JBL re-introducing the L-100

All the new JBL products can only be a good thing. I've heard a couple of thier highend speakers at shows. Look forward to hearing at Axpona in Chicago in April. I'm sure the L100's will be there.

Agree with Wayner, China made products can be quality made. Manufacturing follows cheaper cost labor. No lamenting is going to change that. As retired from manufacturing, have seen it.
 
I auditioned these in the Harman room and was very taken with them. Thinking hard about trading one or two pairs of my vintage models to 1) make room for and 2) finance buying a pair when they come out later this spring.

They're 12" 3-ways with a very solid woofer, typical 5" JBL mid and new titanium tweeter with waveguide. Supposed to have nice big motors on all... I can tell you the bass was really solid and the top end was a delight. Not sure they voice all that close to my older JBL systems but those don't have the titanium tweeters (unless I get around to updating one of them) so no surprise. My host thought they voiced like the higher end Revel stuff, can't comment on that since I haven't heard any. The tweeters are more modern type with a softly sprung metal dome, not the solid metal diaphragm type from the original TI tweeters.

The bass was dynamite though, I'd say substantially better in all ways than my L112 and more accurate than my L150A - though I'd like to know whether they have the same room presence - couldn't really judge that in the room they had set up. No foam surrounds, thank you vey much - these woofers have a rubberized surround and plenty of excursion. I did not hear them pushed hard, but at moderate level the bass was impressive.

The vent is larger overall and the engineer that was standing by said they had gone out of their way to not tune these for really low bass so much as more musical bass and from the brief audition I'd say that was successful.

The cabinet finish on the demo set was pretty sleek, almost plasticky and had somewhat of a subdued brown cast overall - not as appealing as the old American black walnut cabs. He said they're working on tweaking that to a slightly more open grain appearance, more like the originals, which I'd like to see.

The eggcrate foam grills never did that much for me - though neither do the drab brown ones on my L96/112/150A - but if you have to have that iconic orange appearance it is there in spades. I'd probably do one of the other two colors, black or - I think - blue were listed as available. The demo set was in orange.

John
 
I auditioned these in the Harman room and was very taken with them. Thinking hard about trading one or two pairs of my vintage models to 1) make room for and 2) finance buying a pair when they come out later this spring.

They're 12" 3-ways with a very solid woofer, typical 5" JBL mid and new titanium tweeter with waveguide. Supposed to have nice big motors on all... I can tell you the bass was really solid and the top end was a delight. Not sure they voice all that close to my older JBL systems but those don't have the titanium tweeters (unless I get around to updating one of them) so no surprise. My host thought they voiced like the higher end Revel stuff, can't comment on that since I haven't heard any. The tweeters are more modern type with a softly sprung metal dome, not the solid metal diaphragm type from the original TI tweeters.

The bass was dynamite though, I'd say substantially better in all ways than my L112 and more accurate than my L150A - though I'd like to know whether they have the same room presence - couldn't really judge that in the room they had set up. No foam surrounds, thank you vey much - these woofers have a rubberized surround and plenty of excursion. I did not hear them pushed hard, but at moderate level the bass was impressive.

The vent is larger overall and the engineer that was standing by said they had gone out of their way to not tune these for really low bass so much as more musical bass and from the brief audition I'd say that was successful.

The cabinet finish on the demo set was pretty sleek, almost plasticky and had somewhat of a subdued brown cast overall - not as appealing as the old American black walnut cabs. He said they're working on tweaking that to a slightly more open grain appearance, more like the originals, which I'd like to see.

The eggcrate foam grills never did that much for me - though neither do the drab brown ones on my L96/112/150A - but if you have to have that iconic orange appearance it is there in spades. I'd probably do one of the other two colors, black or - I think - blue were listed as available. The demo set was in orange.

John

Thanks for your review. It’s refreshing that someone chimed in who has actually heard them.

So, would you say they are $4k good?

- Woody
 
That's a tough one, mostly because I am so heavily grounded to the older models and don't spend a lot of time auditioning newer speakers these days. Also my game plan is to leverage someone's employee purchase to get the cost down and then sell one or two pair of my old ones to cover the lower cost, which admittedly won't work for everyone.

