S3VC Center Channel Speaker & The L Series...?

[Slare]

Hello everybody...

I have a bunch of L series speakers, L1's for surrounds, was using L5's up front but recently upped to L7's. I'm using a EC35 true 3-way center channel speaker at the moment, as it was the best match I could find and works well with just a touch of treble boost. I use subs so <60Hz from my center isn't critical to me.

I went through a bunch of centers while running the L5's... EC25, LC1, SC305, S-Center1/2, even the rare CL505 and a stab at a CL505 reworked with some L drivers. I liked the EC35 best.

Recently on ebay a Synthesis S3VC center popped up, and some refurbs are still available from JBL. I'm wondering if anyone has any seat time to know how this center might stack up with the L7/L5's? I don't have any intention of abandoning the L's I have, and would like fill in this one last missing link with the best match possible.

And before people chime in otherwise, I don't have room for a L3/L5/L7 center channel, and like the idea of a conventional form factor (short wide box) center channel speaker. I won't lay a L speaker on it's side.

I know the S3VC is meant to be used vertical and am not sure if it was designed to be used horizontally at all. I think that might be a killer right off. I'm also not sure about the tweeter, but the 6.5" woofers are shared with the L series. I have no problem refinishing grill cloth to match.

I'm really intrigued by it because I think it is the only JBL factory center channel to use drivers from the L series lineup.

Thoughts?

[rdgrimes]

I think the LC2 is one of the most neutral centers I've heard, and can be blended well with a range of other models. Not very small though. I ran one for a bit with a vintage L150A/L112/L96 surround setup and was not disappointed. Can be had for a lot less.

I'd be leery of laying that one on it's side since it changes the dispersion.

[Titanium Dome]

I know I posted about it somewhere here, but a direct response is easier. The S3VC and its sibling, the horizontal S3HC use a pair of 706G drivers along with a horn-loaded 1" Ti compression driver. Fortunately, it doesn't have active switching like the S3M units for FR and FL mains.

I have an S3HC, and the cabinet is a dead ringer in fit and finish with the L Series, except for the Synthesis® identifier. The grilles look quite similar, and of course two of the three drivers are straight from the L Series.

One could easily remove the horn, install a mounting plate, and put an 035TiA in its place, if one were so inclined. The grille would hide any poor workmanship.

The catch is what to do about the crossover. What's in there won't work very well, as it's set up for a compression driver in a horn. My lazy guess is to grab a crossover from an L3 or L1 and give it a go.

[Slare]

Well without seeing one hands on, the bolt pattern for the horn looks awfully symmetric. Maybe you could just rotate it?

I had an LC1 and didn't care for it at all. I can't put my finger on it but it just sounded very dead to me and I really didn't like the tweeter, despite it being a technically good one. I know the LC2 should be a much stronger speaker overall but I just couldn't talk myself into trying one after coming off the LC1.

[rdgrimes]

I had an LC1 and didn't care for it at all. I can't put my finger on it but it just sounded very dead to me and I really didn't like the tweeter, despite it being a technically good one. I know the LC2 should be a much stronger speaker overall but I just couldn't talk myself into trying one after coming off the LC1.

Night and day difference. The LC2 has a mid-range, the LC1 does not. My point was just that it's a far cheaper model to experiment with, and very impressive in performance for the price.

[hjames]

Night and day difference. The LC2 has a mid-range, the LC1 does not. My point was just that it's a far cheaper model to experiment with, and very impressive in performance for the price.

Yeah, Love my LC2 - and surprisingly, it does work well with the 4341s!

[Slare]

Hrrm so it seems like the S3HC takes care of the whole orientation problem.

Have you ever tried it as a center with L5's or L7's? Is it just way out in left field? Seems like you may be the only fella on the planet equipped to render a verdict...

I know I posted about it somewhere here, but a direct response is easier. The S3VC and its sibling, the horizontal S3HC use a pair of 706G drivers along with a horn-loaded 1" Ti compression driver. Fortunately, it doesn't have active switching like the S3M units for FR and FL mains.

I have an S3HC, and the cabinet is a dead ringer in fit and finish with the L Series, except for the Synthesis® identifier. The grilles look quite similar, and of course two of the three drivers are straight from the L Series.

One could easily remove the horn, install a mounting plate, and put an 035TiA in its place, if one were so inclined. The grille would hide any poor workmanship.

