distressed speakers

leftwinger57

I was looking at some JBL L-100s on E-Bay the other day and 1 set clearly had a torn cone on one of the speakers. The seller clearly stated the tear and said it was repaired using the glue,felt or some other filler paper from the rear method. Cosmetically it looked real bad. Now, would any of you buy a speaker w/ that kind of damage sound unheard or take a chance and then if n/g have it reconed ? I forgot what they were going for and they might have sold or time went and I could not find them again.
Another minor question, the Century series had 2 different designs w/ 1 having the speakers in line straight up and down and the 2nd being off set which for some reason appeals to me. Is there any difference in sound and which design came 1st ? The 1st question I guess isn't only limited to JBLs, the're the ones I saw an you could apply the same question to the speakers of your choice.

mhardy6647

Simple for me, since I wouldn't buy an L-100; I eschew 'em :-P

That said, a damaged driver wouldn't be a deal breaker for me a priori; it would have to be factored into the value, and thus the cost, of the component, though. Of course, always better to listen if at all possible. Worst case, if the price of the speakert plus the cost of sourcing a replacement woofer (the worst case) is still a good deal, then it is a good deal. The JBL woofer would be repairable by any number of speaker repair companies, I would think.

You might be surprised how much latitude the audible performance of a loudspeaker driver can have even after a pretty hamfisted "repair".

leftwinger57

Doc ,I love your responses.That's why I threw in at the end any beat speaker on your menu and you seem positivein your answer if the price of repair was right then it would make sense to go ahead and buy them if in fact it was only 1 said cone and nothing else. Also since your not into the Century series you have no idea about the speaker line-up between the straight line and the off-set models. Even if the repair was up to snuff running them w/o grills would be out of the question it was that obvious being white cones.

mhardy6647

Yeah, I really don't know about the different morphs of the L-100; the Lansing Heritage pages/forums would be a better place to ask/look for info, methinks.
http://www.lansingheritage.org/



There's some irony in my sentiments vis-a-vis the L-100 and its 4310/4311 monitor siblings... the series was developed to mimic, in a small package, the sound and the performance of the venerable Altec Duplex studio monitor. To make a long story short, Altec squandered its preeminence in the studio monitor business, JBL won the day, and the "real" Altec, as we knew them, went the way of the passenger pigeon.

... and you know what kind of speakers I have in my house ;- )