JBL 4341 and future plans..?

[Mika K]

Few months ago I bought JBL 4341 Studio Monitors with original alnico drivers that I think are pretty rare. Technically these are working brilliantly but by closer inspection the grey finish is not so good with the holes from studio mounts and other equipment. Also the bases were damaged badly and at the moment I'm just using some wooden furniture feet as a replacement. Already decided that these speakers are keepers and ordered heavy Kenrick Sound style bases for the speakers from local carpenter that does also speaker cabinetry and also new black studs for the nice shape grills that came with the speakers. Hopefully these will arrive in few weeks.

61530

However I've been thinking should I start small project to renovate the cabinets to suit my living room little better (or atleast use some kit and original style paint). The biggest question is should I also do some upgrades to crossover to replace the capacitors, internal wiring etc. at the same time. One of my friends has even suggested to make these semiactive at the same time by adding some quality plate amp for the bass containing possibly DSP, and drive just the mids and highs with my McIntosh gear.

Performance wise this sounds like a valid thing to do as these speakers and especially the bass driver seems to like fair amount of grid from the amp and this could be easily done with some modern D-class amp etc. On the other hand I'm bit conservative in these issues and decided to ask your opinion here. Has this semiactive mod been done by somebody for the 434x model monitors? Or just tell me what do you think of this?

Thanks.

[grumpy]

Thinking out loud: biamp and entirely remove the stock crossover (for future value).
Build a new "charge-coupled" network for the mids on up. Think about possible mid
compression driver updates. Very involved and time consuming effort though.

nice looking system!

[Mika K]

Thanks! These finally substituted my Altecs in Hiragas Onken enclosures and Jabo horns being smaller and fitting better to the living room of our current house :)

Was thinking to use some plate amps for the bass and leave the crossover as is, or then just recap the whole thing. Naturally new crossover could be one option also if schematics are easily accessible for a novice like me. Any more information for the compression driver updates as have not been reading about these yet..

[grumpy]

Recapping the stock unit will not increase it's value... and may hurt it.

The compression driver updates are of the "move to a 4-inch driver and
compatible horn" and "Be driver" (ala TAD) variety. Both will require
reviewing the network, and likely measuring efforts.

There are tested updated-network schematics of all mods mentioned
so far (may require some looking around here). Also there are walkthroughs
of a few such builds. When you narrow down your scope, we can probably
point you to specific pages.

[Mika K]

Thanks, will do a search and try to clear my plans.