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Sleeper JBL speaker?

CharlieBee

CharlieBee

Super Member
I saw where a nice pair of JBL L-50's went for $455 on ebay a few days ago. They had the original foam surrounds but due to their age, how long will they last? Another not so great pair of L-50's, needing surrounds, went for $178.

Is the JBL L-50 a sleeper speaker now, on par with say the L-100?

Charlie
 
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The L50 is simply the replacement for the L36. Crossover is a bit different, that's it, as far as sonic differences are concerned- exactly the same driver complement.

Same mid and tweeter as the L100A, but with a 10" woofer (with a 2" voice coil) as opposed to the L100's 12" woofer (with a 3" voice coil).

Regards,
Gordon.
 
GordonW said:
The L50 is simply the replacement for the L36. Crossover is a bit different, that's it, as far as sonic differences are concerned- exactly the same driver complement.

Same mid and tweeter as the L100A, but with a 10" woofer (with a 2" voice coil) as opposed to the L100's 12" woofer (with a 3" voice coil).

Regards,
Gordon.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the response. There are other differences between the L-50 & L-36. The 10" driver in the L-50 are 127A vs 125A for L-36. The wattage rating is 70 for L-50 vs 50 according the JBL technical Manual and the physical size is different. L-36 is 343mm x610mm x 346 vs 622mm x 362mm x 314mm plus the L-50 is 2 lbs heavier. Both are bigger than the L-100 but it weights 55 lbs vs 47 for the L-50. I agree they will probably sound similair.

Normally the L-50 has sold much cheaper on ebay than the L-100A's but these two recent sales have jumped up some. I have both and can not wait to get new surrounds installed on my L-50's to hear them.

Charlie
 
The 127A is the exact acoustic equivalent to the 125A. In fact, the ONLY difference WHATSOEVER, is that JBL puts the dustcap on the other way... the 125A has a concave inverted dustcap, while the 127A has a normal convex ("dome") installation. IT'S EVEN THE SAME DUSTCAP, just turned the other way. They use the SAME recone kit from JBL, and have the exact same magnet properties.

As for the cabinet differences between the L36 and L50- the only significant difference is the baffle width, which changes the midbass response a TINY bit. The two cabinets are within 1.9% of the EXACT same size, so bass response isn't going to be much of a noticable variation between the L36 and L50...

As for the L56- it's a bit of an unusual speaker. The woofer in the L56 isn't used in any other JBL models... so it's not exactly like anything else. Sonically, it's close to the L40... but the L40 and L26 (which the L40 replaced) seem to have better bass "control'... this is probably related to the L40 using the 127A (with a 2" voice coil) as opposed to the slightly lighter-weight 118H in the L56 (1.5" voice coil). In all, not a bad speaker, but not one of JBL's greatest either, IMHO...

Regards,
Gordon.
 
As far as the surrounds go, I have to replace them on my L-300's about every ten years or so.

But instead of the LE-15's(?) that came with them I have Altec 411's in there.
 
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