JBL L57 Carnival (1976–1981)
The L57 Carnival is one of the strangest speakers JBL ever produced, and the company's own 1976 dealer brochure said as much. It called the Carnival "the most unusual speaker JBL has ever built." It's a compact 3-way bass reflex bookshelf system, but instead of aiming everything at the listener, the midrange and high-frequency drivers are angled upward on the front baffle. The tweeter fires upward from the top of the cabinet entirely. JBL described the result as 360-degree, omnidirectional dispersion. The brochure's pitch: "Its sound is not directed at you. It is directed in all directions at once."
The driver complement is a 10-inch bass driver, a 4-inch midrange, and a 2-3/4-inch cone tweeter, with crossover points at 1,500 Hz and 5,000 Hz. Frequency response is rated at 47 to 20,000 Hz, impedance at 8 ohms, and sensitivity at 87 dB/W/m. JBL recommended a minimum of 10 watts RMS from a tube amplifier, and hifi-wiki lists overall power handling at 10-75 watts. A continuously variable tweeter level control is on board. The cabinet measures 22-13/16 inches high by 13-7/8 wide by 10-7/8 deep and weighs 25-3/8 lbs. The U.S. price in 1976 was $108.00 each.
According to the dealer brochure, the L57 sat above the L26 in JBL's lineup. It was produced from 1976 to 1981. High Fidelity (June 1967, p.48) noted that designs like this traded raw volume for a more diffuse, "intimate" presentation suited to patios and pools. That coverage predates the model's introduction, but it gives some context for the Carnival's layout.
That's about where the documentation ends. No owner reviews, no common-failure notes, no collector pricing has surfaced in the research. What remains is the brochure's confident claim and a genuinely odd speaker that seems to have been JBL taking a real swing at omnidirectional sound in the mid-seventies.
- Type: 3-way bass reflex bookshelf speaker
- Drivers: 10" woofer, 4" midrange, 2-3/4" cone tweeter (upward-firing)
- Crossover: 1,500 Hz / 5,000 Hz
- Frequency response: 47–20,000 Hz
- Impedance: 8 ohms · Sensitivity: 87 dB/W/m
- Power: 10W RMS minimum (tube), 10–75W handling
- Dimensions: 22-13/16" H × 13-7/8" W × 10-7/8" D · 25-3/8 lbs
- Price: $108.00 each (1976)
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