JBL LX500
A modest black bookshelf that hid a titanium tweeter and a price tag that made the big-box stores nervous.
Overview
The LX500 arrived in the early 1990s as a compact bookshelf speaker, and it's the kind of speaker that rewards a second look Audio (February 1994, p.97). JBL's own literature described it as an 8" woofer, 5" midrange, and 1" titanium dome tweeter in a black cabinet — a conventional layout on paper, but the titanium dome was the tell. That's the same material thinking JBL was applying to its better-regarded home and monitor lines, and it gave the LX500 a top end that punched well above its price class.
The suggested power range was 10–150 watts into 8 ohms, which is a genuinely forgiving window. The 8-inch woofer does the heavy lifting down low, with the 5-inch midrange handling the vocal band and the titanium dome taking over above.
Retail pricing was modest. The trade-off was the cabinet, a plain black box with no veneer or flourish to speak of.
Cabinets are typically scuffed from years of shelf and floor duty.
For a listener who wants a genuinely capable three-way without paying collector prices for a JBL monitor, the LX500 is an honest option — provided the surrounds are checked and the tweeters verified. It won't impress anyone on the shelf, but the titanium dome and the 8-inch woofer make a case that the plain black box doesn't.
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