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View Full Version : JBL L-100 as garage speakers



sluggish
22-06-2010, 18:56
Now that I'm married and have a family, they urge to build a fortress of solitude in the garage or basement is slowly emerging. Old JBLs come along frequently around here, so they seem like a good candidate. Refinement isn't the name of the game here, but I'm not much of a '70s rock fan, so maybe their charms will be lost on me -- are they just loud boom-and-tizz boxes? And what would I drive them with? Maybe a 70's vintage Marantz receiver with the cool blue lights? Or one of those old Japanese units from the time that had those weighted tuning knobs that would spin forever? Surely a new cheapy receiver wouldn't have the right voice or enough whallap...

hifi_dave
22-06-2010, 19:08
Far as I can remember they were fairly easy to drive, so you won't need a huge amp. Having said that, they are good 'rock' speakers and will thrive on some serious watts.

They're a bit raw and coloured but good fun and if they're cheap that makes them even more desirable. It's a pity we don't have much in the way of s/hand JBL here.

sluggish
22-06-2010, 19:25
Old JBL and Klipsch by the ton here, but you won't find a pair of Royds to save your life! Maybe we could work out a deal and become ebay millionaires!

hifi_dave
22-06-2010, 19:27
I'm up for that. :eyebrows:

sluggish
22-06-2010, 19:47
There's money to be made! Send me a wish list and I'll see what I can scrounge up -- I think I have a pair of K-horn around here somewhere... I'll just drop 'em in the post. And there doesn't seem to be a US Denson distributor, either, so with a little ingenuity we could be just this close to living the dream, right?

DSJR
23-06-2010, 09:24
It would cost too much to ship some L100's over here and i suspect they'd be damaged in transit :( but my gawd, they were fun, the limitations being in the simple crossovers used I think, which ran the tweets too low and the mid driver far too high (it takes off at 6KHz I read online somewhere). This site I Googled went into detail on a new crossover design which blended the drivers better and sorted the peakiness out once and for all. the speaker took on a whole new and far friendlier personality I remember.

Failing that, look out for the later pro versions of this speaker. They weren't expensive several years ago (in the UK around £1300pr) and had been well sorted by then. The pro market was going active at this point, so the passives sort of faded away sadly.

As for Royds, don't be daft :lol:

Just for the record, other JBL's were very good indeed and HiFi dave will know which ones as he sold some of 'em. From the 70's, the L65 Jubal's were great if got off the floor - not severely coloured at all and hugely powerful. the L150 was supposed to be a goodie as well.

Did the US sell many Bolivar 64 and 125 models? These were cheaper JBL made models but sounded fantastic on stands, better balanced than the JBL Decade models from a few years before as I recall and similar to the early first-generation Missions (720/730).

Apologies for sticking to the one make. Small Klipsch need great care in UK rooms if they aren't to bite your head off and a 70's Jap receiver aint the way to do it with them - a good valve jobbie or one of the classic HK Citation amps from the mid 70's (or possibly a Luxman) would be better

sluggish
23-06-2010, 15:33
Back when I was selling this stuff (my college years, early 1990s), JBL had largely devolved into a mass market brand and Klipsch had fully assumed the Big'n'Loud throne. We sold loads of Cornwalls and Heresies to the beer and mullet crowd, and we had a big demo room dedicated strictly to Klipsch and NAD. The funny thing is, even though we always auditioned the big Klipsch with the 3020, which was a fairly good match (as was this one particular 50-watt Nakamichi receiver we also carried that had some Nelson Pass magic in it), most buyers insisted they needed BIG WATTS to go with the big speakers, even though the 20-watt NAD would get loud as all hell. And considering that most of our Klipsch buyers would drop most of their hifi budget on the speakers, that meant that their desired BIG WATTS had to be cheap Jap watts, the resultant systems, installed, sounded like a screaming pile of chrome plated poo. So, I guess the old Arkansas brawlers usually bit your head off in US living rooms too! To be fair, though, in another store we had a Linn room with active Kabers, and those little beasties could have some sharp teeth on 'em as well!

ON the other hand, I do have both an old Citation integrated and a Fischer receiver, both tubed, both around 35 wpc, but both in need of serious TLC. Do you think either would fit the JBL bill?

DSJR
23-06-2010, 15:39
In my opinion - YES INDEEDY!!! :)

Those Nak amps from the late eighties were based on the Threshold Stasis circuit I think from memory. I had a CA7/PA5mk2 for a while, although the ARC SP14 with Tube-Technology Genesis mono's sounded so much better it wasn't true. The CA7 was a fully dual mono design IIRC and very well made. One of those items you had to leave powered 24/7.. We also sold the Amp 1 and 2 at "Audiolab" prices and I thought these were very good and big hearted sounding, with more refinement than the NAD's of the period.

sluggish
23-06-2010, 16:05
Yes, "big hearted" describes the sound of that Nak well. BTW, what do you know about the class A American transistor amps like the Krell KSA80 (I think that's what it was called, but it seems that Threshold and Levinson also had something similar, all around 50-100 wpc)? These we're a little before my time, but I've always been curious about them. All I know is that they ran hot and supposedly sounded good, and I seem to have gathered somewhere that they had a knack for combining a more expansive US sound with a more organized UK/Euro sound, but I could be well off the mark.

The Grand Wazoo
23-06-2010, 16:30
The Levinsons 50 & 100 watters were the No.29 (1990-95) & No.27 (1989-92)respectively. There was also a mono 100 watter - the No.20 (1986-89) and 200 watt No.23 (1987-90). All of these except the No.29 had a .5 version (till 1995)

Before that the power amps were the 50 watt ML11 (1982-89) & 100 watt ML9 (1981-88). The 200 watt ML3 (1979-87) These were not full class A.

The mono 25 watt ML2 (1977-86) was Class A and could drive almost anything!

Like the Krells, all Levinson amps rated output is doubled eg 50 watt into 8ohms / 100 into 4 / 200 into 2 / 400 into 1

hifi_dave
23-06-2010, 18:29
The Threshold Stasis were great power-amps. The smallest model, the Stasis 3 IIRC, sounded a lot better than the larger models and could drive a rusty nail into a barn door.

The original Krell KSA100 and KSA50 sounded a bit too fat and warm for my tastes but the Levinson No.29 was a wonderful amp which sounded more tube like than any other SS amp of the time. The No.27 then 27-5 wasn't as open and tactile and the larger models nowhere near as good but were very powerful if you needed to dive Martin Logan CLS or Apogee. The later Levinson amps got steadily worse as the company 'improved' them...:scratch:

sluggish
23-06-2010, 19:13
Is it just me, or does it often seem that it's often the smaller amps in a given product line that sound the best?

hifi_dave
23-06-2010, 19:20
They often do in my experience.

I'm not an engineer but I believe they often use very similar circuitry for the small and large amps but the more powerful one has a whole heap more o/p transistors and associated parts to provide the extra watts. Of course, the poor old signal has to wend it's weary way through all this extra circuitry. Consequently, the sound suffers.

sluggish
23-06-2010, 20:50
So, then, do amps/preamps continue to evolve, or did they peak somewhere in the purer, pre-home theater past?

DSJR
24-06-2010, 06:51
From my experience, I'd say that in power amps, newer and higher power transistors has enabled more power from less transistors. The distortion results and tendancy to crossover distortion has reduced dramatically as a result, along with the fussy lengthy warm-up process as the transistors struggle to thermally track each other.

As for preamps, quite competent circuits can be made on high grade op-amps now and the best valve ones don't need to be complex either (Glenn Croft anyone?). Older stuff was often limited by the quality of components.