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L65 Crossover

fizzgig

fizzgig

Well-Known Member
Just entered the world of JBL with a set of L65 Jubals.
I had the 12" surrounds repaired and just got them set up in a temporary position in my listening room.
I found myself getting up to adjust the brilliance and presence multiple times when a new recording/artist would start playing. The speakers are powerful, present, and revealing but a bit shrill...and I love my high end frequencies.

I've read differing opinions on crossover rebuilds for these. Would they benefit from replacing the paper capacitors? Would it tame the high end at all? Are there other mods for these to help calm them down?

I've been doing a lot of reading on these but havent really seen a comparison thread for a x-over redo or mod. Pointers?

Original purchase thread here:
http://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/jbl-l65-jubal-project.822313/

Thanks in advance!

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Congratulations! My standard approach is to replace those old Mylar caps with modern film caps and give the L pads a good cleaning. I think you will find a significant improvement. IIRC, the Jubals had three different generations with three slightly-different crossovers; I don't recall the details but you might want to look into whether it's advisable to use a later version of the crossover, since it's probably just a matter of using slightly different cap or resistor values. Not sure about the coils.
 
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Zonker92 said:
Congratulations! My standard approach is to replace those old Mylar caps with modern film caps and give the L pads a good cleaning. I think you will find a significant improvement. IIRC, the Jubals had three different generations with three slightly-different crossovers; I don't recall the details but you might want to look into whether it's advisable to use a later version of the crossover, since it's probably just a matter of using slightly different cap or resistor values. Not sure about the coils.
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These are generation 1 Jubals with the 126a woofers. Dont think I want to re-invent the crossover, just wondering how it will affect the sound if I do recap the crossover...if at all. If I do a crossover reconfigure, I would need follow someone elses work, but I havent found a thread about it.
Would you be able to tell me what caps you use for replacement? Mouser is down the road from me.
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The first thing that I would try would to be to put a 20 ohm, 10 watt resistor in parallel with the tweeter terminals. JBL did this on the 2405 in later offerings to smooth out the impedience curve a bit. I do this on all of my JBL slots except that I use 12 watt Mills resistors.
 
toddalin said:
The first thing that I would try would to be to put a 20 ohm, 10 watt resistor in parallel with the tweeter terminals. JBL did this on the 2405 in later offerings to smooth out the impedience curve a bit. I do this on all of my JBL slots except that I use 12 watt Mills resistors.
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I may be reading this incorrectly, but is there already a resistor in play?

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fizzgig said:
The speakers are powerful, present, and revealing but a bit shrill...and I love my high end frequencies.
Click to expand...

I have had Jubals since the 70's and played them up till a few years ago. I found that recently I got a LOT of ear fatigue, to the point where I had to turn them way down. Then I got my L200's back from a long hiatus at my brothers house. The ear fatigue was gone! I as an experiment took the tweeters out of the L65, seeing if there would be any improvement to adding them to the L200, sort of a poor mans L300, and I found to my delight that there was a nice improvement and without the fatigue I suspected was from the 077's before..

But that lead me to think that it was the mid range drivers in the L65's that was causing the fatigue, but perhaps it was the crossover caps too.. Will be interesting to hear what you discover as to your shrillness. Don't assume like I did that it was the 077's because they sound great in the L200's.
 
Alobar said:
I have had Jubals since the 70's and played them up till a few years ago. I found that recently I got a LOT of ear fatigue, to the point where I had to turn them way down. Then I got my L200's back from a long hiatus at my brothers house. The ear fatigue was gone! I as an experiment took the tweeters out of the L65, seeing if there would be any improvement to adding them to the L200, sort of a poor mans L300, and I found to my delight that there was a nice improvement and without the fatigue I suspected was from the 077's before..

But that lead me to think that it was the mid range drivers in the L65's that was causing the fatigue, but perhaps it was the crossover caps too.. Will be interesting to hear what you discover as to your shrillness. Don't assume like I did that it was the 077's because they sound great in the L200's.
Click to expand...

I only got to listen for an hour or so last night for the first time. They aren't even in good location for performance. I'll play with placement and positioning and the speaker brilliance and presence adjustments before making any major changes.
That being said, last night when I blocked the mids with my hand a lot of the shrillness went away. I did that because I wanted to make sure I had sound from the tweets, which I did. The mids seemed to be overpowering the tweets.
Tonight I'll play around with the presence lpad to see how it affects them.
 
fizzgig said:
They aren't even in good location for performance. I'll play with placement and positioning
Click to expand...