The catch is what to do about the crossover. What's in there won't work very well, as it's set up for a compression driver in a horn. My lazy guess is to grab a crossover from an L3 or L1 and give it a go.

[Titanium Dome]

Hrrm so it seems like the S3HC takes care of the whole orientation problem.

Have you ever tried it as a center with L5's or L7's? Is it just way out in left field? Seems like you may be the only fella on the planet equipped to render a verdict...

Since you're from the Motor City (close to my birthplace of Toledo, home of Telegraph Road, my old cruising haunt, and part of beautiful MI where I lived for 20 years) here's what I'm gonna do for you:

This weekend I'll take a couple of photos of the thing to show you its orientation. Then I'll hook it up and run it with the L5s to see how well they play together. Since my L7s are in my downtown LA office, the L5s are the only weekend Ls that I have.

Then I'll post my impressions here. (If you buy something else before the weekend, let me know so I don't do all this in vain.)

[Slare]

Hehe. My office is on Telegraph road and I have some friends from Toledo with some good stories of that town/University. We're not exactly leading the pack up here these days but I don't think it's half as bad as people make it out to be. And when JBL's do pop up (not often) they are pretty cheap!

Anyways, I've scoured the net for pictures of the S3's so I don't think any special photos are required. From what I can tell the finish and even the front baffle build/design are spot-on matches for the L series. So I'm all square there.

For me it's purely a sonic question and the idea of getting a good "life partner" center to hang with my L's. Comparisons with the L5's will do just fine.

I've had some HLS620/820 and SVA1800's pass through my hands which are my only basis for a dual woofer + "horn" loaded design. Obviously the HLS kit is pretty poor ($2 tweeter) and I wasn't as fond of the SVA's sound as I thought I would be. Honestly I was really disappointed in them, though I know the tweeter in them is again an completely different animal.

So I'm a little leary of the midrange definition possible in a two way like this. I know it can be done, but haven't heard it out of mainstream kit yet.

On the completely opposite side, I really love the sound of the L1's so I know a two way can work with the 706 on bottom half, so I'm a bit enamored by the potential of this speaker filling my wishlist.

I really don't understand why JBL didn't just step up and make a real center using the the L series 6.5's, mid, and 035. In my mind (at least) it would have been a real show stopper. I wish I had the ability to design such a beast. I have to wonder - if you had those drivers around and used them with an L5 crossover... would that work? I don't know enough about crossover designs and baffle arrangements. Seems like it would be really complicated. But the potential...

[rdgrimes]

I really don't understand why JBL didn't just step up and make a real center using the the L series 6.5's, mid, and 035. In my mind (at least) it would have been a real show stopper. I wish I had the ability to design such a beast. I have to wonder - if you had those drivers around and used them with an L5 crossover... would that work? I don't know enough about crossover designs and baffle arrangements. Seems like it would be really complicated. But the potential...

I build a center out of an L86 using 2 706Gs and a PC600 XO. (thanks Dome) The results are mixed and it needs a lot more work. The XO for any such project clearly needs to be scratch built or modified from something else. With that as a starting point, any drivers can be used. The real hang-up is the use of 2 woofs on a XO built for one.

[JBLAddict]

Well without seeing one hands on, the bolt pattern for the horn looks awfully symmetric. Maybe you could just rotate it?

I had an LC1 and didn't care for it at all. I can't put my finger on it but it just sounded very dead to me and I really didn't like the tweeter, despite it being a technically good one. I know the LC2 should be a much stronger speaker overall but I just couldn't talk myself into trying one after coming off the LC1.

I have L7 Fronts, L5 rears, and and LC1 center, which I picked because it fit in the space I had. The LC1 has been universally slammed here, though I don't quite get it, I think it has very natural clear voicing and a quite competent tweeter, for a speaker that's primarily for dialogue.

While I understand it being slammed relative to centers with a dedicated mid, I can't understand it being slammed to other two centers with a tweeter flanked by two MF/LF speakers?

[Slare]

RD - That's why I thought the L5 crossover would be a decent starting point. It's already arranged for a four-way with proper crossover points and slopes for the drivers. It'd just feed lower frequencies to one of the 706's which I'm fairly certain is a technique used in some other JBL centers already. But when you get into centers guys a lot smarter than me start talking about comb filtering and time alignment stuff I'd have to dedicate a lot more learning to. Do you have any pictures of that build? I'd be really curious to see what impact using a L5 xover would have. I have to imagine the PC600 xover is a lot different as it's original drivers are quite different.

