JBL, end of an era

I realize that people losing their jobs is not nice and is very hard on them. I would be very upset if I lost my job. What I do not understand is why some of you seem to think that out sourcing is something new. My father retired when he was 62 in 1975. At least 10 years before he retired (1965) he was complaining about all of the shoe making jobs going to Mexico and overseas (he was a union man). The same thing happened in the garment industry around the same time. So this has been going on for something like 50 years, it is not new.

When it comes to consumer electronics the things that the industry I work in have made possible are mostly responsible for what you see. Tubes were replaced by the invention of the transistor, and the transistor was replaced by the integrated circuit (IC's or chips). State of the art technology today is 45 nm. That means that the circuit dimensions in the chip are as small as 45 nanometers. To give some idea how small 45 nm is the wavelength of green light is around 450 nm. This type of technology makes it possible to produce the processor chip in a Sony PS3 that is roughly the size of a postage stamp. With so much densification of function, things that would have taken many circuit boards to do before are now done in a single module that you can hold in your hand. Assembly becomes trivial. If all you need to assemble your unit is unskilled labor it is only good business sense to find the cheapest unskilled labor that you can.

Would you suggest that we should still use tubes in all of our electronics gear and forego all of the wonderful things that the last 50 years of progress in the electronics industry have given us?

This does not mean that I do not think that many corporations over do out sourcing. They most certainly do and some take a hit in service and quality when they do. I will be posting about my recent expereinces with this in a little bit in another thread.

 

Ok, what do you guys have to say about the letter from the JBL rep?

 

Cool. Those are legendary.

Here's a JBL site that's make you drool...

http://www.jbl43.com

As for Klipsch, I'd like to audition a pair of the RF-7s. Those are more in my price range than the 1400 Arrays! Plus, they're built in Hope, Arkansas!

 

Well, there are a few problems here.

First, you seem to be confusing outsourcing with automation in your comments, but in all fairness, outsourcing sometimes has little to do with labor costs. Ask the drug companies.

Second, it seems to me that majority of tube electronics are actually assembled in China, so I am not really following that point either.

Third, outsourcing labor, as in the race to the bottom, is fraught with many long term ills not necessarily associated with local job loss, chiefly environmental.

The use of cheap labor is not entirely justified by the cost savings. It depends. Certainly, any American somewhat familiar with history should have a feel for this. Actually, that attitude can be seen as quite offensive to some of us.

 

Mike from NYC: your absolutely right!

 

Mike, You hit the nail right on its head. OLED (organic light emitting diode) display is thinner and lighter than LCD panels - it can even be folded. OLED displays also naturally achieve higher contrast ratios than either LCD screens using cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFLs) or the more recently developed LED backlights in conditions of low ambient light such as dark rooms. All these advantages mean OLED will replace LCD at some point. For now, Corning, a great American company has some 50% of the LCD market share. Unfortunately, Eastman Kodak cannot take advantage of the fact that it holds many key OLED patents since most of its manufacturing capacity has been permanently eliminated. Instead it will be licensing its OLED patents to a few Asian companies. If Kodak had manufacturing capacity, it could literally print money in the future when OLED displays become mainstream.

 

You are absolutely right, this has been going for so long now that there are very few manufacturing jobs left in this country. I'm sure glad I'm not just starting out in manufacturing.
Although It's been very good to me, I can see it slipping away everyday in posts like this one. When I was just starting out I wanted to work at JBL

 

Kimo, I did not want to go into the role of automation in my post, but you are absolutely right, a huge number of jobs have been lost to automation and are just gone (not out sourced). But, this brings me back to the point I made in the last post, do we stop technical progress to save jobs? I hope we all know the answer to that question.

 

Anyone?

 

It's hard to know exactly what they are doing. What are our concerns? Are they nationalism? Quality concerns? Brand identity survival? Is JBL the curator of a certain taste in sound? Will that survive this change? Most of those issues are not answered by his email; inn fairness, maybe they can't be or even shouldn't be? But, as I read through the thread, those are some concerns. At the JBL company, I'm sure the concerns extend to continued employment.

I worked for several large, multinational companies during my career. Whenever something like this happens, a lot of things are up for grabs.

My thoughts.

 

Ok, thank you. Yeah, I concur, there's a lot of unanswered questions here. But, I like the news that they're not gona at least scrap the Array series. Not sure about the K2 or Everest.

 

The discussion became political and very bitter and was pulled and rightly so.

JBL has been making speakers in other countries for a long time; what's disturbing here to JBL fans is that now the really good stuff----the professional models and drivers and the top of the line audiophile models based on the pro technology----will no longer be made here. Note that many DIY speaker builders use JBL pro drivers and horns for home audio. People fear that moving production will also entail a dive in quality, they also fear that JBL will no longer supply rebuild parts for it's old drivers.

Fortunately Radian and GPA build drivers here in the USA of pro JBL type and quality; JBL was never the only player in that game and many DIY speaker builders use GPA and Radian for home audio.

 

Welcome to the forum, and thanks for your input. Where exactly is JBL going to make the pro and audiophile stuff now?

Keep this quote in mind, please. What does this mean?

"They are not moving to a new facility – they are moving to an
established Harman facility that already exists and does quite well."

 

Well, I am no fan of auto tune or automatic transmissions, so I would say that there can be a few exceptions.

Nevertheless, the concept of "free trade" with a country so patently not free is a little hard to accept.

 

Old thread. Made me pull out my old JBL 4311B's I bought back in college. Bought them from a now defunct chain called Tech HiFi. Hooked them up to my old Marantz 2238B I also bought while in college (late 70's). Man, even after all these years, the old hardware still sounds so good!

 

I used to go out there from time to time. Used to deal with Drew Daniels who was a mainstay there for years.

 

Are ALL JBL speakers now made in China?

 

No, only the lowest end models. The higher end models like the S series, the Studio Monitor series and the Project Everest are made in Mexico.

 

On a related note, I'll assume that KEF has moved offshore as well?

 

China, I believe.

 

KEF, Quad, Mission, Wharfedale, etc are now all owned by the same Chinese company. There are still a bunch of Brits based in the UK working on designs to the best of my knowledge.

 

Those were the good old days in the golden era of stereo ...

 

The problem is the market. Most people today are not buying speakers like we used to back in my day. I remember hearing my first system in 1970 and buying a Fisher 500 TX, Dynaco A-25s, a Dual 1209 with a Pickering XV-750 cart, and tghen adding a Teac 350 cassettte deck. Even my young bride was all in. Today it is a set of cans, if that.

I bought about 6 months ago a pair of JBL ES-20s bookshelf speakers for our bedroom system to better hear the TV dialog. Those little 3-ways (5" woofers) are great for that and music is great off them as well for all of $129 and free shipping. I am about to buy a pair of ES-30s with a 6" woofer for my classroom for all of $199. Most people today would not even buy those no matter how good they sound, which is a sad testament to American audio listening today. They have no right to sound as good as they do and I would put them easily up against the Andrew Jones $120 Pioneers, and even he has moved on from Pioneer.

The game is changing daily and manufacturers must change with it. Once someone else offers a $29 DVD player and sell tens of thousands then game is on. If you need a spare pair of bookshelf speakers it would be a mistake to overlook these because of where they are made. There are new models coming on the heals of these. Go on line to JBL.com

 

I know that I am the problem. I took the bait when I bought an entry level faux THX system based around the Paradigm Atom v.2. At the time the Atom was the cheapest thing from Paradigm still made in Canada. Retail was $179 a pair. The deluxe center was $200 and the dipole surrounds were $450. I bought so well that nothing I've heard in the price range impresses me.