Well the first thing those who have owned these and lived with them for a while will tell you, they don't make good end tables! Unless you sit on the floor. Elevate them and or rock them back a little and they will have pretty nice sound! Yours are the original L65' like mine. If you want to get better sound from them many (including JBL) said to replace the woofers with the 128H1. This was what I had envisioned with mine as mine were damaged beyond repair but then my L200's came back in my life and I went with those..
 
Alobar said:
Well the first thing those who have owned these and lived with them for a while will tell you, they don't make good end tables! Unless you sit on the floor. Elevate them and or rock them back a little and they will have pretty nice sound!
Click to expand...

Oh yeah, they are already lifted by a foot. See pic in initial post.
 
The LE5 midranges are notoriously peaky around 8K; see the blue line here:

spl_drivers_noXO.jpg


They literally embody the West Coast sound. Later JBLs that used that driver rolled them off well below 8K to avoid that "feature," but older models like the L100 let that driver run full range.

I didn't look up the Jubal's crossover frequency for the tweeter (6500 Hz maybe?), so I'm not sure if they let the midrange run too high (and thus too hot) but that's definitely an issue worth exploring.

Interesting thread here:

http://www.audioheritage.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?1200-L65-Jubal-upgrades
 
Zonker92 said:
The LE5 midranges are notoriously peaky around 8K; see the blue line here:

spl_drivers_noXO.jpg


They literally embody the West Coast sound. Later JBLs that used that driver rolled them off well below 8K to avoid that "feature," but older models like the L100 let that driver run full range.

I didn't look up the Jubal's crossover frequency for the tweeter (6500 Hz maybe?), so I'm not sure if they let the midrange run too high (and thus too hot) but that's definitely an issue worth exploring.

Interesting thread here:

http://www.audioheritage.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?1200-L65-Jubal-upgrades
Click to expand...

Yep, they xover at 6500.
Screenshot_20180601-121157_Adobe Acrobat.jpg
Thanks for the thread link. Will start digging in. I imagine I can tweak a couple of the components (or add) to help with that peak in the mid while also keeping the xover design the same.
 
I purchased a very nice set of original L65's about 6 months ago. I also found the upper end very harsh after setting them up in my listening room. So I got out my Behringer 8024 and Shure KSM109 mic and looked at the response in Real Time Analyzer mode (Pink Noise) in my listening room environment. The Shure KSM109 has slight rise in response of about 2.5 dB at 3-4 kHz and from 7- 10 kHz so I kept this in mind. I found my L65's were very hot in the mid range around 6-8 kHz. I am running them approx 8 feet apart, canted in slightly, 6-12 inches from the wall (due to canting) and elevated 12" off the floor. Brilliance set at +1, Presence between -3 and the max attenuation mark. This really tamed them down for me. I listen to mostly 70's - 80's rock and Jazz. McIntosh MX 114, MC-2105, Nakamichi 482, Teac A3300SX-2T, Pioneer PL-518 with custom Walnut plinth, Shure V-15 type-V with aftermarket stylus. "Old-School"
 
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JBL, at the time, seemed to be cheap on inductors on their X-overs. Made some models sound so-so, unfortunately. Excellent drivers that benefit being corectly
x-overed. Nevermind the ''nostalgia sound'', making them sound as they SHOULD, is the idea i think!.
 
turboyam said:
JBL, at the time, seemed to be cheap on inductors on their X-overs. Made some models sound so-so, unfortunately. Excellent drivers that benefit being corectly
x-overed. Nevermind the ''nostalgia sound'', making them sound as they SHOULD, is the idea i think!.
Click to expand...
Absolutely right on
More justification for a Biamped system
 
turboyam said:
Yep, but a bi-amped, wouldn't get rid of that LE 5-2 Mid, 8khz hump. I still believe in passives but done right!.
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Yes just cross them over below 6k triamp?
I think it’s also why Jbl put slant lenses in front of them on the L222’s although they weren’t Le5-2’s. That I prefer
 
Punt the Le5-2 and replace with 104h2 or 3....this goes for the L100 series also. I believe Simply Speakers has a Le5-2 knock off but I have not seen a response curve on it yet.
 
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