once jbl announced they would no longer be making replacement parts for their product line, i kinda lost interest in the hobby. i think this was sometime around scott's untimely death.... maybe before, i can't remember now...
anyway, what are people now doing to restore drivers when they cannot get a factory replacement cone or diaphram....
are there any 3rd parties that are producing kits that are close to the originals.... what is the best of breed... or are they all mutts
thanks....
oh, yeh....
what happened to the jbl tooling for the old kits...
...after altec's demise in the 1980s their tooling was sold to a 3rd party. is it possible that someone might acquire the jbl tooling and reintroduce some of the replacement parts...
When did that happen I must have missed it?? Is it posted somewhere or on their website?? Sounds more like the rumor that's been circulating for years than a real corporate decission.once jbl announced they would no longer be making replacement parts for their product line, i kinda lost interest in the hobby.
Rob
"I could be arguing in my spare time"
So, I can still buy a JBL cone kit and diagrams for an L200 or L300 system? How about JBL cone kits for a 4312 studio monitor?
Where?
Thx...
The L200 isn't worth fixing.Originally Posted by robertbartsch
The 4333/L300 is one of the legacy JBL systems you can still get a full range of replacement parts for, however...
The C8R2231 kit was replaced by the C8R2235 kit
The D16R2420 kit was replaced by the D16R2421 kit
The D16R2405 kit is still available
I've lost count of the number of legacy systems that no longer have a full range of JBL replacement parts available.
Ok - thanks 4313B
When you say you lost count of the legacy systems where JBL parts are no longer available, what exactly does that mean? Does this mean that JBL is no longer making any replacement parts for any legacy systems and no inventory is available from dealers?
Or does this mean that it is still possible that JBL will run batches of selected legacy system parts sometime in the foreseable future? Somehow, I doubt this is the case....
I thought they were not even making kits for their current line of products, so if you blew out a current model driver, they would replace it under warranty. I would assume this would anger the dealer network.
thanks..
It means that I've lost count of the number of legacy systems affected by the lack of kits (marked NLA). JBL has discontinued quite a few.
There are some kits available for new product, such as the C8R1500AL, which is only available in Europe and Asia, not the Americas. Most of the recent JBL systems are repaired with whole driver replacements.
Sure, but they still make replacement kits for quite a few vintage drivers too... not all to be sure, but far more than the bean counters must be aware of or they would probably pull the plug on those too.
Widget
I've been a bean counter in public practice for 30 years...UHG! ,,,,beans must be counted.... ...how else would we keep score?
Anyway, if the Company believes it cannot make a buck on the legacy repair kits, it should consider selling the tooling to a third party. As I see it, JBL is a sound reinforcement company now and continuing to allow owners to restore the legacy systems with OEM parts would not adversely affect sales of their existing product line; right?
Great Plains Audio is an example where this idea was made to work well after the demise of Altec in the mid 1980s.
Besides, James B would be rolling in the grave if he knew about this situation....
Alot of the kits are simply NOS, marked as NLA when depleted. They haven't actually made any of them since the eighties. I suspect that part of the reason the kits are so expensive is because they've calculated out how much it costs them to inventory them year after year after year.Sure, but they still make replacement kits for quite a few vintage drivers too... not all to be sure, but far more than the bean counters must be aware of or they would probably pull the plug on those too.
Widget
Keep in mind that JBL Consumer, Harman Consumer Group, Lifestyle, Luxury, or whatever the hell they are calling JBL Consumer this week, is at the mercy of suppliers, including HAdM, formerly known as JBL Professional Manufacturing. And if HAdM feels the least bit inconvenienced it just flat out isn't going to get done. It is not uncommon to wait several years to see if a particular kit will be produced (apparently only woofer kits at this point). Nevermind replacement transducers and their potential to show up all busted up because of inadequate packaging.
If your drivers are JBL Pro there is a better chance that kits still exist and are potentially still being manufactured fairly regularly. The other nice thing about Pro is that replacement drivers actually show up usable 99% of the time because someone on the shipping end had a clue how to package the driver. Oh, and they often show up within a week, not a year or two.
He can roll all he wants. This is WAY bigger than him, this is BIG BUSINESS. His name was bought and paid for and they can do whatever they want with it. They can crank out iPod docks all day, everyday, until the end of time and laugh all the way to the bank doing it. The JBL products we love and cherish are barely a blip on their radar.
Harman/JBL is really in the car audio business. They sell almost 3 Billion with a B to the automotive OEM business and the home audio is allowed to exist because it gives a modicum of prestige to their automotive brands. The legacy repair kits aren't even a rounding error. As for selling the tooling? A few years ago they crushed millions of dollars of Studer repair parts to clear them from the books... keeping score as you put it.
More recently the same score keepers made the brilliant decision to shut down a perfectly good factory and lay off the workforce with many decades of experience and start over a few miles south... I am sure if/when they score that brilliant move they will realize a negative financial gain.
As for Mr. Lansing, he ran his company into the ground several times over, selling it to Altec once and using his life insurance the hard way to save the company and his family another time. I'd suggest the ideal is somewhere in between Mr. Lansing's business acumen and the typical US taught MBA bean counter of today.
Widget
And years before that they crushed millions of dollars of Harman repair parts to clear the books without offering said parts to Dealers or Repair Centers (who would have gladly taken those parts off their hands).
Bean counters count beans and keep score. Managers use the score cards to make decisions, some of which, at times, are not very good.
No one is more upset with short sighted decisions of harman/JBL them me. Please blame the right folks and not bean counters. This is like blaming the refs when your favorite NFL team losses the Superbowl.
As far as I know, intentionally crushing your old inventory does not necessarily trigger tax deductions, so there must have been some other rationale.
I know a licensed JBL dealer that has been working with the Company for +40 years. Apparently, he owns a ton of Harman stock and has done well over the last few years. He wears a button to the annual stockholder's meeting that says, "No More [Chinese] Junk."
Yeh, James B was not the best businessman and he killed himself, I think. UHG - what a way to collect life insurance. I suppose it was a whole life policy that had a surrender value since you cant collect if you blow your own brains out.
I was using "bean counters" to describe a particular mindset more than a specific occupation.
I have no problem with CPAs, I like mine and visit with him annually... that said, I wouldn't mind a simple flat tax that put most CPAs and tax preparers out of work. Way off topic to be sure, but I think we've covered the salient points of this thread.
Widget
Me too.Way off topic to be sure, but I think we've covered the salient points of this thread.
Some kits are NLA, some kits will be NLA once the stock is depleted and some kits are still made. Many of the 80's and older systems have been affected by one or more relevant kits being NLA. I think that sums it up.
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