This is indeed a sad time for JBL fans. It seems that many American companies are now manufacturing items in China. In the 80s my system consisted of JBL L150a speakers powered by Marantz electronics. I had my L150a speakers for over twenty years. I purchased them at a local high end audio store. The JBL name was highly respected then and that was the only place you could buy JBL speakers at the time. I remember the salesman, showing me actual cutaways of the JBL drivers and explaining the construction quality compared to other well known speakers at the time. I loved my L150As. But in 2001, I thought I'd perhaps look into replacing them with speakers that had the latest technology advances. I was hopefully going to replace them with new JBLs. Then I started to see JBL speakers at Best Buy. These were not the JBL speakers that I remember and compared to my L150As, frankly, they were basically junk. In my opinion, that's when the JBL era came to an end. They cheapened their name and the name dissappeared from high end audio stores. And I admit, I do have a problem buying audio gear made in China for my own personal reasons. If given a choice, I try to purchase products that are made in democratic societies. So my gear now consists of a B&K amp and preamp designed and built in Buffalo, NY, and Paradigm Studio 100 speakers designed and built in Ontario, Canada. And yeah, I still get nostalgic about my old JBLs but the company has decided to go in a different direction. To me that's sad and I can't support that.
Originally Posted by scarpi
