which is a better speaker

About 10 years ago while temporarily living in Dallas, I discovered a great vintage audio store in Bedford, TX chocked full of all the great audio gear from the 70’s that I yearned for back then but could not afford. I heard all “the (mid-fi) good stuff” from that era at this store.

I listened to several JBL models, some of which were their most upper-line models that had very high asking prices due to their notoriety “back in the day”. To me, they all sound very upper-midrange forward and shouty when played with a wide variety of vintage gear from many brands. I eventually heard the Pioneer HPM 100s and bought them on the spot. Still have them for my second system (all 70s vintage gear) and always will. For me, they get the 70’s sound right. Another great speaker from that time was the Watkins Stereo WS-1a which I also own. The HPM 100s are probably the better sounding speaker overall IMO.

One of the great things about this gear is that it is not “high end” and doesn’t pretend to be. Accuracy of timbre and other esoteric high-end concerns are not a priority. It is squarely aimed at rowdy reproduction of 60s/70s/80s rock (think lots of distorted electric guitars and amplified drum kits) and that it does superbly. The real trick to making these systems sound fantastic is to add a vintage parametric equalizer, like the Pioneer SG9500, to freely and unabashedly shape the character of the sound to your preference, which I would never ever do in my high-end system.

Enjoy your journey @mike317!

@dicockrum

 +1  Good non-crabby answer and advice for the OP's inquiry.

Brilliant all guys on here.

Not one recommendation of a speaker model or even a reference to any save OP's present speakers.

OP picks two speaker models out of thousands and asks which is better.  He tells us nothing about his room, his tastes and only identifies his Marantz.

Only @dicockrum attempts an answer.

.We are finally learning that silly questions cannot usefully be answered.

I liked the Pioneer HPM100’s when I first heard them. JBL has always been a favorite and slightly more efficient. Between those two I would choose the JBL’s.

Not a fan of either. Pioneers had a nice tweeter, but that's about it. JBLs were built better, but boomy and hardh. Find a pair of JBL L-110s ca. 1980. Those are killer, will be very happy driven by a 2265B. JBL got all the pieces right - it was the first ported speaker I ever heard with extended, tight bass. The soft dome tweeter was a vast improvement, and everything could keep up with the LE-5a midrange. Add to that mid and tweet level controls and impeccable build quality and you have a classic.   

As for the 2265, Marantz always had ballsier receivers because they had better power supplies and discrete transistor high current output stages. This was why they also tended to cost a bit more than the Pioneers and Kenwood's of the day.

I worked in a shop that sold tons of Advents, a speaker known to blow tweeters when pushed. The high watts/dollar receivers were heavily current limited to protect their wimpy output stages that only performed well into an 8 Ohms resistor. Rather than damage the output stage, current limiting essentially clipped the amp at a level low enough to not hurt the outputs and dumped the resulting trash into the speakers. This was marketed as a feature that protected the amp. We rarely saw blown speakers driven by Marantz and HK, blown tweeters were common with Pioneer and Kenwood receivers.