JBL Control 5Plus (c. 1991)
The JBL Control 5Plus is a compact two-way, bass-reflex speaker from around 1991, sold in Japan at ¥76,000 per pair. It belonged to JBL's Control series, a family of versatile, install-friendly monitors that also included the smaller Control 1 and the distinct Control 5. The 5Plus has its tweeter placement mirrored relative to the non-Plus Control 5, per owner observations on the Audio Heritage forum.
The design brief was clearly flexibility. The enclosure is molded polypropylene with a foaming agent intended to suppress resonance, and the speaker is magnetically shielded so it can sit near a TV. JBL offered a wide range of optional mounting hardware - wall brackets, ceiling brackets, a TV bracket, and even a 19-inch rack adapter. That points at everything from foreground music systems to broadcast and post-production rooms. The "setting-free" description in the Japanese catalog copy suggests it was meant to work in free placement without fuss.
The drivers are the notable part. The 20 cm woofer uses a newly developed white cone. It has a pulp base (fusing Super BKP and BKP) laminated with a polymer film for stiffness, a natural pure rubber surround for long excursion, and a urethane copolymer center cap to damp voice-coil resonance. The tweeter is a 2.5 cm balanced-drive unit with JBL's pure titanium diaphragm, shaped with a diamond-type edge structure to break up high-frequency resonance. The crossover is set at 5 kHz.
Documentation on this model is thin. No period reviews have surfaced, and the record is largely built from the Japanese catalog listing and scattered owner reports. What the catalog gives us:
- 2-way, 2-speaker, bass-reflex, magnetic-shielded
- 20 cm cone woofer (white cone, rubber surround)
- 2.5 cm balanced-drive titanium-dome tweeter
- Frequency range: 50 Hz – 25 kHz
- Impedance: 5 Ω
- Sensitivity: 90 dB/W/m
- Power handling: 180 W max, 60 W RMS
- Crossover: 5 kHz
- Dimensions: 244 × 381 × 231 mm (W×H×D); 4.8 kg
Owners on the AVS Forum report using them as wide fronts in a cinema setup, with one noting they sound better in a room with concrete flooring, which helps cut rattles and buzzes. Current used prices vary widely. A Yahoo! Japan search for "jbl control 5" over a recent 120-day window averaged around ¥12,500, though that covers the whole Control 5 family generically. The optional brackets still turn up occasionally, and the mirrored tweeter relative to the Control 5 is worth knowing before buying a mismatched pair.
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