Northridge Visit - Day 1

As many of you are aware, I have been in LA for the past week to visit with JBL staff and some of our Lansing Heritage history contributors that are outside of JBL. I am still in travel mode and will be for the next week, although the website related part of the visit is largely over. Regardless, my available time will be unpredictable until I return so that I will be posting on an ad hoc basis as time permits.

I have to state up front that there is a substantial portion of this trip that I cannot document for the next few months. All I can say is that the future looks bright for significant new developments from JBL that I will elaborate upon once they become public from Harman International.

I can state that in the past, these trips to Northridge had been at my request. This time, my attendance was at the request of JBL and they went out of their way to accommodate myself, Steve Schell and Giskard who I invited along. I managed to spend four of the five weekdays this past week at Northridge and staff went out of their way to schedule time with us and generally make us feel appreciated and welcome. The following is a photo record of some of what we saw.

Monday started with a meeting with a delegation from Japan consisting of senior representatives from Stereo Sound Magazine (Japan) and Harman Japan. I have had dealings with both in the past. Harman Japan has provided most of the digital images used in the K2 S9800 driver profiles and Stereo Sound has been an ongoing asset in both providing us with a no cost subscription to their magazine and providing ongoing input on JBL's influence in Japan. It was a really good meeting them for the first time even though I no doubt committed some cultural goofs. I didn't seem to do well in the traditional business card exchange that resulted in the odd awkward moment. However, I seem to have been forgiven as I think we got along quite well.

After meeting with the Japanese delegation, we had a meeting with Mark Gander. For those who don't know, Mark is our mentor at JBL. He was responsible for first soliciting JBL support for our endeavors in providing access to their corporate records and key staff members. He is currently Vice President of Marketing for JBLPro and he spent time with us describing JBL's current endeavors and future direction in the pro market.

The day ended with a listening session - for what, I cannot say. Here, from left to right is Stereo Sound's photographer (Hajime Someya I think), Paul Bente, President of Harman Consumer Loudspeaker Division, Ken Yasuda, President of Harman Japan, and Koji Onodera, Senior Editor for Stereo Sound.

By the look of all those smiles what ever is at the other end of the room has got to be something exciting:applaud:

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Originally Posted by John

By the look of all those smiles what ever is at the other end of the room has got to be something exciting:applaud:

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Affirmative :yes:

I love the look on Paul's face. - "There's going to be some soaking wet crying towels is what there's going to be when the competition sees and hears these beautiful babies!"

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Originally Posted by Giskard

Affirmative :yes:

I love the look on Paul's face. - "There's going to be some soaking wet crying towels is what there's going to be when the competition sees and hears these beautiful babies!"

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I didn't think JBL really had any competition.:D


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Originally Posted by Don McRitchie

.... we had a meeting with Mark Gander. For those who don't know, Mark is our mentor at JBL. He was responsible for first soliciting JBL support for our endeavors in providing access to their corporate records and key staff members. He is currently Vice President of Marketing for JBLPro and he spent time with us describing JBL's current endeavors and future direction in the pro market.

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Brilliant marketing.... (not to mention a great good will gesture from a large corporate entity)

I, and countless others i am sure, are deeply thankful for the insight....

Rumor is that there are two woofers involved... We shall see how that plays out in the end. High performance comes at a price and certainly compromises in the crossover point tree of life.

Im sticking to the K2S9800 SEs and the Arrays for the moment.

The Sure fire and ONLY way to reel me on on the "new ones" would be a world class spectacular finish....not some painted over wood with milky black. Again...only time will tell how they end up when production rolls around.

I'm not sure I'd risk anything by posting anything... :no:

Is there a time frame till us forum members can get some insight on the situation?:bouncy:

Maybe Don has an answer. I don't.

Don, thank you for posting it is very refreshing to see a company
care enough to share some insight with their consumer's.

Does anyone know where we will be able to listen to these xx-xxxxx speakers when they are released? I would consider buying these depending on some hard to get around points including selling my signature 800's;)