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Thread: The seeming demise of JBL OEM parts... and the subsequent devaluation of a brand?

  1. #31
    Charley Rummel
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    Hi, Everyone:

    I have so many thoughts righ now about the demand for classic JBL product support VS the infrastructre of availability from the current manifestation:

    Like it or not, JBL Professional, currently, is an extension of the Harman organization. We can sit here and be aw-stricken about what ever is available from the modern-day manifestation of our beloved JBL from the glory days, but the FACT is JBL Professional TODAY is merily a part of a brand management scheme managed by whatever Harman marketing thinks will compliment the collective effort of all their product, or brand mix. You want a mixer? Harman offers Allen and Heath; You want a power amp? Harman offers a line of Crown amps. You want some speakers? Harman offers JBL. And so forth.

    Personally, I am in love with my classic JBL speakers, of which I have several. I think we are fortunate to have the good graces of today's JBL organization which will provide us with services to maintain our 40+ year old D130, 077 etc., especially after surviving Beatrice (look at what Emerson Electric did to Fisher); at least Harman is gracious enough to have offered support as far as they have.

    Regards,
    Charley
    Last edited by Charley Rummel; 07-20-2003 at 01:22 AM.

  2. #32
    RIP 2010 scott fitlin's Avatar
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    your right

    And so was Mr. Widget when he basically said the same thing! Vintage JBL was PHENOMENAL! But the stuff they make now?

    A local bar owner in my area just bought Mackie speakers. He told me he listened to everything! He DID NOT care for the JBL product. He liked the Mackie speakers sound. The only other speaker he liked better was the EAW,s which were too expensive for him!

    My point isnt that JBL is great for having parts for ALL our old stuff, but that they are losing sales to other brands by NOT making what the users want!

    And yes, Charley, Harman runs JBL with a corporate mentality. But I think the corporation has lost touch with the marketplace! But JBL has been Harman for a long time, and when they arent doing the sales they want, they will get it together! Just my opinion.

  3. #33
    littlemike
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    Quote Originally Posted by Oldmics View Post
    ....Heres a question-When is the last time you had a television set repaired?In my experience its cheaper and faster to purchase a new unit and throw the old one out....
    Actually, just two weeks ago. I tried but couldn't find something that would fit in the space, and all these damn HD-widescreen LCD sets that are flooding the market won't go in my nice oak cabinet. Turns out, the only way to fly with new gear was to buy a commercial-grade CRT set made for hotels, but for over $500, I decided it was easier to get the 7-y.o. Samsung CRT fixed for $100, and it works beautifully now. But I do get your point, most of this stuff is throwaway trash.

    BTW, Mackie and EAW may have stolen JBL's market share, but let's see how long that lasts now that both sisters are now building their product in China.

  4. #34
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    I agree with all of that but I'm glad I didn't say it. Left to it's own natural end this is capitalism.

  5. #35
    Senior Member Steve Schell's Avatar
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    It is a funny situation with TV sets. I remember shopping for my first new 19" color TV back in 1977. Back then anything decent in that size cost $300 or more. The best available, a Sony Trinitron, cost about double that. I bought a Sharp and had good service from it for at least ten years. By the time it gave out good 19" or 20" sets had dropped to about $200 and had more reliable electronic tuners, picture in picture and other goodies. Nowadays a nice new 20" set can probably be had for $120 or less, a small fraction of what my 1977 set cost when allowing for inflation. Even the cheapies these days probably perform as well as the Trinitrons did years ago. Although I'm not happy about our disposable consumer culture, I'd say that the overall cost-per-year for a good TV in a given size has dropped dramatically over my adult lifetime.

  6. #36
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    I guess when Chinese (or who ever is the cheap labor of the day) labor is as high as ours this will change in some way, but probably still not to our benefit.
    Don't stone me for this as it's only an idea, but it might make sense to figure out who in the aftermarket business makes a quality product, if someone does, and encourage them through patronage. I sincerely doubt that the profit made from repairing their installed base is the reason that JBL has kept service up. It's tricky when your old product is what is keeping people from buying your new product If all of a sudden people need new product because there old product ,made by you, can't be fixed, you're not the natural for them to look to for new product. Unless you can work out some neat trad-in practice. Or the like. Does anybody know, Is there a competing pro line owned by Harmon? If JBL gets all the way out of the parts business, that will make enough of a business for someone to do it really right. Till now all the aftermarket had for customers was people who wouldn't pay JBL prices. I'm not advocating anything. Just in this case JBL could be biting and the market, surely not the hobbyist, could be the hand that feeds.

