Class of 77

The tiniest member of the Classic range from JBL keeps the period features, but in miniature. Ed Selley listens in

- Ed Selley

JBL’s re-released Classic series channels the design language of its Seventies models and the L52 brings all the principles of the series down to a size where they’ll fit into most spaces. Like the larger L82 (HFC 473), the L52 is not a reproduction of a speaker it produced in the Seventies but an ‘inspired by true-life events’ take on the style of the time.

A two-way design it uses a 25mm titanium dome tweeter (as seen in the other models) placed in a shallow waveguide. This crosses over at 2.8kHz to a 133mm pulped paper cone augmented by a front bass port. The L52 Classic retains the facility to adjust the high-frequency output via a rotary control. There’s no boost, but the output can be rolled off to suit brighter equipment or rooms. Connection to an amplifier is via a single set of speaker terminals.

As a relatively small driver in a small cabinet, it doesn’t have quite the same seismic potential as its bigger brothers. JBL quotes 47Hz24kHz albeit at +/- 6dB. It is relatively benign and should not prove too difficult to drive, while the front port reduces its interactions with rear walls effectively.