About a year ago, I stumbled upon a pair of JBL L5s at a local Boy Scout yard sale. Not knowing much about the model itself, I used my generic audio knowledge and saw that they used binding posts instead of cheap spring clips and they felt very heavy and solidly built so I bought them for a measly $10.00 and brought them home. Now, the last thing I needed was yet another pair of speakers gathering dust in my basement, but these guys piqued my interest. They were in pretty rough shape, missing 3 of the 4 grills, filthy and looking a bit abused but for the money, how could I say no?
When I got home I hurriedly hooked them up to my system and had a listen. Not bad, a bit bright and very little low-mids and deep bass. I wasn’t all that impressed. Upon closer inspection and research I discovered that these were some pretty nice speakers. They received many favorable reviews from their owners and JBL fans; the cast aluminum baskets were a nice surprise as was MSRP on these babies. That being said, they weren’t much to look at and wreaked of 90’s BPC but still, they had a certain something.
One night over the winter I read that these speakers had a genuine wood veneer under that ugly black paint (I always thought it was vinyl) and decided to see if it was true. Sure enough it was and few days later, all that black paint was gone and my restoration project was underway. I found that both woofers were in need of new surrounds and one of them read 0 ohms across the terminals. So my goals are as follows:Next up, the crossovers are going into the shop this week. I’ll let you guys know how it goes…
- Get replacement woofers (Ebay) or get them reconed
- Have the crossovers gone through by a local tech to make sure nothing is burned out or shorted
- Refinish the cabinets
So I tackled the last item first. I used some dark oak Howard’s Restore-a-Finish (which I had left over from restoring some ADS L1290s I rescued from a local thrift store) and Howard’s Feed and Wax. I’m quite happy with the way they came out. I like the contrast of the oak with the black bezel, which I hand, polished to look like a piano black finish. I think that some brass floor spikes will look nice and give the speaker a nice “high-end” look. I am very impressed by the build quality of these cabinets and the crossovers and can see why these get the love that they do.
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