JBL D120F Rare 16 Ohm Version CLOSE

Brandon Fickler · Post by **Brandon Fickler** » 16 May 2017 6:49 pm

I have a rare JBL D120F-6 - 16 ohm - authentic JBL 21032 cone, possibly original or an old recone using a genuine kit. Fender "F" stamp on the back label, possibly an early example of a Fender marking on JBLs. This speaker sounds fantastic and would be great to put in a single 12" combo amp that would normally use a 16 ohm speaker in order to "steelize" the amp, such as the Peavey ValveKing, probably a few others.

Peter Leavenworth · Post by **Peter Leavenworth** » 18 May 2017 6:33 am

Hey Brandon, I think I have one of those speakers in my collection, why would 16 ohms be particularly suited for PS?

Jon Light · Post by **Jon Light** » 18 May 2017 8:17 am

I had to read this a couple of times before I (think I) understood --

If you have a guitar amp that takes a 16Î© speaker, putting this 16Î© D120 in it will make it more steel friendly (steelize). That's what you meant, right? Not that a 16Î© speaker is more steel friendly (which it isn't--steel does not care about speaker impedance).

Brandon Fickler · Post by **Brandon Fickler** » 18 May 2017 9:02 am

Thanks, Jon. Yes, that's correct. You wouldn't want to put a standard D120F in an amp made for a 16 ohm speaker, as you will get an impedance mismatch and would risk damaging your output section. Therefore, this D120F-6 would fit the bill for those amps if you want that JBL sound added to them.

Ken Fox · Post by **Ken Fox** » 18 May 2017 1:32 pm

For a transistor amp it will not harm it at all. Just lowers the power output of the amp and the amp runs cooler. A 200 watt amp rated at 4 ohms produces 130 watts at 8 ohms, as an example. At 16 ohms even less power. What you would not want is a 2 ohms load! The 4 ohm rated amp would try to produce far more power than the output transistor could handle.

Brandon Fickler · Post by **Brandon Fickler** » 19 May 2017 8:06 am

Good point, Ken. Since most solid state amps are rated for less than 16 ohms, this speaker would work fine in those amps. It would lower the available output power, but that power loss doesn't necessarily translate to as drastic of a volume loss as one would expect, especially with an efficient speaker like the D120F.

Ken Fox · Post by **Ken Fox** » 19 May 2017 8:38 am

That is correct for sure. The JBL is around 103db SPL at 1 watt. Makes it twice as loud as a 97db rated speaker

T. C. Furlong · Post by **T. C. Furlong** » 19 May 2017 11:05 am

With all due respect to Mr. Ken Fox, twice as loud is 10dB or one Bell. That's how a decibel was determined - one tenth of a Bell . Back in the old days, the smart guys wanted to determine how we perceived volume. They put a bunch of people in a room and turned the source up until the subjects reported that they thought the source was twice as loud. That was divided into ten increments, each of which was to be called a decibel or a dB. So 10 dB is twice as loud. 6 dB is twice as much voltage and 3 dB is twice as much power. Loudness is logarithmic scale so it's not intuitive to understand.

Brandon Fickler · Post by **Brandon Fickler** » 24 May 2017 7:14 am

Thanks for posting that table, T.C. That highlights what I was getting at - it takes a power drop by a factor of 10 (100 Watts down to 10 Watts) to get the loudness to drop by only 1/2, assuming all other things are equal. So using this 16 ohm speaker in a solid state amp rated for 8 ohms would not be very noticeable. However, using this speaker in a solid state amp rated for 4 ohms would probably be noticeable, but it still wouldn't have dropped to half as loud.

Brandon Fickler · Post by **Brandon Fickler** » 26 May 2017 11:54 am

TTT, price drop to $225 plus shipping.

Brandon Fickler · Post by **Brandon Fickler** » 31 May 2017 8:43 am

Brandon Fickler · Post by **Brandon Fickler** » 16 Jun 2017 6:24 am

Brandon Fickler · Post by **Brandon Fickler** » 19 Jun 2017 6:54 am

Sold elsewhere, please close.