New BIG JBLs followed me home tonight, ...

SaturationPt

Big Woofer Club
Subscriber
Look big, sound big. I bought them and don't know much about them except they seem to eat a couple-hundred watts pretty happily.

LX13 crossovers
2235H 15" woofers
PR15c 15" Passives
2470 Compression Drivers (horn)
H92 horns
L91 Lenses
2405 Tweeters

They came with five 2-channel amplifiers and a Sony 3-way crossover/preamp in case I want to tri-amp.

Sound pretty good I think.




JBL Big.jpg
 
Decided to try something dynamic, played Deadmau5 Strobe, ... power meters crossing into the 400W territory pretty quick and even my Magnepans didn't seem to drink from the firehose like these do!
 
Sounds like big fun :rockon:

Rock on and let us know if you get into the active crossover. Lots of good stuff to work with.
 
Nice! I bet they are more efficient than you know and at those levels you are listening VERY LOUD, except it doesn't register with your ear as VERY LOUD (especially if you ramped up the volume over a few trys) because they are clear and uncompressed. Don't destroy your hearing.
 
Nice! Which amplifiers and crossover did you get? Some of the vintage Sony crossover newtworks are really nice.
 
Sony 4300F, Sony 3200F (x3), Sony 3120, Sony 1130.

All in pristine condition other than dust (no boxes, but some manuals).

I'm not completely sure what to do with them, but I'll probably clean and test them anyway.
 
Sony 4300F, Sony 3200F (x3), Sony 3120, Sony 1130.

All in pristine condition other than dust (no boxes, but some manuals).

I'm not completely sure what to do with them, but I'll probably clean and test them anyway.
You may want to research what that stuff is worth! Wow ...
 
Very cool. Sounds like (roughly) 4333s with passive radiators. I’d love to see more of the cabinets.

The cabinets *look* custom, the (deceased) owner's Son didn't think so but started to wonder if I was correct as we looked at them more carefully. Nicely done, braced and sealed, all JBL components (not from salvage speakers either, all looked to be excellent purchased new for the build). Listening to them I'd like tighter bass, but I'm surprised at how good they sound, will do some measurements maybe this weekend to see how flat they are on the internal crossover.

The Sony stuff is pretty cool, I want to go through it and check everything out, trying to decide whether I'll hurt its value if I restore them electronically (caps, transistors as noisy/needed, etc.), not sure I'm the right person to own them but they kind of came with the speakers. Most likely I'll keep the crossover/preamp and three matching amps as it has to be a very hard to find / assemble set, my Son is already wanting to claim the smaller amp, ... he claims a lot of stuff but he uses and enjoys it carefully so I guess that's okay.
 
I might consider swapping the woofer and passive radiator; I’m pretty clueless about comb filtering and dispersion and phase issues, but I usually see recommendations to keep the woofer close to the horn on similar systems, and many 4333s have the same active driver configuration. Is the PR tunable?
 
Last edited:
The PR has a mass bolted to the back, so yes. Swapping is probably a good idea but I'm also considering that the builder bought some very specific and fairly expensive parts to build these, might have known well what he was doing. I'd just be moving parts around, ... could make it worse.

I have a close relative who does this for a living, hoping he can look at them and tell me if they're designed properly or not.
 
Back
Top Bottom