JBL - With respect to the LC1, I'm sure it's a fine center but it didn't match up with my L5's (that I was running at the time) very well imho. Everybody's ears and source preferences are different and the golden rule is if you like it, it doesn't matter what everyone else thinks. I think one of the things it had going against it is I had a slew of JBL centers all together at one time and as soon as I found one I liked better, each previous one was fairly quickly dismissed. Honestly it was silly at one point I think I had a stack of five or six different JBL centers.

If I recall properly I thought the LC1 was fine for dialogue, but one of the other (a bit odd, I'll admit) tests I do with center channels is to hook it up as a L/R speaker while keeping one of the L/R's I'm trying to match in place. I then play really familiar 2-channel music to evaluate how well they match up. To my ears, the EC35 and S-Center II I had at the time did better on this odd test than the LC1.

[Titanium Dome]

I wasn't as fond of the SVA's sound as I thought I would be. Honestly I was really disappointed in them, though I know the tweeter in them is again an completely different animal.

So I'm a little leary of the midrange definition possible in a two way like this. I know it can be done, but haven't heard it out of mainstream kit yet.

On the completely opposite side, I really love the sound of the L1's so I know a two way can work with the 706 on bottom half, so I'm a bit enamored by the potential of this speaker filling my wishlist.

I really don't understand why JBL didn't just step up and make a real center using the the L series 6.5's, mid, and 035. In my mind (at least) it would have been a real show stopper. :

As you probably know, I'm a big fan of the SVA stuff, but not everyone likes it. It is different. The crossovers are pretty straightforward, though.

The L Series was produced at an interesting time during the first big consumer movement toward adding sound to television. JBL's primary HT emphasis was either Synthesis®, HTIB, or some cheapo add on surrounds and center (like Flix). The contemporary Synthesis® Three system was the multichannel big brother of the L Series, and it was based on the then current theory that direct radiators made better music and horns made better cinema. In music modes, the center generally wouldn't be used, so there was no need to make it an active switching unit like the left and right mains; hence, it only had a horn and no direct radiator tweeter.

[HCSGuy]

I am assuming from the course of this thread that you are looking for a horizontal center speaker (as TDome mentioned, a S3HC rather than S3VC). If so, and you are trying to stay in the same vintage, I think you're stuck with homemade. While I'm not a big fan of the L series, I've used an L1 as a center to L7's, which worked out very well, especially off axis. I wouldn't put the S3VC in the same league - very different sound. It doesn't have the detail on top or the presence in the upper midrange. I've got an S3VC playing with L5's right now to test with and am not thrilled. It's pretty neutral, and blends well when everything is playing, but if you shut everything off but the center it's a little flat sounding. An S3HC would look great and certainly be servicable, but not perfect. I like TDome's idea of pulling out the horn - I wish there was enough room to put a 704G and 035Tia in vertically, but there isn't (won't even fit an 027Ti and a 704G). Maybe if you went with a tweeter from the Control series you could make it fit. By the way, the horn is not square (8 3/8"w x 7 9/16"h) so you can't rotate it.
Hope this helps.

[Slare]

Thanks for the input. It's interesting how everyone has such different preferences. I've heard a good bit of JBL stuff barring true old vintage and high dollar, and the L series is my favorite by far.

I had a pair of SVA1800's for a couple months. They were a cheap CL find that I cleaned up and eventually passed on. Great bass out of those speakers (huge enclosures) but I thought they were really soft in the upper midrange, and the big killer for me was what seemed to be really terrible off-axis with a tiny tiny tiny sweet spot. If the S3 is anything similar on the upper end, then your feedback makes perfect sense to me.

I have a mtm CL-505 center and a 035tia fits just fine where the HRD tweeter goes. 704's bolt in, as well. I'd like to have dual 708's in there with a single 704, but know from other centers that I can be satisfied with good ~5" woofers. The 704's seem to have good enough bass response for a 80-100hz hp use. I just have no idea about how to build or what to use for a crossover, and the CL-505's certainly doesn't work.

Is there a crossover expert thread?