There has been speculation here that JBL may decide in the future to discontinue selling replacement parts necessary to service older professional components.

In thinking about this, I began to wonder if this would significantly disadvantage folks in sound reinforcement businesses.

I assume the varaibles that come into play when deciding to buy a new driver or re-cone/re-fram on older dead unit, include:
  • Cost of a new driver compared with re-coning/re-framing
  • Time necessary to perform rebuilds
  • Finding competant service folks
  • Frequency of blow-outs
  • Underlying cause of failures (physical damage Vs. excessive excurtion)
  • Feasibility of using knock-off repair parts
Before I became a bean-counter about 30 years ago, I was in the automatic transmission rebuilding business. Apparently, rebuilding transmissions is not very common today since the technology has become more complex and swapping in new factory units is now the preferred method of repair.

So anyway, if the JBL drivers made today are very ruggid and can take lots of power, is it a disadvantage if occasionally you would need to replace a driver rather than have it repaired?

I assume your "average component life" would be a major consideration but I assume this has increased a ton in recent years.