Let's See Your JBL-Loaded Enclosures!

[Michedelic]

The d and k series had almost identical magnet and other physical structure. The K could handle more power. JBL no longer makes re-cone kits. What is available from third parties is a cone for the E series which has the same physical structure except it has a ceramic magnet. These cones will have the higher power capacity that comes with modern high temperature adhesives. (What I just said applies to the K130 which I recently reconed--I presume the 140 series has the same situation). The older ones are better in my mind because the alnico magnet weighs a lot less than the E series. Folks just ran out of alnico and so the ceramic magnet is cheaper.

PS. I had a sunn coliseum in the late 70s. 4 kt88 if I recall. I didn't realize how cool it was and had to get a marshall (I was a guitarist back then)--wish I still had it.

You could have also had the Sunn Coliseum PA head, very early and rare, nothing to do with the transistor stuff...four inputs/channels and a master volume. This is what you hear Leslie West playing through on Mountain’s “Mississippi Queen”, and the rest of the “Climbing” album. Most of the Sunn gear they used was hand-me-downs from the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Yeah, you should have kept it!

 

[Walking]

You could have also had the Sunn Coliseum PA head..

Yup, that's the baby! I have seen pix of hendrix playing sunn gear. Bet sunn wishes they could have kept the hendrix account...

 

[Michedelic]

Yup, that's the baby! I have seen pix of hendrix playing sunn gear. Bet sunn wishes they could have kept the hendrix account...

They did great for awhile; they got more milage out of the association with Noel Redding as they were primarily a bass amp company, at least that's where they shined the most. Unlike Marshall and Fender, their guitar amps were the afterthought product. Hendrix came to hate them because they were too clean(!). They did OK by Mountain, John Entwistle, Jerry Scheff, and countless other bands/bass players for a few years, until shifts in the marketplace and a change of ownership (similar to the CBS/Fender fumble)led to their fading away.

 

[Walking]

A number of companies didn't evolve their thinking quickly enough to take advantage of the new market for distortion in guitar amps--marshall owned it for a long time--Ampeg and Fender come to mind. Also, as an english company, marshall had access to many of the very successful guitar bands before they were famous and came to america. IIRC, many of the guitar gods of the 70s listened to american blues records and wanted to get fender gear, but it was very expensive due to tariffs--in england, marshall was less expensive. But as we know, Marshall never made much of a spash in the bass amp market--so maybe I should stop talking about them here. Personally, I think the sunn amp recessed faceplate is the coolest thing ever, but nobody ever used that approach after sunn faded away. I did have the chance to buy a sunn amp a while ago, but the seller described all the work he had done to minimize 60 cycle hum, and I decided it was best to leave my sunn as a pleasant memory.

My garage band rig in the late 70s used a JBL K130 for guitar, as the audio store engineer said it put out the most sound per watt. So, I am fond of the JBL K series and learned a lot about it once Harvey Gerst, former jbl employee, started posting in pro audio blogs.