Vintage Speakers Worth Owning Today?

[Ciobi69]

got the klipschorn myself, sadly i cant put them in the corners, i eq'd them with dirac, they are amazing, unlimited dynamics, with the eq in the middle of the room the frequency response is fine, i love them, but they are too much for my living, looking for a pair of kh420 instead,this is a screenshot of 1 channel of the horn

 

[Adi777]

frequency response

It's a green line?

 

[Ciobi69]

Ys it's the green

It's a green line?

 

[EJ3]

John Prine was a home-boy for me, he was raised on the near west side of Chicago within walking distance of where I lived. One of the great folk song writers of our generation, I put him right up their with Dylan though he never enjoyed that level of success. When you have the time listen to his first album John Prine, and his last, Tree Of Forgiveness, 50 years of great music are in the middle, you'll be hooked. But for now just check out this quick tune off his first album, Sam Stone, for a quick look at his greatness. It's also one of my personal favorites, bet you'll know why.

I like Dylan better when someone not Dylan does it.
I like John Prine better when John Prine did it.

 

[blanddawg62]

They give a great, neutral and deep bass, but there are probably better ways to achieve that these days.

Let's not forget the AR9 or its smaller brother AR90. Both full range and produce smooth frequency response and awesome SPL through power handling ability. Of course they would need recapping and refoaming if they haven't been done already.

 

[blanddawg62]

IF ONLY
If only I had a home with a large family room, pool table in the middle, nice bar along a side wall.
If only I had the funds I'd fulfill a early childhood fantasy to own the JBL Paragon stereo speaker system
I'd put a 100" LCD flatscreen right above it and add some surround speakers + Atmos overheads
All it would take is the cash, but I ain't got none.

Enough cash would place all of that on a nice big sailboat with an all female crew.

 

[blanddawg62]

In a bag somewhere. I'm thinking I'll keep it off the feet and put a small layer of rubber insulation on the bottom. I like the looks sans feet. L100s on a wooden floor aren't a good idea, but raised on stands lowers the typical boom you expect, and hence (I suppose) acoustic interference to the turntable.

What I found obvious is the need for a subsonic filter. Playing records on either the Technics or Garrard causes the woofers to pump significantly. You can watch it on the lead-in groove without music playing. Can't really hear it, but you see it. Because of that, I run everything through a dbx equalizer which has a low filter, and I can also make certain mid-range adjustments to the L100s--to smooth out that portion of their FR. Sure, it's a '70s sound, but I've kept this stuff with me forever, and it's served me well. I might try the Maxell 'blown away' experiment if I can find a cassette deck!

Some say that the speaker in the 'Maxell' ad was an HPM 100.

 

[mhardy6647]

Some say that the speaker in the 'Maxell' ad was an HPM 100.

It's a JBL L-100 (or one of the monitor equivalents).
Note the grille.

Is it live or is it Maxell by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

 

[Kumabear]

I personally am in love with very late 80's and early - mid 90's JBL large studio monitors.

Just fantastic, and cheap at the moment

 

[Adi777]

How good are drivers from JBL versus the newest speakers with the lowest distorsion?
I talk about JBL drivers like from Westlake Audio Tower, PBN Audio, probably also Lenard Audio.

 

[SCR]

Another one for the JBL L-100 Century (although they only turned 50 this year, making them 1/2 a century). Mine are a tad modified, there is a new crossover to have a proper separation of the three drivers, the bass reflex port has been closed with a plug on the inside and the enclosure filled with damping material.

 

[Kumabear]

How good are drivers from JBL versus the newest speakers with the lowest distorsion?
I talk about JBL drivers like from Westlake Audio Tower, PBN Audio, probably also Lenard Audio.

The original question is if they are "worth owning"

I have zero doubt that some of the most modern up to date drivers out there do indeed have lower distortion than these older speakers.

That said JBL pro studio monitors are NOT the same as the L100 series of consumer speakers, particularly from the very late 80s onward on 4400 and 4400A series of speakers, the 4400A's in particular have much more modern crossover networks.

The 4400A series were used extreamly widly to master a huge amount of music in the late 90's all the way up to the mid 2000's and in my opinion despite the more "utilitarian" look of the cabinets, they were the sonic peak of JBL as a loudspeaker company, at least if you don't count the exotic unicorn unobtainable options and are after a neutral true to source speaker.

I have a set of JBL 4410A's as my L+R along with a JBL 4412A as my center speaker, and while I have no way to measure the distortion levels reliably, the in room frequency response is essentially dead flat from 50hz on up to 20khz.

