I've been thinking about this one for a while...

Recently, I was brought a pretty ubiquitous repair to do... a pair of L100 Centurys needing tweeter kits. I contacted the local JBL service center guy to place an order, and while talking to him, we got into the whole issue of JBL, seemingly NOT wanting to deal with much of ANY of their vintage products anymore. Things like the now-common 6-9 month wait for recone kits to go thru production, complete discontinuation of entire bunches of kits, and the like. In the service guy's words, he was warning me that the situation was getting WORSE, not better. As in, we may need to start stocking up now, 'cuz if the fat lady ain't singing, she's at least doing her pre-concert gargling with salts and such...

What we were musing on, was the consequence of said ditching of old stuff, on the PERCIEVED VALUE of JBL as a brand in general. IMHO and IME, a LOT of the value seen in buying JBL, has been their SERVICABILITY, and the EXPECTATION that when you bought one, you were getting it for the LONG HAUL. Sure, a number of recent products have been kinda "disposable"... you blow a driver, you can only get a whole replacement driver for them, and such. But, there's still the AIR of COMPANY BACKING... and I'll suffice to say, that once this is gone, we're gonna see the bottom fall out of a LOT of used (AND new) JBL product percieved value, and therefore, the price that can be charged and willingly paid.

In short, I'd really hate to see JBL pull an Altec Professional Products... the main reason, IMHO, that JBL completely cleaned Altec's clock in the '80s, was exactly this- SERVICE...

(Whoo boy... I guess I'd better batten down the hatches with this one. If this doesn't generate a firestorm of words, then what will?? )

Regards,
Gordon.

ps: anyone got any LE25 kits they can spare, or plan to order any soon? JBL says they have like 15 orders in the queue, of like probably 50 or more needed for them to run off a batch...