John
 
Just looking at "street" pricing on DD67000 these days around half of MSRP, you might want to consider whether or not the new L100 will be a good value at $2000/pair. Even the little LSR305s have been advertised at 50% off MSRP for a couple of years even though they've only been on the market for about three-years.

Then there's the question of do any retail outlets for JBL even exist anymore for anyone to ever hear them before buying??
 
I prefer not to discuss moderation and how they keep things in order. It's a thankless job, and those guys and gals do a lot of work and deserve our appreciation. So I will defer from talking about your observations.

Regards
Mister Pig
 
<<snip>> All audio...no attitude. hmmmmmm.:idea:

That's the goal, but there is the reality that we're all human and have opinions.

I like the new speaker. Is it an L100? No, not even close, I would prefer to call it more of a 4312A remake, or even a consumer LSR6332 as it doesn't share one component with the original L100 other than the name.

The L100 went from a very good speaker (and fairly expensive at the time) to obsolete permanently when dome tweeters entered JBL speakers, I was there and never wanted to go back to the cone-tweeter world, neither did anyone else. Now it's "vintage" and people love to hear music how it used to sound in the '70s and before, which is great too, so you buy old stuff (and hopefully restore so that it sounds like it did).

So why call it an L100 re-issue? Marketing plain and simple.

I love the sound of JBL's current LSR6332 monitors, they are clean and flat. However they're (IMO) ugly, flat gray paint with molded plastic baffles and no grilles, ... look completely industrial, and I've talked about how nice it'd be to have a consumer version with at least a glossy black cabinet and grilles, a wood-veneered option would be even better. The recently re-issued 4312A is nice also, but no wood-veneer option.

So here's the "L100", with a grille and walnut-veneer cabinet, for about the same price as the LSR6332, ... not exactly the 6332's components but close, it's pretty much what I was looking for. Maybe I can get a third cabinet and stick my LSR6312SP sub in it to match, ...

It's a niche market, kind of like why Dodge offered the (for example) Viper, and it's my guess that the small number that they'll sell to dealers (for what, half of MSRP or less?) will not cover the R&D, the tooling, etc.. It's for the image and those of us fortunate enough to get a pair will benefit, I'm very happy that JBL (Harman, Samsung) is out there testing the waters and working to stay in the high-end consumer speaker market.
 
1. I don't think employees will be able to buy them at a discount in the beginning because initial orders need to be handled first.
2. I don't think the company will be keen on selling lots of product to employees. Back 35 yrs ago when I worked at Jensen, I recall we were only allowed one or two pairs per year mainly to avoid reselling to friends thus avoiding a dealer.
3. I would bet an employee discount would be closer to 30% off list but that of course depends on the margin the dealer gets.

I remember all the (relative) begging I had to go through when I asked Apt for an "industry" discount. I was able to get a Holman preamp for about 25-30% off. We didn't make preamps, of course.
 
I have been reading through all of the posts in regard to the new JBL L-100 and have duly noted that many of them are in regard to the $4000 price. I also happened to see a small article in a recent edition of Hi-Fi World in regard to a new Yamaha speaker, the NS-5000, which is being deemed as the "spiritual successor to the NS-1000M." I am not sure what the 1000M cost but the new NS-5000 is priced at an astounding $19,999 a pair!
 
A new pair of ESS AMTs can be had for $2,500 MSRP, so compared to their original list price, they must be a steal. A brand new Air Motion Transformer is $350, so again, a steal compared to 1978.

And, I believe these are made in the USA.
 
The Chinese do not set the tolerance for products, JBL/Harmon does. Things are built to product specifications. Condemning an entire nation for "bad tolerances is just plain nonsense. There are plenty of American companies that might practice such bad tolerances as well. It's not nation dependent, but rather, company dependent.
 
The Chinese do not set the tolerance for products, JBL/Harmon does. Things are built to product specifications. Condemning an entire nation for "bad tolerances is just plain nonsense. There are plenty of American companies that might practice such bad tolerances as well. It's not nation dependent, but rather, company dependent.

True that. Many of the recent smallish black speakers we have in the market passing as today's bookshelf speakers are designed elsewhere but made in China to specs.
 
