Your Favorate JBL's from the 70's

As a young teenage audiophile I used to drool over 4311's, but couldn't afford them at the time. (Anyone know their original street cost?) I had to settle for the pair of Pioneer HPM100's I had, which a friend who did eventually get a used 4311, used to tease me calling them boom boom speakers.

I was recently in a friends apartment and saw he has 4311's which he still uses (I guess he had more money than me as a kid). He mentioned he was planning on getting them refurbished (which he often has done to fairly valueless electronics at considerable expense) I have advised him not to refurb them, but rather spend the money (plus some) on some newer but low cost audiophile speakers, possibly used. Any thoughts on this? He has a cheap reciever also from the 70's but I'm trying to get him to go for a Chinese tube integrated amp.

Well I guess in the end I have compensated for never having gotten those 4311's. My well chosen system (approx $50K) using OTL tube amps and the amazing Raven One turntable reproduces "real" sounding music, not just good hi fi playback. (you can see my virtual system if interested in what relative depravation in youth can spawn in later years)

Aaaaahhhh, I can't remember the seventies

My system is undoubtedly "better" than way back then, but I got just as much, more?, pleasure with my humble system back then. I have not thought about JBL in a long time, but when I got my first pair I thought I had it made. I reget not keeping them, they were certainly of a time and place.

I didn't have a stereo for the middle 70's but I ran sound for a rock band & we used JBL 18's in some 4560 cabinets, along w/some Altec 18's in VOC cabinets. Or was it the other way around? Topped off w/some Emilar horns, I just thought of it as my giant stereo.

I had L-88's with the wood veneer fronts, with cutouts for the grill cloth in front of the woofer and the top 6 inches for the tweeter.

As a high school senior in 1974, I had an after-school job and used my savings to buy a Pioneer SX-838 receiver (50 wpc), a Dual 1229 TT, a Wollensak 4765 (what a great cassette deck that was!) and a pair of EPI tower speakers. After a while, I decided to replace the EPI's, sold them to a friend and bought the JBL 88's from an on older guy who was the son of a friend of my parents. Man, they rocked! 12" woofer, bass port in front and a tweeter with an adjustable "tone control" knob to raise/lower treble output.

One time, I raised that treble knob all the way, turned the receiver's treble tone control all the way up, put on ELP's "Tarkus" (there is this cool, phasey drum thing on it) and destroyed the tweeters. I didn't know that there was a covering on the outside ring of the tweeter that had to be removed to expose the screws to remove the tweeters, so I removed the whole piece of wood that the tweeters were mounted to, sent them to JBL for repair/replacement. When I got them back, (replaced at no charge), the new tweeters were mounted in the wood, just as I had sent the old ones.

I guess the blowout occurred during the summer, because I remember going back to college with the L88's, and their not having any tweeters in them. I compensated by placing my old pair of dept. store stereo speakers (I think he brand was "Columbia") on top of the JBL's, and connecting both pairs of speakers to the two sets of speaker outputs in the Pioneer receiver. It worked great.

I had them 'til I got married, and then some. When I needed to downsize, I bought JBL 18ti's (much smaller, but with the JBL house sound). I recently replaced the 18ti's with GMA Europas, but the negative WAF forced them out. Now everyone is happy with Von Schweikert VR-1's, which have a very full sound for their size, but don't thrill the way the JBL's could.