JBL VT4889
The VT4889 is the full-size element of JBL's VerTec line array. Unlike most models in this archive, it was never a curiosity. It was a working tool that stayed in production for years. The record here is uneven. There is no clean factory spec sheet in hand, but period trade coverage fills in a fair amount of the story.
The VerTec line was rolled out in stages. Mix (March 2001, p.152) ran a feature on line arrays as "SR's latest sensation," and Mix (March 2003, p.129) carried the expanded VerTec line announcement. By then the VT4889 was the anchor of a family that included the VT4887 dual 8-inch element and the VT4881 compact 15-inch sub, both designed to be compatible with it.
The clearest picture of what the box actually is comes from a passing description in Mix (January 2005, p.46). It is a three-way design with two 15-inch woofers, four 8-inch midrange radiators, and three high-frequency compression drivers, built on a wedge frustum with 5° side angles. The tapered sides let cabinets hang in a curved vertical line without gaps between them.
In the field, it had a reputation as a rig that behaved. In Mix (June 2006), Leon Esker of RSA described the VT4889 system as extremely smooth and easy to use, and singled out how straightforward it was to rig and align. The box turns up all over the trade press of the 2000s. Derek Featherstone's Gamble EX56 rig ran twenty VT4889 cabinets over VT4880 subs (Mix, January 2004). The 2008 CMA Awards used 88 of them at front of house (Mix, January 2009). Mix (May 2013) reported that American Idol's revamped set hung left-right arrays of ten VT4889 elements per side. The Wiltern in Los Angeles flew eight per side with Version 5 processing (Mix, October 2014). A powered version, the VT4889ADP, was announced by 2008 (Pro Audio Review, June 2008, p.52).
Not documented in the material available here: original list price, production end date, and detailed factory specifications. A VerTec owner's manual or a period price sheet would fill those gaps.
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