Opinion

As JBL celebrates 80 years in business, Steve Harris salutes the loud, proud past – and present – of the American loudspeaker giant, and traces the story of the man behind the badge

This year the US speaker giant JBL has been celebrating its 80th birthday, with a touring exhibition, the JBL Playback Gallery. Much as we take pride in the heritage of British loudspeakers, the Americans can point to a long line of development that starts back in the 1920s with the Western Electric movie sound system. Born in 1902, JBL’s founder James Bullough Lansing was involved almost from the beginning.

Lansing’s now-famous name was one of his own choosing. He was born James Martini, ninth of 13 children, in a small mining town in Illinois. By the mid-1920s, he was in Salt Lake City, where he met his future business partner, Ken Decker. In 1927, they moved to Los Angeles and set up Lansing Manufacturing Company to design and build loudspeakers.

Cinema standard

In the early 1930s, Lansing designed the drive units used in the Shearer-MGM theatre speaker, which went on to become an industry standard. Unfortunately, in 1939 Decker was killed in a plane crash, and without his management skills, the company faltered.

Just before this, in 1938, when Western Electric was forced to divest some of its interests, a group of WE engineers had formed Altec to take over service contracts with the motion picture chains. In 1941, needing a manufacturing arm, they bought Lansing’s failing company to create Altec Lansing.

Lansing designed Altec Lansing’s 604 coaxial speaker, and collaborated with John Hilliard to create the first in the enduring ‘Voice Of The Theater’ series, which would become the dominant movie speaker line in the 1950s. When his five-year contract expired in 1946, he set up a new company, initially called Lansing Sound.

In 1948 he introduced a groundbreaking 15in driver with a 4in diameter edgewound voice coil and Alnico V magnet, a type of unit that would continue in production for more than half a century.

Altec Lansing took issue with the company name, so this changed to James B Lansing Sound Inc. Sadly, Lansing himself didn’t live to see his company’s ultimate success. After three years it was still making big losses and, in September 1949, he took his own life.

Then Lansing’s VP, William H Thomas, took over as president. He was able to continue and build the business successfully, with the products now branded JBL rather than Lansing.

When the music industry boomed in the 1960s and 1970s, JBL became a dominant supplier of stage and studio speakers. In 1973, the company launched its largest and most powerful monitor, the 4350. Its specification included a sensitivity of 95.5dB for 1W at 1m, and a maximum peak sound pressure level of 126dB at 3m. It still has a loyal following.

JBL went from strength to strength after it was acquired by Sidney Harman in 1969. It thus became part of Harman International, which today is a subsidiary of Samsung. By contrast, Altec Lansing, once a major force, went through many changes of ownership before finally closing its professional division in 2006. Today, the revived brand name appears mainly on small portable home speakers and headphones.

Orange crush

JBL’s hi-fi speakers have always had pizzazz as well as professional cred. Based on the 4310 monitor and launched originally in 1970, the bestselling Century L100 was a two-feet-tall three-way with a 12in bass but was still called a ‘bookshelf’ speaker. It’s been revived as the L100 Classic [HFN May ’19], now in MkII form, and with an 80th Anniversary Edition too.

What made the L100 look special was the Quadrex foam grilles. With speakers from the ’70s, these will probably have perished, but replacements can be had.

As for the colour, it’s got to be orange.