While this may or may not be to everyone's taste there is no "faults" to correct, and extremely basic tweaks with a parametric EQ can make them sound however you could like them to, I will post a couple of screenshots of uncorrected sweeps if people are interested, obviously this would only be relevant to my particular room.

All I can comment on distortion levels is that I sometimes catch myself listening way too loud, and only notice when I stop and my ears are ringing a little, they are so clean that you have to be very conscious of just how loud it is, because they just seem to sound better and better as you turn it up.

The cabs are super thick and solid, and damped incredibly well internally, I took the drivers out to have a look inside to be sure nobody had messed with them being almost 26 years old. I have never been able to detect any cabinet resonance

I am actually extremely envious of people in the US, because the 4410A's in particular are insanely cheap over there and nobody seems to want them, because they are "Ugly"

 

[blanddawg62]

In my personal experience, another great place to do business for repairs is:

Audio Proz (Watertown, MA) has been in the Hi-Fi and Pro Audio business for over 40 years. The owner, Vince Naeve has worked for companies such as Apt, H.H. Scott, and KLH. We are a different kind of shop. We assist our customers by helping them choose the correct equipment for their application, with special attention to the serviceability, longevity and manufacturer support. We try to be competitive on prices for new products and all of our used items are fully serviced, calibrated and Warranted. We do not stock cheap throw away electronics that are actually more expensive to own and needlessly pollute the environment.

A quote from Vince
We get a lot of calls about this matter. More and more music lovers are realizing that many older design woofers are still very competitive performing with modern parts and so it’s worthwhile to replace woofer surrounds. Personally, I’ve seen older Advent, HH Scott, some Infinity, the better original KLH, and especially a wide range of AR woofers that can perform better than some esoteric parts. Magnet, voice coil, and cone technology has made some great strides in improvement today, but most consumer-grade chain marketing speakers are certainly inferior to the great designs of the 60’s to the 80’s. To be clear however, tweeter improvements have been more remarkable due to the ability to wind more accurate voice coils and the availability of higher quality dome materials.

The important advice I can give is this: Although I applaud the hobbyist who will try “do it yourself” speaker edge re-foaming, this job is actually more difficult than it appears. In my experience I seldom (if ever) see it done correctly.

By the time the foam deteriorates, usually the voice coil centering spider has either bottomed out or the lacquer impregnated cloth is now off center. To do re-foaming correctly requires removal of the dust cap, insert a voice coil positioning former and a trained eye to know where the center of the voice coil falls in the magnet gap. Moreover, I see many foams which are incorrect and consequently inaccurate cone re-centering will result. A skilled re-coner knows how to shim the foam height and use the right foam thickness to ensure optimal cone vibration dampening.

Even more problematic is the fact that re-foam kits don’t address the correct edge angle of foam to cone and as a result, buzzing of the foam edge will occur. Again, an experienced re-foam tech will know which foam is truly appropriate. I will get annoyed when people say it sounds fine to them, but I hear severe foam buzzing or worse, an off center voice coil rubbing on the magnet gap. In time this situation will wear away the enamel coating of the voice coil wire and expose bare copper wire at the rub area, effectively intermittently shorting the speaker voice coil. Ultimately this situation causes the amplifier to work unstably, and often causes overheating. Then, yes, the amp will burn up.

In my opinion even an average re-coning tech will do a better job (from experience) than a hobbyist. I hope you will trust me on this matter, but if you consider yourself knowledgeable about speaker technology and you’re very careful, then you may get it done right. Good luck, and let us know if you do need help.
Inquire about this Repair

I have done dozens of speaker resurrounds by using a 30hz test tone which forces the centering of the voice coil.

 

[blanddawg62]

One thing that is certain is that alot of these Vintage speakers are still going after 30 or 40 years. I wonder if today's will do the same.

 

[mhardy6647]

One thing that is certain is that alot of these Vintage speakers are still going after 30 or 40 years. I wonder if today's will do the same.

oh -- many are still dazzling after much longer than that.

1930s or early 1940s RCA theater horns with electrodynamic drivers. Dazzling to listen to.
(EDIT: In full disclosure, the small horn tweeter at top right is a relatively modern permanent magnet driver and horn. Relatively.)

 

[pseudoid]

I never not owned a pair of Vandersteen2C speakers.

I recently found out Vandersteen has released Model 2Ce SigIII (8th gen.)
I'll be waiting for some loyal current-owner to upgrade, and leave their older 2Ce SigII by the curbside.

 

[Frank Dernie]

I have done dozens of speaker resurrounds by using a 30hz test tone which forces the centering of the voice coil.

How would that do it?

I can see no technical reason how a 30Hz tone could centre a voice coil with sagging spider.