Studio engineers kept taking JBL's 4310 monitors home, so JBL built a version for the living room. The L100 Century made its debut at the summer 1970 Consumer Electronics Show, named by marketing chief Irving Stern, and Arnold Wolf gave it a sculpted foam grille he borrowed from microphone windscreens, painted rather than dyed, in Ultra Blue, Burnt Orange or brown. Inside are the 4310's drivers, a 12-inch Alnico V woofer, the LE5-2 midrange and the 2-inch LE20 tweeter, in a ported walnut box finished on all four sides so it can stand up or lie down. It became JBL's most successful product yet, and Wolf's history calls it, from all indications, the best-selling speaker system of the decade. In 1973 JBL gave it a smaller tweeter and front level controls, so this page covers the first version and the L100A page covers the second.
With the grille off
Ask for a photo of every driver with the grilles off, on both speakers. They should match each other and this list.
The grille is painted polyurethane foam, which ages like any foam, so look closely at both. Drivers get swapped between versions over 50 years, so a cabinet with a mix of tweeters, or a woofer that isn't white-coated, has had work.
New to old speakers? How to check a used pair walks through every driver, the crossover and the cabinet.
We haven’t been through this model’s listings yet. Search eBay and run every listing through the checklist above. Ask for photos of both speakers with the grilles off and the serial labels on the back, and pass on any seller who won’t send them.
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BookshelfSpecs and what to check →
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JBL · 3-way
BookshelfSpecs and what to check →
JBL · 3-way
FloorstanderSpecs and what to check →