Your Favorate JBL's from the 70's


My first pr of JBL's where L26 then L110 and finally L220.
I was 17 when my mother purchased the L220's for me.I must say the police where called several times for load music and for my Mother I'm sorry for
all the problems caused by me and these concert hall spkr's.
What's is your story?
Mike
hiendmmoe
I got a pair of JBL 4311's back in the 80s from a radio station. I still have them and can't part with them. Much of the music that I like to listen to was mixed on 'gerbils" so it's a good fit. They are on stands and flipped upside down about 18" from the wall and majorly toed in. They are after all a nearfield monitor so you have to be in the sweet spot.
I have an Audio Research Ref 1, VPI TNT, ARC Ref Phono and a D130. The speakers are very unforgiving of bad recordings but on classic Columbia 6 eye jazz records they sound incredible.
The first high-end speaker I ever heard was the JBL L110 at Tech Hifi. This will always be my favorite "classic" JBL for sentimental reasons alone.
I like JBL a lot more these days than back then.

JBLs in teh 70's were never my cup of tea. Most receivers and many integrated amps even of the day were not up to bringing out their best. I much preferred OHM over JBL in the 70's at Tech HiFi, though the JBLs were popular as well. I think a lot had to do with the OHMs being designed to perform better off of lesser amplifiers than JBL and some others back then in general. I think many of the older JBLs (and many other popular lines from back then) if in good operating order these days would do much better off of better home audio amplifiers available these days.

I still run my old OHM Ls that I refurbished a few years back and these sound better than ever off my current system which is leaps and bounds beyond anything I had back in the 1970s. I did many A/B comparisons between the OHM Ls, the much larger Advents that they were designed to compete with, various JBLs and others back then and the general character of each line remains pretty fresh in my mind as a result even all these years later.
I am the original owner of a pair of L19's that I bought in 79 for $460 and $5 for the stands!   No idea how I came up with the money back then.  After a woofer refoam they sound pretty darn good.   They image well with a decent sized soundstage.   To my ears a little shy in the base- perhaps the x-over needs a recap.   I remember a pair of 220's playing at Tech Hifi that left me in awe!