  7. #37
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    Quote Originally Posted by Thom View Post
    If all of a sudden people need new product because there old product ,made by you, can't be fixed, you're not the natural for them to look to for new product.
    I think you'll find JBL probably makes more replacement parts for older models than just about anyone you can think of in this business. If someone buys a more current model, I still believe it will be far better supported in the future than most other manufacturers. Personally, I'd much rather buy new product from a company with a history of comprehensive, if not total, support of older models.

    I don't have any specific facts to back that particular perception up, but do know that JBL still provides recone kits, etc., for models made close to 40 years ago! Most current speaker manufacturers haven't even been in business that long!

    John

  8. #38
    Tom Loizeaux
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    Quote Originally Posted by PSS AUDIO View Post
    ...Products are sold on the name, not for the product...
    We can't audition, test, analyze and thoroughly evaluate every product we purchase, we have to trust the manufacturer. That's why the name is so important! We need product confidence. That's why companies need to protect their names. When they don't they may make some undeserved money on imitations, but will slowly fall from grace. The companies that DO uphold their quality will not sweep up the market, but will continue to be looked up to as a premium manufacturer and maintain the loyality of those customers who care about quality.
    In the final analyisis, I think there are more who appreciate quality then one might think.

    Tom

  9. #39
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    Agreed, but the trend is in the wrong direction. I know AB was going to discontinue the PLC5 line of plc's and the industry basically revolted because if AB had given the new hardware away for free the labor for switchover might have cost industry in the billions. I'm really not familiar with numbers that large so I can't swear I have the decimal point in the right place but basically it's what have you done for me lately and they would have lost a fortune to companies who might not have stood behind their stuff as well but if the current impression is you f-- me you don't get my business. It's probably worse the better you used to be because the contrast is greater. Also if one of your main features was that you weren't like that you start out behind. Anyway AB still services PLC5 and a couple of other legacy lines and there official line is that they never planned to discontinue it, they have no idea where these rumors started. But service parts keep getting higher and they offer some pretty good change over programs and this keeps their customers their customers. There are major differences in the industries but there are similarities as well. I would think JBL would want to try harder now then 40 years ago. The differences between their drivers now and 40 years ago seem to have changed. If you wanted a 4 inch voice coil where could you go. JBL, Gauss, I think Altec had one model with a 4 inch otherwise it was 3 and EV was 2.5. Of course EV said it was because they had superior machine tools and JBL couldn't make the precision adaptors to use 4 inch magnets, which was a standard size, with a smaller VC so they had to use a 4in but I see EV has 4 in now so who knows. Anyway there are lots of high quality drivers now. I'm not saying they are or aren't as good. This is something I don't know, but speaker companies come and go. I believe (I have read it) that Jensen was once the worlds largest speaker mfg. JBL is or has been the worlds largest speaker mfg. Maybe it's not possible to be the largest and best or maybe they have little to do with each other. As I recall the history they started out making superb product and going broke and with a capitalist economy this often the case. Tesla built the 20th century. Edison became wealthy.

    I think today companies see one way of harvesting their name, so to speak, is to use it to sell a lot of product for prices that it wouldn't bring without the name. But you can only harvest just so much without planting and the rest of it before the crop is gone.

  10. #40
    Senior Member CONVERGENCE's Avatar
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    The product line has diversified to the extent that to what purpose one model is to one manufacturer is different to another.

    Comparing Eon to another brand is not the right approach. One should look for a model that fits his needs.

    The engineer who designed the Eon was probably thinking PA. The Mackie engineer DJ.

    All I Know is that JBL has it's flag ships products : Touring and in Cinema.

    As for Studio Monitors the big ones . The components are still manufactured. Who and why they were replaced by Tad is for studio owners to reply.

    .................................................. .................................

  11. #41
    Administrator Mr. Widget's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by CONVERGENCE View Post
    As for Studio Monitors the big ones . The components are still manufactured. Who and why they were replaced by Tad is for studio owners to reply.
    The custom monitor designers may be using TAD components, but as of last year, TAD also got out of the large monitor business... they also stopped producing their mid sized and smaller monitors too.

