How many here own a JBL speaker less than 5 years old?

[Wagner]

Wagner, I think you have had too much caffeine today...........

There is no inconsistency in being sad that Greg Timbers and Jerry Moro lost their jobs or angry in how they were unceremoniously released from Harman and also realizing that if sales aren't there then ultimately changes have to be made.

I am not suggesting it is the sole responsibility of forum members here to keep JBL afloat by buying their new product. But if the JBL faithful here in the US will not purchase their better speakers, it does not bode well for JBL going forward as they will see this as vindication for why they only offered them in Japan to begin with.

So based on that I am glad to see that many here have recently bought new JBL product.

Why did you sell the business?
This is it, correct?:
http://www.audiovideologic.com/

Why doesn't your store's website feature any shots of your demo rooms, with all those nice TOTL JBL speakers? Makes the website look like a drop shipper's or a warehouse store's without any.
Might want to consider that
Did find a few on-line though:
http://www.yellowpages.com/urbandale...o-logic-503070 (may want to update, no JBL in the brands list)

http://www.houzz.com/pro/audiovideol...io-video-logic

Is this one of you?:

[jpw]

I have been open in a number of posts about my affiliation with my former retail store. So there has been no hidden agenda although some that may have one will invent one for me. Yes the five year old photo is of me next to a custom JBL subwoofer. You can tell from the gray hair why I sold. Time to retire! The store has six sound rooms and totals about 4600 sq/ft. More photos of rooms will be posted as our webpage redesign is completed. Most of our business is local to Des Moines retail although we do have lots of long distance customers too.

[Wagner]

I have been open in a number of posts about my affiliation with my former retail store. So there has been no hidden agenda although some that may have one will invent one for me.

No one that I am aware of said that there was

Get some photos up of some of those high end JBL installs!

At least you still have some hair

Good luck!

[1audiohack]

Two 1400 Arrays and two 1500 Arrays, three years ago. Two 4365's just over a year ago. All new.

All the parts for a pair of DIY M2's including the Crown I-TECH 5000HD amps, this year.

Vintage driver re-cone kits and parts in five years? far too many to mention.

Am I happy with JBL? Nope but I am well balanced, I have a chip on both shoulders.

Barry.

[BMWCCA]

I have a pair of LSR305s that I purchased within the past year and enjoy very much. I consider them a fine speaker system available at a very fair price.

Am also the original owner of a pair of L112s purchased new when I was but a few years out of college. Bought them for our bedroom for our first anniversary almost 34-years ago. The cost then was nearly $1000 per pair, from my local dealer where I still live. It would seem if I could do that then, I'd be a prime candidate for some current JBLs today. The problem is there is nowhere to hear them. I think I would be impressed with the 590 but I'm not inclined to buy them from Harman off the web without having heard them first. My local dealer is still in business, under new ownership recently, but no longer handle JBL. They apparently still find enough buyers for their McIntosh line, Klipsch, GoldenEar, etc, but not JBL. I don't know why that is but I suspect that recently JBL has expended all its energy in producing TOTL systems for sale elsewhere while at the same time diminishing their name value by slapping it on cheap plastic crap which makes it hard for customers to take their $60k products seriously and especially their more reasonably priced models—no matter how good they actually are.

[dprice]

LSR305 and parts for M2 clones.

Theoretically I would have purchased something between the 4312E and the K2 S9900 if I could have listened to them at a local shop. Local meaning a large part of Florida.

[VJunction]

I live in Des Moines and know Audio Video Logic well. I've know the store since it opened at it's first location. Great store, great people period! They have several very nice show rooms showing the gear they carry. The links below are something from a builders site I assume for home theatre stuff. They are anything but drop shippers. I love the fact that I have always been able to take equipment home and audition it. Good store, good people that have with stood the test of time in a hard industry that depends on sales from mostly "desposable income".

