Rebirthing JBL L100T (pics)

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Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 10, 2006
Messages
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So, I found these speakers near the garbage outside my apartment and I decided to take them. Mostly for just the cabinet and I was going to replace the speakers in it. I know that it has a 1" tweeter, 5" mid and 12" sub in it. I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations or good sites I could buy individual parts from to make these things shine. They work right now, but sound like crap.
 
Here's a picture of one of the speakers for your viewing pleasure.

IMG00001-20090103-1415.jpg
 
If that driver still works, put this is the ghetto mod section!
 
why not refoam those properly.it would look,and sound loads better.
 
Oh my god... that picture almost makes me want to cry.

You’ve got yourself an amazing pair of speakers.

The JBL L100T’s were made from 1985-1987.

To understand why these are so great, let me give you a bit of quick history of JBL. Back in the 60’s and 70’s, the JBL 431x monitors were very popular in recording studios. They were so popular and sounded so great that engineers were buying them and taking them home for personal use. JBL capitalized on that and made the JBL L100, which basically used the same drivers as the studio monitor in more of a consumer package. The speaker was tremendously successful, and many of their designs were evolutions of that original package.

Sometime around the early to mid 90’s, they started pushing the mass market really hard, and that’s about when their home stuff went from being great (using similar components to their pro gear, built to last, etc) to the kind of junk that you can still find in best buy’s today.

The JBL L100T’s were made toward the end of their “good” period, where you have all the technological advancements they made in refining their 3-way studio monitor design but it isn’t cut down mass market crap. You can see a bit of mass-market starting to take hold in them (veneer instead of real wood like in their previous speakers, etc) but the components are still top notch.

The 2214H woofers (the victims in this case) are absolutely wonderful. They go low enough and can handle enough power to make most subwoofers laugh. JBL Continued to use this driver for many years afterward, in various professional models such as the 4425: http://www.jblpro.com/pub/recording/4425.pdf

They actually still sell 2214H drivers, given how widely they were used in the pro monitors: http://www.plccenter.com/buy/JBL/2214H

The 104H Midrange drivers and 035Ti (One of the first tweeters to use Titanium, before it became a marketing buzzword) are no less impressive.

Both the 104H and 035Ti drivers continued to be used in JBL Pro applications for a very long time. The JBL 4412 uses both: http://www.jblpro.com/pub/recording/4400.pdf

DO NOT SWAP OUT THE DRIVERS!

Let me repeat…

DO NOT SWAP OUT THE DRIVERS!

That would be like gutting an old camaro or mustang and shoehorning in an engine from a kia.

I paid about $300 for my pair of L100T’s a few years ago on craigslist, but they were mint and had already been refoamed. I’ve listened to them nearly every day since and continue to be impressed by just how good they sound, and how they are still better most other speakers upwards of a grand.

Refoaming isn’t too hard, but given all the tape, etc on them now, I’d look into having them professionally refoamed. When I got a pair of JBL L150’s back in 2002 (made 78-82) they needed refoaming. I paid $35 per woofer to have them professionally refoamed and I consider that a decent price. The kits to do it yourself are cheaper, but JBL drivers have small voice coil gaps which make them a bit more challenging to refoam compared to other brands of woofers.

These places might also be helpful as they are full of people into vintage audio/vintage jbl:
http://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?
http://audioheritage.org/vbulletin/index.php

DO NOT SWAP OUT THE DRIVERS WITH PARTS EXPRESS TRASH!
 
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