    It would seem the monitor business has changed due to the advent of surround sound and more project studios.

    As for selling raw drivers... JBL still offers some product though it is less and less each year. TAD offers a very small line up and their production numbers are really small. On almost every order I have placed it has taken months for the drivers to arrive. A fellow TAD user told me that when he specified a particular TAD driver for a large install and ordered 100 of their HF drivers, they refused to fulfill the order. It was too large.

    Widget

  12. #42
    Benkev
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    Hi everyone.

    This is a very interesting thread. We can talk about the pros and cons of quality until we're blue in the face, but the sad truth is that more and more people do not recognize good sound, nor the quality components that produce it. I cannot begin to tell you how sad it makes me to hear people praise the "wonderful sound" that they get from their (fill in the blank) MP3-player... played through their throw-away-plastic-case computer speakers. People today are continuously exposed to elevator-music, shopping-mall music, crappy-tv-speaker sound, etc. I believe it is imprinting the masses to acceot, nay expect that sound. Some of these people even prefer crappy sound to live sound. I assume because they so rarely have a chance to hear live sound.

    Where does that leave a manufacturer? Are there enough "other" people left to justify the expense of quality? Probably not. Now, add the declining quality of the source material into the equation.

    The future for quality looks ever more bleak to me.

    Just my two cents.

    Cheers.

  13. #43
    Senior Member spwal's Avatar
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    Thats alot more than 2 cents.. thats every last dollar in the music business. Of the 100s of cds i have in lossless format, i would say only a fat handful are truly enjoyable from an engineering standpoint-- the get-out-of-your-seat and exclaim "damn, thats a great recording!". Things are made to sound good out of ipods. From a financial standpoint, you would be stupid to do it any other way...

    Acoustic Sounds keeps high quality vinyl and some boutique CD recordings alive, sadly it will kill your wallet in the process.

    Solution : dont sell out, buy in! I have a melos Sha-1 studio headphone amp and a pair of Grado HP-2 (yes im a lucky boy- my third pair of HP-1000). If you dont know about that combo (this is a vintage website and i would say that you should), you should. Sadly, its sometimes mo' bettah to listen to new albums this way. The tubes and grados manage to tame most commercially viable recordings.

    Just my $.02, having been a headphone-phile first

    Sean

  14. #44
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    Question Is this an OF thread?

    blah, blah, blah, the past

    boo hoo hoo quality

    grr grr grr iPod

    wail wail wail music

    pine pine pine the old ways

    darn darn darn new-fangled technology



    Sorry, it just sounded like my grandfather when I got my first transistor radio.

  15. #45
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tom Loizeaux View Post
    (snip)
    In the final analyisis, I think there are more who appreciate quality then one might think.

    Tom
    Tom, I think you're right, that the appreciation for quality is growing, but at the same time so is the proliferation of consumer grade, mediocre products. The fact is that the size of the market today dwarfs the marketplace of the past, and there's more room for everything.

    --------------------

    On sum, JBL has a greater line of speakers today than it's ever had before. It also has the most lo-fi and mid-fi offerings ever. What we have is a phenomenon where it's addressing the entire market.

    Many who dwell in the past are spoiled by the great value in getting old equipment for bargain prices, then griping that equivalent good deals aren't available on brand new product. Many of us also fail to realize that there's a tendency to compare 50 years worth of product releases against five or ten years of current product. Fifty years is a lot of cumulative product. It wasn't all produced at the same time.

    Looking through the archives, there is no year in which JBL had a broader or a better line of loudspeakers available than 2006/2007. Those who've heard the new Everest say it's the best ever, and I trust the expert opinions of those folks. If that's not enough, then I have heard the K2s, the Project Arrays, the Performance Series, the HT Series and the Studio Ls, and they'll beat any line up from any other product cycle.

    If you've heard the Vertecs in action like I have, you'd think so, too. But I'm talking consumer here, not Pro.

    Ok, so you can't get boxy, wood-veneered cabinets anymore. I don't see much of a downside there. In any other aspect, comparable products now have better drivers, better networks, better materials, better empirical design, better technology, and better sound. Period. End of story. Good night. Bye bye. See ya later.

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