John Harrison looks like an unmade bed, talks more than Larry King and says he sees sound as color. He makes speakers out of hemp, and to spend any time with him leaves you thinking he’s smoking some of the product.

It would be easy to dismiss him as a lovable, eccentric old hippie. But the man might just be a mad genius. He has rethought the most fundamental part of a speaker -– the cone –- and traded paper for hemp. The result is the Tone Tubby, and it makes guitar amps sing like Aretha Franklin. You’ll find them in rigs used by everyone from Billy Gibbons and Carlos Santana to Keith Richards and the guys in Metallica.

"That is one fine, fine piece of product," Gibbons told the guitar gurus at ToneQuest Report. "They look great, but most importantly, they sound great. They are really stunning, and they’ll stand tall with anything."

High praise indeed. But you don’t have to be an ax-slinger to appreciate what a little hemp can do for your sound. Harrison’s outfit has higher ambitions.

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Harrison and guys at Brown Soun – yeah, they spell it that way – started re-coning speakers in 1974. Harrison launched Tone Tubby 10 years ago.

Why hemp? It’s durable. It’s renewable. And, Harrison says, it sounds amazing.

"Hemp kicks ass," he says. "There’s more music coming out of a Tone Tubby. There’s more tone. When I hear paper cones, I see holes between the notes. Spaces. The hemp cones fill in all the spaces. It’s got a high end that’s polished and smooth, not at all spiky. And it’s got a fuller low end that just thumps."

Harrison was driving home from a Tubes concert when he hit upon the idea of using hemp to make speaker cones.

"There might have been some hemp involved," he jokes.

As for the name Brown Soun, it comes from the fact Harrison says he sees music as color. And his favorite music is brown. That’s the color of a 1959 Gibson Les Paul plugged into a Marshall stack turned to 10.

And the dropped "d"?

"It just sounded better," he says with a shrug. "It’s a '70s thing."

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Having made a name for himself among musicians, Harrison branched out into car audio two years ago.

"We’re going to market them as Hemp Hop to the 16- to 28-year-old set," Harrison said.

The slogan is: "Nothing hits like hemp!" That might not fly with the adults or the automakers Harrison hopes might start, ahem, using his product. He’s got a plan for that.

"For everyone else, it’s Green Thunder," he says. "I can’t go to General Motors and say, ‘Hey! I’ve got these hemp speakers you might like. They’re called Hemp Hop.’ They’ll say, ‘Get the hell outta here!’"

Brown Soun still re-cones old speakers, and it’s launching its own line of high-end home audio speakers this year.

"It’s gonna be huge," Harrison predicts.

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Harrison’s customers range from Carlos Santana and Eric Clapton to Bobby Carradine. Yes, the guy from the Revenge of the Nerds movies. He’s is on a tone quest of his own, and apparently he is a guitar nerd who sweats the details.

"He calls me like twice a day," Harrison says.

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New Way Chicago manufactures the cones using hemp grown in the Philippines. You’ll find the cones in everything Brown Soun makes, and Harrison has licensed them to Eminence – which offers five hemp-cone speakers of its own.

"We like to use hemp cones because it allows us to get another unique tonality," says Anthony Lucas of Eminence. "Hemp is stiffer than other pulp formulations. It has a slower breakup characteristic and sounds very warm and smooth with mellow highs."

Lucas says the speakers are "great for taming bright amps."

"They have interesting mid-range qualities," he says. "Most speakers are either very cutting are lacking in mids. The hemp cones are humped in the mids, but it's a very warm, smooth, creamy delivery. The lows are typically fatter and warmer, as well. They have a nice, woody, organic type of character."

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Harrison uses top-shelf parts. The cones and baskets are made in America. The copper-clad aluminum coils are made in Britain. And the magnets are from Australia.

Harrison figures he’s built about 10,000 Tone Tubby speakers. He’s the first to say he’s no scientist, so he can’t explain why hemp is better than traditional paper cones. Neither can we. But we installed a pair in our '66 Blackface Pro Reverb and the high end is clear without any painful spikes and the low end is tight without any concern with farting out.

Not a scientific study, but the sound makes us feel the buzz.