I'm noticing some imperfections on the grille and cabinet finish,:idea: hopefully it gets sorted.
jbl-speaker.jpg

l100-dial.jpg
 
The answer is simple. If you do not like (the yet to actually be publsihed) actual sell price of the new L100s, then I'm sure you wont buy them. For those that have fond memories of the Ls, new certainly is now going to be an option. I ran L100s for nearly 2 decades, finally replacing them with a set of Polk SDA-SRS 2.3s. Its not fair to compare either speaker to each other, different times, different technologies (and philosophies), and of course different prices.

One thing I'm pretty sure of is that the new L100 will not sound the same as the old L100. My (new to me) Studio 530s sound way, way better then my L100s ever did, and that is with a 5.25" woofer.

View attachment 1085689


'ner

530s sound way better than stock L100s to me too. Have considering upgrading my L100 crossovers because of that for a fair fight. How do you like the 230s?

One good thing about the new L100s is the price of the L100s might go up even more LOL. As it is now though the reproduction grills cost almost as much as the speakers.
 
With a little patience I'd think those enamored with the L100, for whatever reason, could hold out for some real fine examples of the real deal.
Classic Coke, anyone?
 
It's a niche market, kind of like why Dodge offered the (for example) Viper...

I'm thinking these new L100s are more in the vein of the PT Cruiser. Nostalgic appeal selling for a huge premium.

It WOULD be really cool if the grilles fit on the original speakers. I'm definitely interested in the speaker stands.
 
I'm thinking these new L100s are more in the vein of the PT Cruiser. Nostalgic appeal selling for a huge premium.

It WOULD be really cool if the grilles fit on the original speakers. I'm definitely interested in the speaker stands.

The PT Cruiser? Really? Basically a wagon variant of ChryCo's cheapest vehicle, the Neon (used the Neon chassis / design and many components). Built cheap, sold cheap, nothing more.

China (and other LCC) production and quality has ALWAYS been a battle for those of us who have purchasing departments who quote components there. Yes we send them CAD files, yes we send them engineering data, yes we send them specs, tolerances, and validation testing criteria. They never meet all of the specs, and usually we run out of time to make tooling changes and figure out how to use the crap that we've got on a ship already. I have (as an Engineer) been through this for 30years, and it hasn't changed. Better quality will come from countries that have more of an engineering understanding of the components and how to produce quality parts, and those with complete understanding of quality control. I shouldn't get started on this, ...

The new L100s are not old L100s and have absolutely nothing in common nor any performance parallels, I don't even know why old L100s are in this discussion other than JBL's marketing angle. If the point is to bash original L100s lets just start an L100 haters thread and make that separate, leave this thread for those who want to discuss the performance and merits of the new L100 re-issue.
 
Remember that the goal -- at least until modern times -- of monitor loudspeakers was to be a known quantity (i.e., of predictable and well-understood performance characteristics). As such, the original L100 fit into the ethos of the market at the time. They were, as has been pointed out, purpose-built to replace Altec 604 Duplexes (albeit with much lower sensitivity -- but that's another story).

Given that studios of the 1970s, 80s and beyond also routinely included Yamaha NS-10 and Auratone (Horrortone) cubes... the notion of accurate monitors (in that era, at least) should be pretty much squelched.

Yes, these new L100s are nostalgia reboots -- but, for better or worse, they've been rebooted with modern technology so it's a pretty safe assumption that they won't sound much like their progenitors.
 
530s sound way better than stock L100s to me too. Have considering upgrading my L100 crossovers because of that for a fair fight. How do you like the 230s?

One good thing about the new L100s is the price of the L100s might go up even more LOL. As it is now though the reproduction grills cost almost as much as the speakers.

The 230s sound a lot like the 530s. Their humpback symbiotic horn really does a fine job. I often tell the speakers to start acting their price ($300 when on sale), but they just don't listen. BTW, both the 530 and the 230 are right next to my AR-4X and Dynaco A25XLs. They are leagues above these old classics (of course, IMO).

GO VIKINGS!!!!!!
 
The 230s sound a lot like the 530s. Their humpback symbiotic horn really does a fine job. I often tell the speakers to start acting their price ($300 when on sale), but they just don't listen. BTW, both the 530 and the 230 are right next to my AR-4X and Dynaco A25XLs. They are leagues above these old classics (of course, IMO).

GO VIKINGS!!!!!!
With you on this opinion! My 4429s and 6332s have a very similar sound. And you would think that would be the case. The same folks built and system integrated/measured both. I should add that they probably were listened to and tweeked by the same people.
 
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