Price Paid:  $300.00 from ebay

Summary:
These are some of my favorite JBLs and I have 6 pairs in the house now. I wall mounted them in the studio and I continue to be impressed and amazed by their clarity, imaging, and detail. You can pay a whole lot more for some of the new speakers out there, or you can buy some of these used for about $400. They were built as professional monitors by a company that truly understands loudspeakers.

Strengths:
Clarity, detail, imaging, build quailty, customer support.

Weaknesses:
None

Similar Products Used:
Many other JBLs

Price Paid:  $200.00

Summary:
I bought a pair on sale and they are perfect for $200.00. These monitors sound very, very good. I can compare them to speakers in $2000.00 price range. I tried them with 60wpc (Myryad MI-120) and 110wpc amp (Roksan KA-1). 110wpc sounds more convincing but I didn''t like Roksan''s coloration and stuck with the MI-120.

Strengths:
Very good imaging, tonal balance.

Weaknesses:
Cheap binding posts.

Similar Products Used:
Tannoy, JBL, Energy, Klipsh

Price Paid:  $700.00 from Coast Audio

Summary:
There's only one way to get reasonable low frequency response, and that's with a box no smaller than this, and a woofer no smaller than this. Although they'd be classified as "mid-field" monitors, these are, and will remain my only monitors, as I am never disappointed when I hear my mixes played on other systems of any type, at any volume.

Strengths:
I've been mixing records on these for about 7 years and the mixes translate perfectly even to laptop or clock radio speakers, which is the highest praise I can give. They're fun to listen to, and are not over bright like JBL's of old. Another plus is that replacement parts are far cheaper than the new generation LSR stuff, probably 50%.

Weaknesses:
I started with a single Hafler 2400 amp, 120 watts/channel, and was very dissatisfied. I've since added a second Hafler 2400, bridged both to mono for over 400 watts per channel RMS. This makes for a far more effortless, and clean sound, even at moderate volumes.

Price Paid:  $700.00

Summary:
These speakers sound amazing. They completely wail compared to speakers upwards of twice their price. I highly recomend these for all of you Infinity, Polk and B&W people out there. They make twice as much bass as any of those paradigm speakers, which might I add are poorly designed(6.5" woofers??????) and way too expensive. If you want real sound quality...go jbl!

Strengths:
These speakers sound amazing. They completely wail compared to speakers upwards of twice their price. I highly recomend these for all of you Infinity, Polk and B&W people out there. They make twice as much bass as any of those paradigm speakers, which might I add are poorly designed(6.5" woofers??????) and way too expensive. If you want real sound quality...go jbl!

Summary:
The mirror-imaged vertical arraingement of the drivers delivers very good imaging. This particular model is often used in the mastering process. Not the ultimate tweak superspeaker, but you could do a lot worse. I grew tired of the cheesy binding posts, replacing them with heavy studs/nuts. Replaced all remaining wiring with #16 AWG stranded teflon-coated wire, and soldered every connection inside. This really cleaned them up sonically. Much of the R & D effort on this model went into the crossover design, yielding very good phase coherence. That's what makes all the parts and pieces work together. The rewiring and soldering is an easy, low cost tweak, good for at least one order of magnitude improvement in detail and focus. I use these in a multitrack studio enviornment, and when playing back a store-bought CD mixed & mastered on these or similar monitors, the effect is that of being there for the production. They do not tolerate crappy input material very well. For more bottom, run with 15" JBL 2235 subs, first order crossovers, -3db @ 125 Hz.

Strengths:
Overall tonal balance; Good imaging; good phase coherence.

Weaknesses:
Connectors and internal wiring prevent reaching the full capability of the overall hardware.

Similar Products Used:
4310, 4311, 4312.