JBL GT5-1204BR Subwoofer Enclosure

Product Details
Manufacturer: JBL
Distributor: Car Audio & Security
Website: link
Typical Selling price: (CAS) £94.99
DESCRIPTION
Carpeted, ported bass box with twelve inch driver. The port is the JBL Slipstream„¢ design, made to reduce what we in the UK call ‘˜chuffing’ or the compression and thus movement of air within the port exceeding the speed of sound and thus making its very own noise. In the USA, they have a better name they call it ‘˜Whacking’. Point being, this isn’t just a hole. It’s a JBL hole.
The driver is a GTO1204, medium-priced, medium to upper power handling by modern standards at just over the quarter-kilowatt and looking ornate for the buyer who wants some ‘˜flash’. This adds moving mass to the cone and also forms part of a bloody serious stiffening structure of lightweight plastic ribs and forms on the front of the cone. The surround is large and the excursion of the cone commensurately long. Nice badge on the front. The proprietary JBL speaker cup indicates that this is serial numbered product.
It was hooked to the mighty JBL resident reference GTO24001 bass amplifier, which is absolutely absurd and easily powerful enough if played with stupidly, to simply ruin the driver in the box. I’ll try not to blow it up but as JBL users tend to be like Subaru drivers (high VFM, mad engineering, drive it like you stole it) I will give it some effort. The last time I smelt voice coil was with the Fusion CP-FR6930 reviewed here: link I put them upon the Alpine F30 new class D amplifier which is beyond twice the recommended power the Fusions are rated for. They finally complained a tad on the deepest bits of an un filtered bass CD and I wicked it back in time for them to remain linear and working perfectly. But the landing smelled of burned voice coils.
Again.
I did gain admiration for the ovals, though. Smokin’!
The rig: a single-DIN 2010 Kenwood KDC-9537U OEL fascia headunit (gorgeous) and a set of Alpine DDLinear DDL RT17S components on an Alpine MRV-F30 four channel amplifier plus the JBL GTO24001 2.4 kilowatt surfboard for bass, all on StreetWires cables and power bits (except for the vital safety-disconnect from fork lift truck technology) with rare JL Audio RCA cables and juice from an Odyssey battery that is now three years old and should be seven flavours of failed. It isn’t, it still holds enough power for me to fear it and respect it
Specifications
– Driver: GTO1204
– Impedance: 4 Ohms
– Power Handling: 275W RMS
– Enclosure: Slipstream„¢ Ported
– Aluminium die cast grille
– Passband: 45Hz to 150Hz
– Sensitivity (1w/1m): 90dB
– Dimensions (HxWxD): 570 x 305 x 369(mm)
Editor Review : JBL GT5-1204BR Subwoofer Enclosure
Plugging in on the regular banana-plug friendly speaker-cup system, I would only use a quick-unplug dual banana plug, i.e. A one-piece ‘˜pos’ and ‘˜neg’ speaker banana plug rather than paired singles, (as I did) unless you religiously keep them insulated from each other when disconnected. Or you are simply going to offer your bass amp a dead short. Which I have done in my time pretty sparks! And the risk of burning home, car, loved ones, so take that seriously.
I took it so seriously that I wondered why the JBL GTO24001 amp wouldn’t power up, then realised I hadn’t connected the fork-lift truck plug/socket used to safety-break the 1/0 gauge cables needed to hook a two thousand watt amp up to a battery. It was used in mere 4 Ohm mode, so was only able, at a paltry just-less-than-twelve-volts under heavy load, of a solid thousand watts. That’s being really conservative about losing two hundred watts to not having an alternator pushing it all. It was plenty.
I adjusted the Alpine DDL components to be low in the mix so I could play with the bass more easily and gave the system some Two Tribes by Frankie Goes To Hollywood and loved it, balancing it all so it worked nicely. So, it’s melodic and capable with tunes, even vigorous ones. The next question is can it do next-level shit basically! Can it play your Drum & Bass? Can you stuff the dirtiest, grimiest Dubstep right up its natty serial-numbered arse and will it make sexy feelings or is it just another cheapie that does sort of work a bit?
The answer is peasy for this reviewerit’s yes. Stuff dirty Dubstep up its butt.
And I could stop there, but the fact is, this GTO woofer is part of a cult of the most extreme bass heads far further out than even the JBL UK guys knew about at the top level. It is seen as cool to buy these sort of things eight at a time and box up the back of say, a posh people carrier with them. The GTO JBL woofer features heavily in the lanes of the Propper Dropper contest format and for good reason. Lots of really out-there bass nutters adore the GTO woofers from JBL.
In this box, with the deeply beautiful JBL Slipstream port tube moulding, the woofer is perfectly acoustically suspended, seems to enjoy bumping in its world and the first part that starts to show signs of stress, as I played the living hell out of it, was, yes, you guessed it, the (delicate, I promise) smell of cooking coil glue. A few more solvents coming off the new speaker, the suspension being given its first really good stretching and in turn releasing solvents of plasticizers and rubbery pongs. I am a speaker pervert, as I confess, I like it, like dragster drivers enjoy the acrid sting of Methanol or even better, the fumes of BURNT Methanol.oh goddd.
Sorry, where was I? Yes, the JBL turns out to be like it’s daddy and it’s daddy before it and so very many more. It has the same capabilities and minor limitations as so many but which add up to a bloody brilliant subwoofer. One made exactly for the people likely to buy it, for this is one really tough fucker to kill.
I played at least thrice what it aughta be good for and it coped and seemed to love it. It never made a single cone noise to register a complaint and I am certain that had I been silly and tried to hurt it that the voice coil wire would have vaporised somewhere with nary ever a cone quack nor buzz, so well-suspended is this cone.
It tracked the whole of the stupid ‘Woofer Excursion Test’ from the daftest Bass CD I have and played all the rest I threw at it. Of course, as tones bump and bounce from one extreme to the next, there are some that played a bit better than others, since it is ported rather than sealed but the overall tuning is wide and that Slipstream„¢ port moulding is bloody awesome.
So if you want bass you can plug in and create a right now, experience Drum & Bass in your ride, this is a real candidate.
In a Nutshell
Handsome looking ported box in carpet with a midprice driver in it that simply doesn’t know when to quit. Able to take large bass power and rock all day. Drops lovely and deep and looks good, Bloody Brilliant Branded Bargain Boomer, Basically, Bo’!
Overall 9.2
Sound Quality 8
Build Quality 9
Power Handling 10
Efficiency 9
Value For Money 10