JBL ESS — Model Does Not Exist
JBL never made a speaker called "ESS". The name belongs to a rival manufacturer.
Overview
A search for a "JBL ESS" leads nowhere, because no such product exists. The model number "ESS" does not appear in any source in connection with JBL. ESS was a separate speaker manufacturer (ESS Laboratories / ESS Inc.), and period advertising pitted it against JBL rather than tying the two together.
Collectors sometimes mix the two up because both companies dominated the American loudspeaker market in the late 1970s, and both sat on the same hi-fi shop floor displays. But if the grille says "ESS", it's not a JBL. The two brands went head-to-head in blind listening tests at universities during the period. HiFI-Stereo (June 1979, p.137) reported that students at the University of Wisconsin judged ESS speakers superior to JBL, Bose, Pioneer, Infinity, AR, and Cerwin Vega in comparative tests.
The fact sheet confirms no specifications, production years, original price, dimensions, weight, or technical data for any "JBL ESS" product. No source in the research mentions one, so nothing can be corroborated. If you want a vintage JBL bookshelf speaker, the L100 Century, introduced in 1970, is the real one. It has a 12-inch woofer, a 5-inch midrange, and a 1-inch dome tweeter, crossing over at 1.5kHz and 7kHz.
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