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Markus wrote:

Hi Romy, in another thread you recommended the JBL LE8 as a good driver for the 200-1,000 Hz region. Any specific version of that driver? It has been produced in different variants over a rather long time.

Markus, I do not feel comfortable when people say that I “recommended” something. I do not do recommendations. Please, treat my posts accordingly.

The JBL LE8 is kind of tricky driver and you are right: there were many different versions of it. The worthy LE8 was the very first ordinal LE8 when JBL introduced their LE series (Liner Efficiency). It was during the times when the D208 driver was released, the  D208 was a good driver as well. Later on JBL made the 2115 copy but it is another story…

The original LE8 was kind of ridicules driver. It had phenomenal paper, magnificent suspension, very ringy dustcap, marvelous tone, too high excursion for own motor, no sensitively and no power handling. It was around 87dB or so efficient and was able to handle 15-20W until it dive into heavy distortions. The high-passing at 300Hz-400Hz helped but not a lot. The tone of the driver was like nothing else but with no sensitivity and no power handling the driver was born to be destroyed.

Later on JBL tried the cure the situation and increased the power handling. They made LE8 with whizzer, with foam and even with rubber suspension and many other solutions were useful as “solutions” but they all were not interesting in comparing with the original “fragile” LE8 driver.

I would certainly “recommend” LE8 to listen to educate how a cone MF driver might sound (if it is driven properly) but I have no clue how the driver might be used in a long run. Why do you think I sold my original LE8 pair – juts because I have no idea if it might be practical to actually use the driver without burning the cone after 5 hours…. The original re-coning of the driver is not available for a long time, unless you might fish it once in 3 years for obscene amount of money… and then to play the driver for another 6 hours before you tear down the external suspension again…

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