn down the amp a little bit, but in general I think a bigger amp is the solution.
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I’m not looking for a more headroom
I’m looking for a higher wattage speaker so the clean channel won’t start to break early
I know it’s a high gain amp but it has clean channel but it always has little bit hair on it so i read somewhere if you don’t want your clean tones to break early look for higher wattage speaker and someone suggested me evm12l speaker which is a 200 watt speaker
FWIW, I used to play a Mesa Boogie Triple Rectifier. The clean channel was…not so clean. This is a 150 w amp, so it’s not even that this was a power problem. When a new rhythm guitarist joined our band (who hated Mesa with a passion) he recommended I get my amp modded by Voodoo Amps since he’d heard such wonderful things about them. It turned out great for me. The clean channel was amazing after that. Sparkling no matter how much I cranked it. It behaved more how I think you’re describing what you’re looking for. Off topic, but my gain channels sounded incredible as well after the mod. I don’t even know if Voodoo is still around or doing mods, that was over a decade ago. But to @Johannes’ point, I’m not positive a different speaker is the silver bullet you’re looking for. This seems like more of electronic issue. I’m no electrical engineer though, just based on my experience with the mod I had, in which I didn’t touch the speakers in my cabinet and saw such a night and day difference in the clean channel.
Just curious, where did you hear this? I’m not saying it’s incorrect or anything, just wondering the source. Interview with a legendary player? Some guy on a forum somewhere? etc 
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Sweetwater sales engineer told me that.
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Interesting! This would imply that the “hair” is due to speaker distortion or breakup. I wonder if that is really the case.
Perhaps the sales engineer can recommend a speaker?
Yes, I would tend to agree with this. But who knows?
I’m curious if it’s breaking up too soon because you’re keeping up in the room with a band/drummer, or if it’s more of a recording thing and you can’t turn it up to get it to a sweet spot that you like on the clean.
Depending on what you’re looking to do, I’d go out there and find a 2x12 or 4x12 that you might like – grab it and consider it an “investment,” since you’d be able to use it with any amp (and plus, keeping the amp controls by you and the speaker in the iso room, or closet, or whatever, does tend to make recording easier). Speaker cabs are going for relatively cheap these days on Craigslist, probably because there’s not a lot of live performance happening right now, so players are downsizing their rigs.
I’d say to demo it with a 4x12 at a store or with a friend – that will answer your question about the speaker headroom for free, and rather quickly. Don’t forget to match up the impedance first. The combo has its own speaker plugged in, so you can unplug that and only use the amp part (obvious, I know, I’m just giving a heads-up in case you didn’t notice that). As long as I’m restating the obvious, make sure you re-plug in the combo speaker and re-set your impedance to the original setting when done.
My favorite solution to this, honestly, is to A/B it with another amp for cleans, like Eric Johnson and a lot of other players. That wouldn’t stop you from using the clean channel on the 5150, but I get the feeling you’re really visualizing that as an all-in-one amp and chasing something that’s not in the wheelhouse of its tonal fingerprint. I had a 5150 II combo for years, and I liked the clean, but I wouldn’t compare that clean channel to a Fender Deluxe or something. There are a lot of boutique builders chasing the vintage Fender/Vox thing – Dr. Z, Victoria, and Carr come to mind.