JBL L20T Thrift Find - Light Restoration

Many years ago, I hit the jackpot by finding some old JBL L100t speakers for $8 at a Goodwill store. This was about a year before the pandemic when finding good gear at Goodwill was still possible, but was also beginning to come to a close. Here's the original post I made over on AK that covers the details + the restoration. I actually had to lay new veneer on the speakers and strip it back to bare materials. Thankfully, my friend was more familiar with woodworking and was able to teach me how all of that stuff worked.

https://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/jbl-l-100ts-find.866550/

I think the L-100ts are incredible speakers with a sound you simply cannot find in any other speaker system. With 12" woofers, and it only being a 3way system, it has a sound that's deep, punchy, and also a bit harsh, which I actually love. You can thank the 035ti titanium tweeters for that! Newer speakers (even higher end) have so many drivers now, but to think JBL carried their highest end floor-standing pair back in '85 with 3 drivers, and the woofer being the famous 2214H woofers... way cool. Downside of the 100ts for me has always been their sheer size; They are massive speakers, and unless they are given lots of room to play, they can sound really off. I still have these 100ts in my possession as I restored them, but have them in storage as I simply don't have the room anymore to have them in an effective setup.

Now, I haven't found any good speakers since this day back in '19 at GW or any thrift for that matter. It's discouraging when the only stuff Goodwill has now is just DVD/Bluray players of lower quality and Keurig coffee machines sitting on the same shelves as some of the all time greats like Marrantz, Pioneer, and Technics used to. It was truly a unique time when the golden age of Hifi was being donated on a large scale across the country to these charity shops.

I actually had some really good luck last week! I was out in my city coming back from a dinner, and I decided to stop in at a Goodwill I used to frequent. This Goodwill is in a metro area near uptown, and the houses nearby are older/matured, so a lot of the donations (even tech) is also older as a result. Here's what I saw:



These are JBL L-20t speakers! The baby brothers to the L-100t... like majorly baby sized comparatively speaking, but still incredibly well regarded and high end. They had a lot of paint on them, and little scratches, but amazingly, the veneer was not hit on any corners and the drivers looked undamaged too. They even had the OG grills present. The worst problems cosmetically were definitely the veneer being very sun bleached and also all of the white paint on the veneer too. It looked like white oak veneer when I first got them. Goodwill was asking $45 for the pair, so they definitely had done some internet research to determine that these were the real deal. Typically, bookshelf speakers never sell for over $20 at any of my local stores, so $45 was a stretch for them.

Now, these speakers did look really rough when I got them. I cannot find the photos of the before, but they looked like the veneer was basically unfinished and had been in a room where some serious paint had been done. The veneer JBL used back then was super thin, so I didn't want to sand the wood or completely strip it, so I decided to use 70% isopropyl alcohol on a cotton cloth with some moderate agitation. People say you shouldn't use rubbing alcohol on wood, but I use it if the wood has a lot of paint marks on it, as isopropyl does a great job at removing latex paint from wood. I also only use it if the current finish is faded/not savable, as I have found that it cleans the wood and raises the grain... 70% raises the grain more than 91%



This is what the original finish looked like in '85. It's a very light colored walnut... almost sunbleached slightly. I'd say JBL used a very neutral teak oil, or another non-dyed oil to just enhance the original veneer. I think this style was in-date in '85, but not so much now. In other catalogs, the L-T series looked so light, that it appeared to be the color of a light oak, but JBL was still calling it walnut.

I want a vintage 70s hand-rubbed look, so, I decided to use a Danish oil, specifically, THIS danish oil:



This is a dyed Danish oil from Watco that creates a darker walnut look, instead of the teak look of the original. I prefer this darker walnut finish, as it reminds me more of the older L100s of the 70s that JBL used to have. It's incredibly easy to apply, as long as you make sure to apply evenly over the entire surface with a cotton cloth and apply 2-3 coats within 15min of each other. It lasts a fairly long time too; all you have to do is treat the wood with this every 15 years or so to maintain a dark rich look. Here's the results:



It's a beautiful warm golden brown finish, even all over, and leaving the scratches in (instead of taking them out with steel-wool or sandpaper) has created a really nice vintage patina that doesn't scream 'beat up wood', but rather 'Vintage Americana'. Thankfully, the isopropyl helped to take out noticeable scratches...

Here's the finished product:



Definitely darker than JBL originally intended, and more inline with the later T3s, but it fits with what I think a vintage walnut speaker should look like. I couldn't get rid of the weird square stains on the top... those were moving stickers that were left on there for a long time to sink into the grain...

I will say though, finding these without any chips is practically impossible these days, and this one is chip free! Those annoying areas where the veneer is completely gone and only the MDF is shown... yeah you won't find any on these!

All-in-all, I'm very happy with these, and I think $45 with an afternoon's worth of work, that's a great deal! Sound demo to follow soon!