Loudspeakers

Arriving in the late 1980s, JBL’s original Everest loudspeaker, the DD55000 [HFN Apr ’88], was its first ‘Project’ model in 30 years, the previous being the D30085 Hartsfield and D44000 Paragon launched in 1954 and 1957, respectively. By comparison with the legendary Paragon – a stereo speaker built into a single but very wide cabinet, with horn-loading of all six of its drive units – the Everest was almost conventional. This was a three-way, floorstanding design combining dynamic 380mm/15in woofers with horn-loaded titanium midrange and aluminium ‘ultra-high frequency’ compression drivers. Large listening spaces were still required to accommodate the 1.4m-high, 92cm-wide enclosures, however, and each cabinet weighed a mountainous 145kg.

The Everest DD55000s were sold in mirror-imaged pairs, as the bass and super tweeter drivers were offset at angles of 30° and 60°, respectively. JBL claimed this helped deliver a ‘wide-stage stereo’ listening angle up to 80o, and allowed for corner placement if necessary. The output of both the tweeter and midrange drivers could be tuned via two three-position switches giving ‘0dB’ (flat), or ‘±2dB’ of lift or cut in response.

Low-frequency extension was rated down to 40Hz, assisted by the speaker’s huge woofer and large, vented cabinet. At the time, JBL said a matching subwoofer would be launched, but this never materialised.