A stupid question......

Actually, it was more of a swipe at Julian Hirsch and the whole Stereo Review/ Audio magazine editorial style that reached its zenith in the late 70's. The reviews said nothing. They just recounted the specs, corroberated them with their own tests, and finished with a listening session that was always perkily upbeat. Even if it was unadulterated trash, they would make an ambiguous, positive sounding assessment, not unlike my paraphrased quote.
 
Don, I just read your story about no JBL around the house. Great stuff. I have a few yrs on you, and was selling all that JBL while you were trying to save up for it. Worked for a company called Record World, Bay Shore, N.Y.

Company handled JBL, Bozak, KLH, Jensen, and a few other brands. The JBL's on hand were the L100's, L36, L16. Several different Record World stores in the area, all shared the JBL flagships. In our store, we had a pair of JBL Soverign's. I think they were about $1100 the pair. I thought they sounded terrible. Then again, the best stuff we had to drive it with was H-K Citation 11 and 12. We had all the big Pioneer receivers, as well as the Sansui's, and even a couple JVC's, but they didn't sound as good as the 60wpc Citation. IN MY OPINION. Even with the Citation I thought those Sov's sounded bad. I liked the Bozak 302, and the KLH 6. Also a little ADC job that was built like a brick.
I must've sold a hundred pair of L100's, as well as a ton of Pioneer 525, 535, 626, 636, 727, 737, 828, 838. The things that sold the absolute MOST, were the 10wpc Sansui 221 receiver, coupled with the Pioneer Project 40 and 60 speakers. Couple of those systems went out the door everyday. Oh yeah, we had Tandberg TCD-300 cassette decks too. THOSE were cool.

I met Julian Hirsch at Acoustic Research's 40th birthday bash at Grand Central Station in 1994. I don't think he believed me when I told him I had a fully functional AR Integrated Amp. I'm not sure Len Feldman was quite in the same league with the man who has never given a bad review.
Toasted Almond
 
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Hey Toasted Almond ever work Roosevelt Field???

This is clasic I bought my first JBL's from Record World in the mall at Roosevelt Field. The were L-25 Primas which I still have!! They sold some great stuff. Got my L100's in the Sunrise Mall. Got a pair of L-88 with the M-12 expander kits. So could you have been my salesman???

Rob2:D
 
Hi Toasted

The Sovereigns were likely $1100 each. In 1970, they listed at $930 each. I agree that they sounded horrible. I only heard them in their last year of avaiability, 1975. The 075 was one of the most ear piercing tweeters made and the passive radiator design always sounded slow and boomy to me.

The speaker that to this day I regret never owning is the L300. It embodied all of the attributes that I lusted after at the time. However, JBL prices took a huge leap with the introduction of that speaker. I believe it was priced at around $1000 each, or nearly the same as the previous Soverign. It was way out of my league.
 
I worked a couple days at the Roosevelt Field store. I also floated over to Centereach, and the Holbrook store on Mondays. Basically worked out of Bay Shore, a strip mall on Sunrise Highway.

Regarding those Sovereign's, a guy who said he was a merchant seamen came in one day, said he was shipping out the next day. He took one look at those Sov's and they were sold. Young guy too.

Toasted Almond
 
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