doucanoe
01-30-2011, 10:27 AM
I made a trip yesterday to visit a friend who is in the theater sound biz. He's been upgrading and replacing these old cinema systems for years and has accumulated many of the old JBL and Altec theater relics from the past.
We were talking before I made the drive about this and that and that and the subject of the JBL 4672A's came up. He said that he had a few pair of these in storage and seeing as how I was a horn guy, thought I might get a kick out of hearing a pair.
After we hung out for a spell, we decided to haul a pair of these down to the lower level to play around with. They had been sitting idle for about two or three years and sounded as such initially. After about a hour of so of run time they were really starting to sound surprisingly good for "PA/Theater" more or less. These have the 15" 2225h for LF and 2370A/2426J for HF. The x-over was the original, designed for the 4672A.
It might be my imagination but the LF (under 100Hz) these were producing was much greater than any A7 I have owned in the past and the HF from the 2370A/2426J was surprising as well. I have not had any experience with the 2370 horn but had read many times that it was a tough one to wrassle into sounding good for HIFI. That combo with whatever x-over magic that was going on, although certainly not the best I have heard was very passable IMO.
We ran these through a pro pink noise/RTA setup and low and behold, other than a blip at crossover, it was reading pretty damn flat out to 20K! I didn't know you could coax 20K out of a 2426 no matter how much you massaged the x-over. This also shocked the heck out of me. Could this be accurate? I mean "data" doesn't lie right? :dont-know:
Anyway, Andy was jazzed that I was getting such a kick out of them that he sent a pair home with me. I have a pair of 2395's and these may be the perfect starting point to try those in a three way. Not even sure I can fit in my room to play around with yet but try I will :D
We were talking before I made the drive about this and that and that and the subject of the JBL 4672A's came up. He said that he had a few pair of these in storage and seeing as how I was a horn guy, thought I might get a kick out of hearing a pair.
After we hung out for a spell, we decided to haul a pair of these down to the lower level to play around with. They had been sitting idle for about two or three years and sounded as such initially. After about a hour of so of run time they were really starting to sound surprisingly good for "PA/Theater" more or less. These have the 15" 2225h for LF and 2370A/2426J for HF. The x-over was the original, designed for the 4672A.
It might be my imagination but the LF (under 100Hz) these were producing was much greater than any A7 I have owned in the past and the HF from the 2370A/2426J was surprising as well. I have not had any experience with the 2370 horn but had read many times that it was a tough one to wrassle into sounding good for HIFI. That combo with whatever x-over magic that was going on, although certainly not the best I have heard was very passable IMO.
We ran these through a pro pink noise/RTA setup and low and behold, other than a blip at crossover, it was reading pretty damn flat out to 20K! I didn't know you could coax 20K out of a 2426 no matter how much you massaged the x-over. This also shocked the heck out of me. Could this be accurate? I mean "data" doesn't lie right? :dont-know:
Anyway, Andy was jazzed that I was getting such a kick out of them that he sent a pair home with me. I have a pair of 2395's and these may be the perfect starting point to try those in a three way. Not even sure I can fit in my room to play around with yet but try I will :D