We're not sure what the shortest review of any particular piece of tone-influencing gear we've ever written about in these pages is, but the Milkman Alnico may set a new bar—and that's a good thing. With intention, it sounds exactly like the coveted JBL K-120 that was manufactured in the '70s by the James B. Lansing Company. Rated at the same wattage as the K-120, with the same level of sensitivity, the Milkman Alnico is built like a tank and, to our ears, sounds identical. With its black-basket, 4" voice coil, and aluminum dust cap, it looks similar to the original K-120 and not too different from many of those you see re-coned and living in other amps, such as the D-131, D-130, D-120-F, although those are gray and orange/black.
If pressed to identify anything different, we may hear just a smidge more volume from the Milkman Alnico than our re-coned K-120 in the D-131 basket, and that could stem from the newly charged magnet at 12,000+ gauss, but it's a split of the hair and, most important, the way the speaker sounds and reacts is all there. As pointed out in the review of the JG 40 amp, playing a Fender of this era with a JBL is an entirely different experience than you'll have with old Oxfords, Jensens, and any other modern-day ceramic and/or alnico-magnet speaker that also work exceptionally well with the AB763 circuit. Riverhorse continues to put a bug in our ear about how much he loves the Alessandro-designed/Eminence-built SC-59 12" Alnico, so we'll return the favor and suggest that one of his three carefully curated mid-'60s Deluxe Reverbs should at some point house a Milkman Alnico speaker.
If you're curious as to what a JBL will do for your '60s-era black-panel Fender, get on the list; the Milkman Alnico can't get any closer to the real thing. Tim Marcus' 10-year quest pays dividends for all of us here, and we are grateful to have tone chasers who commit to seeing their passions come to fruition. TQ—Scott Ulrichs
milkmansound.com