Jac Hawk
20-10-2011, 11:53
I was given a pair of JBL LX500's a few months back by a mate, he has an obscene amount of gear and these JBL's had seen better days, but I thought if they were any good I could use them in my sub £100 system for the "cheap as chips challenge".
To start with the bass cones needed re-foaming and then there was the overall condition, deep scratches, grill fabric missing, dust caps pushed in etc. the sort of condition that would only attract a DIYer.
Anyway 1st things 1st was to find out a bit about them, if they were a good speaker and worth fixing up or just some old junk fit for the skip, so i did some digging on the net and found out nothing, apparently there are 2 slightly different LX500's, 8ohm ones which have a triangular shaped offset tweeter and are made in the USA, and these ones I have which are 4ohm, have a round tweeter mounted directly above the midrange and are made in Denmark. So I was still left with no clue as to the sonic quality of them, but since my mate gave me them, and he was bound to ask about them in the future, i decided to fix em up.
So the main job was to re-foam the woofers, which as it turned out was very straight forward, and then replace the pushed in dust caps, which you can get off ebay. So all the drives refurbished, it was time to test them, and as I had never played them before, I didn't know if there was anything else wrong. Well what a smile they put on my old boat race, sweet sounding, with good stereo separation and plenty of bass, are they keepers? yes they are, so the next job is to do the cabs up so they will look as good as they sound. :)
To start with the bass cones needed re-foaming and then there was the overall condition, deep scratches, grill fabric missing, dust caps pushed in etc. the sort of condition that would only attract a DIYer.
Anyway 1st things 1st was to find out a bit about them, if they were a good speaker and worth fixing up or just some old junk fit for the skip, so i did some digging on the net and found out nothing, apparently there are 2 slightly different LX500's, 8ohm ones which have a triangular shaped offset tweeter and are made in the USA, and these ones I have which are 4ohm, have a round tweeter mounted directly above the midrange and are made in Denmark. So I was still left with no clue as to the sonic quality of them, but since my mate gave me them, and he was bound to ask about them in the future, i decided to fix em up.
So the main job was to re-foam the woofers, which as it turned out was very straight forward, and then replace the pushed in dust caps, which you can get off ebay. So all the drives refurbished, it was time to test them, and as I had never played them before, I didn't know if there was anything else wrong. Well what a smile they put on my old boat race, sweet sounding, with good stereo separation and plenty of bass, are they keepers? yes they are, so the next job is to do the cabs up so they will look as good as they sound. :)