Why did you sell the business?
This is it, correct?:
http://www.audiovideologic.com/

Why doesn't your store's website feature any shots of your demo rooms, with all those nice TOTL JBL speakers? Makes the website look like a drop shipper's or a warehouse store's without any.
Might want to consider that
Did find a few on-line though:
http://www.yellowpages.com/urbandale...o-logic-503070 (may want to update, no JBL in the brands list)

http://www.houzz.com/pro/audiovideol...io-video-logic

Is this one of you?:

[Wagner]

I live in Des Moines and know Audio Video Logic well. I've know the store since it opened at it's first location. Great store, great people period! They have several very nice show rooms showing the gear they carry. The links below are something from a builders site I assume for home theatre stuff. They are anything but drop shippers. I love the fact that I have always been able to take equipment home and audition it. Good store, good people that have with stood the test of time in a hard industry that depends on sales from mostly "desposable income".

The first link is to their own website, if it weren't for the "builder's" page I'd have had no photos other than a Google street view

Secondly, I DID NOT ACCUSE them of BEING a drop shipper, just stated that their website LOOKS LIKE ONE

And it does

[Wagner]

Regarding price, comparing street price then (fair trade and no internet), for street price now (internet and sold much nearer dealer cost), and adjusted X4 for inflation from the 1970's, many of JBL's speakers today are no more unreachable for the average guy now than they were then. MSRP on the L-100 was $273 each vs $1000 each for 4312E (today's pro version equivalent) and available for closer to $750 each.

Except that budgets are tighter now due to stagnant wages and massive inflation of housing, education, and healthcare (none of which are included in the badly-flawed "Market basket" model of inflation used for CPI)

Yes, I agree 100%

I love it today when people (especially politicians) throw numbers around like that

"Well, it was $273 then and that means (only) a $1,000 now after being "adjusted", so it's all the same thing so what's your problem?"

A dream world where money is just a number and the result of the latest contract negotiation or business decision; "sorry, nothing personal, it's purely a business decision" as you hand the guy his pink slip

I don't think a great number of people really know just what a typical "living" is nowadays, or how few folks could actually buy a pair of speakers TODAY that cost $546 without destroying their budgets for a couple months OR putting them on a credit card

Unless they are fortunate enough to have a good gubmnet job

[VJunction]

To me their web page does not at all look like a "drop shippers" web page. The first thing you see is the their complete street address, email, phone numbers , store hours, open late Thursday......

I'm not accusing them of being a great hi end store, I'm implying it

The first link is to their own website, if it weren't for the "builder's" page I'd have had no photos other than a Google street view

Secondly, I DID NOT ACCUSE them of BEING a drop shipper, just stated that their website LOOKS LIKE ONE

And it does

[Wagner]

To me their web page does not at all look like a "drop shippers" web page. The first thing you see is the their complete street address, email, phone numbers , store hours, open late Thursday......

I'm not accusing them of being a great hi end store, I'm implying it

Being a drop shipper, or a big box store, or a HT installer isn't necessarily a bad thing, I am not "implying" that AT ALL

Many of the popular "high end" on-line sellers are a hybrid of both worlds: small stuff in onsite inventory and the big stuff comes out of a warehouse someplace after you place your order..............why pay for, and risk the perils of redundant shipping (and at the same time lose your profit) Mutually beneficial networking

Example: I buy a lot of product from FCP Euro in Connecticut. When I order, and pay them for a radiator it is shipped not from their location but a Nissens' warehouse in Texas. But if I have any problems with the order or any warranty concerns arise, FCP's Connecticut location handles it in exactly the same fashion as if I walked in off the street and bought it from their store front. You're not shined on to some manufacturer's service center

What I am saying, not implying, is that it is cheesy and nothing about it conveys "high end" or "high performance" or "high" anything

It looks about as "high end" as the Parts Express website; the OP claims a first class nationally inventory so why not show it?

Something a little better than JBL stock photos the size of a postage stamp with no indication of what is, or isn't, "in stock" unless you put it in "the shopping cart"

Just might sell more of it that way, maybe pull in more out of state buyers as well

Hear me now?

