NCD?.sort of.. Schroeder/JBL content.

I have dropped JBL K140's, and E140's in all sorts of cabs that did not come stock with either of them. Most times I liked the JBL speaker more than the stock. I even put a K140 in my Roland DB700, and it sounds great, although heavier ! Now, I don't play real loud gigs that much, and , when I do, I have PA support. Most of the tech guys here will tell you it's at best, a crapshoot. But I must be rolling 7's because it's been pretty much an improvement over whatever was in those cabs to begin with.

 

I took a look but couldn't find a 2225I just a J 16Ω and an H 8Ω. I bought three trashed 2205 chassis' and had 2225 cone kits installed into them. One was Ceramic and the other two AlNiCo.

In the early Eighties a built a cabinet that I designed to suit a JBL K140 for a friend. He returned it to me sans woofer. Needing a system to leave at our rehearsal place I dropped the Ceramic unit into the cabinet. Its performance in that service blew me away.

In my mind it is a really good driver.

 

The 2225 is one of my favorite drivers, works well with a nice round low end. I have also designed a few very nice mixed driver size cabinets (yes, horror of horrors, I know ) specifically taking advantage of the electro-acoustic performance of this driver. I have also done the same thing using a 2240 or 41 on the bottom.

Another combination that works well is a 2225 on the bottom and a 2220 on the top (not sharing the same acosutic space) with appropriate tunings, not unlike a D140/D130 combination.

 

Just curious, why do you guys like the 2225 for bass, over the JBL drivers specifically designed for bass guitar , like the K and E series ?

 

In my case I had an empty cabinet and a spare driver. Having a need I put them together. I was very pleasantly surprised at the result. I won't change from my Acmes for gigs but the combination works well.

 

Thanks man!

The HF rolloff of the 2225 makes it a fairly dark speaker, but alone with an amp that has a naturally bright voicing it can smooth things out, and with a suitable top cabinet that has reasonably similar phase response to the bottom 2225 cabinet, it can deliver some tones that just are not possible with either alone (IF that's your sound).

I spend many years working with JBL speakers, went to the warranty/recone school in 1978 and developed an appreciation for some of their very targeted approaches. I also serviced a bunch of JBL products while doing my time in the cinema service industry and when speakers can survive being operated 10-12 hours/day for 20 years, there's some value there that just can't be matched by "race to the bottom" oriented companies. The cinema chain that I serviced for had about 10,000 JBL drivers in their theatre inventory, along with maybe 4-5000 QSC power amps which I also serviced.

 

man, that's a cool perspective.

 

That's what I was thinking about the 2225, that it was a darker sounding driver, than say, the K140, which, imho, has a vey sweet sounding top end. I rarely felt the need to have a " brighter " top end when using one or more K140's, thus I would never think about using the 2225 as a stand alone driver in a 115 cab. But, if that's what ya like, then that's all that matters.

 

There are players that like a darker tone, and if you get a 2225 up closer to your ears, the mids may be appropriate for some players.

 

I've used E 140's in a 80's Sunn B215 cab and loved the tone. It had enough low end - easily. The tone was very very nice. I don't have that cab any longer but now I have an original K140 that deserves a cab build someday. Long live JBL man.