1960's Grey back JBL D120F's

[Genmin]

Hello to all, just registered today 2/16/09 My first question is, I am interested in vintage Lansing products and would like to know which forum would be best suited to ask the members of this vintage subject. In particular, the latest or most current information on date coding/serialization of numbers on 1960's JBL d120F's Thanks already, Genmin

[Genmin]

Posted earlier, need some direction to vintage JBL speaker codes/serialization nomenclature and other, please read my first post and respond. There may be threads from the past on this subject, just do not know where to look or maybe you guys can give me directions, make it a little less painful, Thanks to all, Genmin

[Harvey Gerst]

Apparently, George Martin's notebook (which contained all the serial numbers and dates) was destroyed in the big fire. Your D120F's are probably from the late 60's. What else do you wanna know about them?

[Genmin]

Hello "Hifi", Thank you for responding, I have two Fender amplifiers known to be special order and JBL installed, by my research and viewing other period correct amps with the grey D120F's I find peculiarities in the numbering, I am not sure as to the numbers being a sequential number exiting the manufacturing line in order produced. In my case my 1962 has later a serial code than a set of 2/12's from a 1964 amp. I have also noted this for later years as well, up to about 1970 vintage. My guess is that this serialization is a coded type that was propietary information and we out here without Mr. Martin's book are a little left in the dark. I just thought with all the sleuthing going on maybe through this site and over the years something came out of the wood pile. Although I could be on to something. Amps with single speakers pose a bit of a problem, but when two are installed the numbers reveal someting as the sequence, if original to the amp the last two numbers are usually fairly close. Making something of the first three numbers is what might be the icebreaker. And like I said above about an older amp having earlier numbers numerically leads me to believe that this is the coded part. From what I have gathered I would guess that the last two digits do indeed reflect a week code based on 1-52. But the moment I find a speaker with the last two digits of 53 or greater then off to school I go again. Can you ascertain from your personal insider knowledge that the "F" was actually designated for the Fender line. Or will this part number be found elsewhere on other brands. Thank you. Genmin

[Harvey Gerst]

Here's how the "system" worked:

When speakers were finished, George Martin would enter the model and serial numbers in his little book; the speakers would be packed, and put in the cage near the shipping dock. Since Fender was the distributor for our musical instrument speakers, they would be shipped to Fender as orders came in.

We decided to use Fender as our distributor, rather than try to open up a whole new distribution chain to music stores. Fender already had a good distribution chain in place.

I'm pretty sure that Fender installed speakers pretty much like we did. If we needed two speakers, we grabbed two off the shelf in the cage and used them. If we founnd two sequential numbers, we'd use those, but there was no rule that they must be sequential. Most often, we'd just grab two drivers off the shelf and that was that.

Since Fender was also selling individual speakers to dealers, I imagine they weren't too picky about serial number matching for their cabinets either. If they found two numbers that matched or were close, they'd probably use those, but I don't believe we or Fender were ever too fussy about it.

We DID try to use sequential numbers when making Paragons as I recall, but that was because we (as assemblers) thought it was cool; there was no directive from management about it - at least, none that I remember.