シンガポールのDavid様より「芸術領域レストア JBL 4350AWX 最高峰アルニコWウーファー セーム革エッジ」ご購入お礼とレビューを頂きました。David様は、2012にもケンリックサウンドにてJBL 4345新品製作リプロダクトを購入して頂いています。
As promised, here is my review of the magnificent 4350A as refurbished by Kenrick Sounds. Just for the record, my last purchase from Kenrick Sound was the 4345, which has found a new happy owner.
Firstly, on the physical condition of the speakers. The enclosure walnut veneer has been waxed to a finish which is to die for, to see and feel it is to want to own it. Every driver looks immaculate, like new condition. Of interest is the 2231A surround has been replaced with Kenrick Sounds proprietary leather chamois, claimed to have superior properties over the conventional foam surround. Critical listening revealed that indeed the bass response seemed to have been enhanced in terms of clarity and speed, which was a know issue with the 4350A double woofers design.
As to the sound, to quote JBL's literature: " ...the 4350 is the result of an engineering study undertaken to create, regardless of cost, the optimum studio loudspeaker for monitoring recording sessions and for final mix down of master tapes." Listening to the 4350A is like being in the studio, in front on the musicians, witnessing a recording process. Instruments scale are portrayed closed to life size, most obvious when playing a drum track. The attack and scale of the kick and snare drums, the decay of the cymbals are reproduced in an uncanny manner. I played a test track from YouTube on the ride cymbal to my friend and he just sat there and shook his head in disbelief.
The sound is truly 'high fidelity'. The other aspect that stood out is the instruments separation, instruments seemed to be suspended in air, each occupying their own space. As a result its easy to follow the music as you could hear into each instrument and what each musician is trying to do. Voices are lifelike and reproduced with every nuances that has been captured in the recording. At this point, I would like to highlight that like many others, i prefer voices reproduced via a paper transducer, which is why after auditioning the new JBL designs, I still prefer the proven 43 series 4-way designs where a dedicated paper driver is devoted to playing the vocals frequency range. Yes, many has argues that the 4-way will lose out in terms of coherency and imaging to a 2-way designs, but this is a trade-off I and many other 43 series fans are willing to live with.
Lastly, I want to thank the Kenrick Sounds Team for doing such a great job in keeping the JBL 43 series studio monitors legacy alive.
Yours truly,
David Ng (Singapore)