Not everyone agrees. Skip Simmons, who has been repairing and restoring vintage amplifiers for 20 years, isn’t knocking Brown Soun and has a lot of respect for what Harrison has done. But he says speakers are "like chocolate or strawberry." Some people like one, some like the other, and no one is right or wrong.

"At some level, you can’t really tell the difference," he said. "It’s all a matter of taste. There’s been lots of great speakers … all the Jensens, the Celstions. They’re fabulous."

That’s not to say Simmons doesn’t recommend replacing a speaker, or even using a Tone Tubby. If you’ve blown a speaker, obviously you’ve got to replace it. If you hope to one day sell your like-new tweed Fender Harvard, you may want to stuff the original speaker in the closet. And if you’re playing through some middle-of-the road amp you picked up at a chain store, yes, replacing that crappy speaker will almost certainly improve your tone.

But, he says, there are a lot of great players making a lot of great music who didn’t pay $300 for a Tone Tubby with an alnico magnet.

"Elvin Bishop would probably say, ‘Huh? What are you talking about? $300 for a speaker?’" Simmons said.

We don’t play like Elvin Bishop, so we’ll take all the help we can get.

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The finish on Tone Tubby speakers is deeper than the Grand Canyon. A gleaming paint job seems completely pointless, but it’s speaks to Harrison’s craftsmanship.

"People never cared what speakers looked like. They all said, ‘They go in the cabinet. Who cares?’ I care. It’s like the gas tank on a Harley. It doesn’t make you go any faster, but it makes you feel better if it looks good. Same goes for a speaker. When you’re playing, you’re going to feel a little better playing through a Ferrari red speaker."

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Harrison is not at all shy about praising his own product. Of course, it helps when a guy like Billy Gibbons compares them favorably to some of the most lustworthy speakers ever made: blue-frame Jensens and Celestion Greenbacks.

And Electro-Voice? Please.

"An EV speaker is a Volkswagen," Harrison says. "My speakers is a Ferrari."

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The speakers are color-coded. Red ones have alnico magnets and go for $300. Green ones have ceramic magnets and go for $150 (an 8-incher will run you $100). The alnicos are the most popular but they aren’t any better or worse than the ceramics. Just different.

"Ceramic magnets are just as good as alnico," Simmons said. "A lot of vintage amps used ceramic magnet speakers."

If you’ve got an amp with two (or more) speakers, Harrison suggests going half and half with an alnico and a ceramic. Wire them up, plug in your guitar and stand back.

"We call that the H bomb," he said.

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All of the alnico speakers are made in Harrison’s workshop in San Rafael, California. MisCo in Minnesota makes the ceramic ones.

The great irony of Tone Tubby is the man behind them isn’t a guitarist. He can play, but it’s strictly a second instrument.

"I’m a keyboard player," Harrison says. "Isn’t that great? I dial in everybody’s tone and I’m a keyboard player."

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"Carlos Santana was my very first customer," Harrison says. "He’s one of the guys I’ve had for years. Of course, he told Clapton, so Clapton had to get some."

Turns out Clapton didn’t think much of his Tone Tubbys at first.

"We sent him two alnicos. He said, ‘Yeah, thanks, no’ and had his tech stick ‘em in the studio," Harrison recalls. "About a year later his tech is going through the studio, discovered them and loved them. He asked us for more Tone Tubby speakers because he was building an amp for Clapton. Clapton’s still using them. He loves them."

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Harrison uses the words "Santana" and "Clapton" almost as frequently as "tone." You think he’s pulling your leg about all the musicians he knows until you see the stuff tucked away in his shop. The drum riser from Santana’s last tour. Bits and pieces of Neil Young’s gear. A road case with Neil Schon’s name stenciled on it. His most cherished possession is a pile of 50 speaker baskets from Jerry Garcia’s amps.

"I built some speakers for Carlos Santana using some of those baskets," Harrison said. "Think of the karma those speakers have. Jerry played through them, then Carlos played through them."

No, Harrison won’t build you a speaker with one of Jerry’s baskets. You are not worthy.

"I’m not gonna use those baskets for just anybody," he said.

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