The Steel Guitar Forum

I have a 15" JBL 8 ohm speaker. It has a grey basket. All my other one say JBL D130F, This one says JBL D130F-2. Just was wondering what the dash 2 means. Thanks. Gary

Gary,
The F in the model number means it was made for Fender.
The JBL D130F was an 8 ohm speaker
D130F-2 was 4 ohms
D130F-6 was 16 ohms

Your speaker may have been reconed to 8 ohms at some point.

Hope this helps.
Jeff

Thank You Jeffrey!!!

Jeffrey Maxwell wrote:Gary,
The F in the model number means it was made for Fender.

the F in the model number means the speaker had a larger voice coil gap and the outside edge of the cone has an accordion fold and that is painted with a black dope. the original D130 speaker was designed to be used in stereo speaker boxes, but guitar players started to use them. in order for them to stop being blown so much by guitar transients, harvey gerst working at JBl redesigned the D130. the voice coil gap was opened up some and the accordion edge painted with black dope compound kept the paper cone from twisting and shorting the speaker out.

the most important thing about a JBL speaker is whether or not the cone is original. if it is not...then you dont have a speaker that sounds like a JBL anymore.

as for the -2....i do not have any info on that. i will see what i can find.

The D130 and D130F use the same cone. The D140F had the accordion edge cone. I operated a pro sound repair business from 1978 till 2015 and was an authorized service center for JBL Professional.
Learned to recone their speakers at the JBL facility in Northridge, CA.
Reconed lots of the D series speakers over the years. JBl stopped production of the recone kits several years ago.
There are some reproduction recone parts available these days that come very close to the originals if installed correctly.

Attached a couple of quotes from Harvey Gerst about the D series speakers.

Jeffrey Maxwell wrote: There are some reproduction recone parts available these days that come very close to the originals if installed correctly.

I can attest to that after doing some A/B comparisons. The difference between a new cone and an older one is much greater than the difference between a JBL original cone and a very good aftermarket one. Unfortunately one really superb replacement dealer went out of business a year or two ago and I can't find those exact kits any more.

Steve,
I think you are referring to Sound Speaker Repair.
I got some very good kits from them and now don't know where to go.
Erv

Yes Erv. That's the company that I thought had exceptional kits. It seems like there should be some of their old stock somewhere waiting to be sold... Or someone willing to restart the manufacturing process...

https://reconekits.com/reconekits.aspx?page=10

How about this place? Aren't they still going?

Those kits might possibly use the same manufactured parts as Sound Speaker Repair did. However the site doesn't go into details, such as what is the material of the voice coil cylinder. I think that detail, in particular, is important to match the sound characteristics of the original cone assembly.

Oh! I take that back. It looks like they use the desired material

"JBL MVC1810-OK Voice Coil. is for the JBL 2220H/D120/ D130/D130F/E120/E120F/E130/K120.8 ohm Aluminum on Kraft paper"

That looks like a good source for re-coning kits.
Erv

You're Welcome. 😑

Just did my D130s , I used un assembled kits. Simply Speakers .com These kits are built to meet or exceed JBL specs. They have a video on you tube that is great. Fast friendly, great packaging. My JBL D130F -8 ohm speakers sound fantastic. They use the same materials as JBL used. The only difference is instead of the nasty black dope, they use a white latex that dries clear on the surround. The kits I used have cloth surrounds. Much better than paper edge.

https://www.simplyspeakers.com/jbl-spea ... -kits.html

That's the other one I was trying to think of earlier. So they are still selling kits?

Yep they have them.

I believe, if you want the 60's and early 70's sound of the JBL's then choosing aluminum wiring on Kraft paper will get you extremely close.

If you want the sound of later 70's and after then you might choose the plastic/synthetic material for the voice coil cylinder. Simply Speakers sells only this variant, doesn't it?

Steve, I sure wish my ears had the ability to hear those differences!

Right Bill. It's not so easy to hear subtle differences in tone I think. But if your pickups put out a lot of punch and you like an aggressive tone you may notice a difference in attack characteristics and more or less of a certain type of "cut".

But then, each example of any model of the JBL line surely varied from any other example. And certainly varied as they aged.