Hey "Joseph Smith Jr", you might look into this neat little feature called the edit button. That's the reason why you don't see others posting back to back in the same thread several times in a row within the span of a few minutes.
This site has more collective JBL knowledge than anywhere else on the planet, so I'd say he's already come to the correct place.
Perhaps you can elaborate on what exactly about this series you consider to be a "ticking time bomb" . There are many drivers from over the years which either never had a re-cone kit available or they are no longer available, and many functional fixes have been brainstormed. Recall, JBL doesn't even consider a re-foam to be an acceptable repair. Officially it's re-cone or nothing. It's the community that came through in making re-foaming viable, and I wouldn't be surprised if solutions can be found for other issues also - to the extent that those issues even exist.
You are again referring to lack of a recone kit? Would this not apply just the same to all other speakers where recone kits are no longer available for any reason? Who is to say that there isn't a functional solution to the OP's problem?
Yeah you've made your dislike for the L series very clear in this thread, about a dozen times. I just want to make sure that the OP knows that whatever experience you aparently had which generated so much dislike for these speakers, there are also many of us on here who still love these speakers, and have not had any insurmountable issues with them.
Doesn't that apply to most speaker repairs? Who is to say that the OP can't do the work himself?
The value of these models has gone up consistently especially with the wealth of knowledge and discussion to be had on sites such as this. They have largely been rediscovered in the last 10 years, creating many very happy users who have had few if any issues with them. That isn't to say that problems can't or won't happen, but you seem to be trying to mold the discussion into a narrative that suggests these problems are inevitable and not worth the risk. You could probably extend that logic to any vintage speaker, but most of us are doing just fine even with speakers that are double or more the age of the 90's L series.
While I'm sure that your hatred of these speakers does have some real-world basis, the positive experiences that so many of us have had with these speakers should also be taken into account.
The idea that it's always better to have a "pro" do it, is a blanket statement that you can probably apply to any repair. Certainly no repair should be attempted unless using the "correct" adhesives, etc, but that is hardly unobtainable information in this era of the internet. God forbid anyone actually attempt a repair, the might "botch things up"!
OP, I wish we had more information about what happened to that driver before you bought the speakers. My guess would be that they were simply pushed too hard, probably to the point of repeated over-excursion, where the only thing stopping the cone movement is either the spider reaching it's limit (which would explain the detachment) or the voice coil physically hitting part of the magnet assembly. The L5 is an amazing speaker, but in my opinion the 8" woofer is undersized. IIRC even the designer himself (who posted on these forums) wished it had a 10". The 8" driver isn't bad, but it will hit it's limits a lot quicker than other JBL speakers with a 10" or 12". Having that happen occasionally still should not cause problems, but if we imagine something like a party where the music is cranked and everyone is walking around half-drunk, it's not difficult to imagine the woofer sitting there destroying itself over the course of the night. Here is an example of what you can expect from a 708G-1 very near it's maximum bass output: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZR12g1WJgw This level of output would be almost trivial for a 12". Again that isn't to say that the 8" is bad or even deficient, but the L5 probably benefits more from a sub than most JBL speakers. An L5 with a subwoofer, where the 708G-1 is no longer burdened with the lowest frequencies, would eliminate the over-excursion risk, and would likely best most other JBLs.