cc1091 Posted November 25, 2002 Share Posted November 25, 2002 Well maybe not. I just wanted to share my enthusiasm for a pair of 23 year old speakers that a buddy just picked up. They're NOT Klipsch. Ok don't tar and feather me yet. It is horn loaded. They're JBL L220s, last manufactured somewhere around 1979. WOW! Passive radiator with...I think it was a 15" woofer. A Hartsfield like midrange horn with the baffled front (forgive me horn fans, I don't know the JBL lingo), and the cat's eye tweeter. It was mated to a 25 watt Cary tube amp. Nice deep bass, coupled with clean & nicely resolved horn sounding midrange and a powerful extended range tweeter. Dynamic and authoratative. Clean, crisp. Hits all the usual Klipsch frequencies (35hz-15Khz+/-) and then some (yes I think these JBLs were punching down to nearly 25hz and definitely close to and perhaps beyond 20Khz) Anyone got a pair to sell? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Invidiosulus Posted November 25, 2002 Share Posted November 25, 2002 Sounds awesome, those older JBL speakers can amount to some really good listening. Peace, Josh Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TBrennan Posted November 25, 2002 Share Posted November 25, 2002 I parted-out some L-220s that a friend had owned a few years ago. The woofers is the 14" LE-14 with a 15" passive radiator. The midrange is a 5" cone, LE-5-9, with a lens in front of it. Not a horn. The best thing is the 076 "catseye" horn tweeter, argueably the best horn tweeter ever made. My friend had 4 of these speakers and totally abused them running each with a strapped Crown DC-300A. The crossovers were trashed, blown, I'd never seen blown capacitors before. The LE-14s worked but had rotten foam surrounds and sagged spiders, I junked them. I gave the passives to a guy for a project, traded the boxes for a pair of JBL LE-175 compression drivers, kept the LE-5s as paper weights and kept the 076s in case I ever decide to use tweeters. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cc1091 Posted November 26, 2002 Author Share Posted November 26, 2002 You're right. After I wrote this I checked http://www.lansingheritage.org/ and found the literature for the L220s That is a cone midrange with a "lens" in front of it. Odd. I assume the JBL Hartsfield is actually a horn? Anyhow, it did sound awesome. My buddy was using an older Carver Amp to drive them but didn't like the sound. Switched to his Cary tube amp and found it to be a great combo. You could hear how crystal clear the catseye tweeter was. The sound difference between that and a Klipsch tweeter (my Heresy tweeter to be exact), was incredible. By the way, my Heresys didn't like the Cary. Seemed to drive the squawker very well, but the tweeter was almost AWOL. Weird. Sounds fine hooked to my Rotel. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TBrennan Posted November 27, 2002 Share Posted November 27, 2002 CC---Yeah, the Hartsfield was a horn. JBL made a number of horn-lens combinations, in fact the lens on your pal's speaker was mated with a horn too. I still have the lenses around, have some horns for them too. The 220 was the only JBL I ever saw with a lens over a direct-radiator. Janszen made an electrostat with JBLish lenses over the electrostatic elements, that was kinda weird. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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