Nothing personal, just business

[hsosdrum]

My current JBLs are pair of 4312Es that I got directly from JBL when I was working at Harman (being used as one of three pairs of studio monitors), a 4641 subwoofer (bought retail) that I'm using in my home theater setup (see below), and a pair of Control CRV surface-mount contractor speakers that I won at a Christmas raffle also when I was working at Harman (still new in the boxes—there's no place to put them in my 1,000 square-foot house).

I also have one of the old paging speakers that had been used in the JBL factory. The paging system had not been used since JBL moved the bulk of their manufacturing out of Northridge, and when Harman was subdividing the former factory for sub-lease, the facilities crew removed that paging speaker and were going to 86 it in the dumpster. I got wind of this and got them to sign it over to me instead of shit-canning it. By the way, that paging system consisted of 2350 horns powered by 2482 drivers that were hanging all over the building. I was hoping to rescue a second horn/driver combo as Harman continued to shrink JBL, but they downsized our department before I could, so I have just the one. (I've never even checked to see if it still works.)

In reference to another post in this thread about JBL speakers in home theater systems, I put my HT system together in the mid-1990s with Klipsch KT-LCR left, center and right speakers and Klipsch KT-SUR surrounds, which in all respects sounded far better than JBL's comparatively-priced THX-certified offerings available at that time (D'Appolito LCRs w/5-1/4" woofers, and dipolar surrounds, I forget the model numbers). If I had the money I'd replace the Klipschs with five M2s in a heartbeat. Short of that, in the last dozen or so years I haven't heard any speakers from anyone (including JBL) that would tempt me to replace my HT system's L/C/R/LS/RS speakers.

The HT subwoofer is a whole other matter. At first I was using a pair of Klipsch Cornwall IIs as subs (amp directly connected to the 15" woofers, bypassing the crossovers) and they kicked pretty good down to about 30Hz. Then I got married and to improve the WAF I replaced the Klipschs with a single Kenwood THX-certified passive 12" (we bought a house with a much smaller living room). I was never very happy with the Kenwood sub's ill-defined and bloated sound (got it for free when I worked there) and eventually my wife was not happy with me, so after we split-up I replaced the Kenwood with the JBL 4641 (which, coincidentally, shares almost the identical dimensions as a single Klipsch Cornwall). The 4641 is hugely superior to the pair of Cornwalls: much more musical detail, much more authority and more neutral frequency balance. It makes absolutely everything I listen to sound so much more REAL. I just got my hands on a Sonance DSP 2-150 amp (about 475 watts bridged) which has built-in DSP, so when I get it installed I'll be able to utilize JBL's recommended 20Hz high-pass filter and 6dB (Q=2) of boost at 25Hz. Should rock the house!

[youngho]

I don't think you understand that being a drop shipper, or a big box store, or a HT installer is necessarily a bad thing, I am not "implying" that AT ALL

What I am saying, not implying, is that it is cheesy and nothing about it conveys "high end" or "high performance" or "high" anything

It looks about as "high end" as the Parts Express website; the OP claims a first class nationally inventory so why not show it?

And that might be just fine and functional enough for the Iowa market; I don't know and I don't care

Something a little better than JBL stock photos the size of a postage stamp with no indication of what is, or isn't, "in stock" unless you put it in "the shopping cart"

Just might sell more of it that way, maybe pull in more out of state buyers as well

Hear me now?

Nothing personal, just business

Wagner, you don't seem calm to me.

[srm51555]

When I first saw this thread I thought to myself "Wow, three pages of everyone congratulating and drooling over each others purchases". My excitement faded quickly. The only thing I have that is Harman and less than 5 years is a Crown Dci 4300N.

[hsosdrum]

When I first saw this thread I thought to myself "Wow, three pages of everyone congratulating and drooling over each others purchases". My excitement faded quickly. The only thing I have that is Harman and less than 5 years is a Crown Dci 4300N.

This is still a good thread as long as you skip all of Wagner's rants.