The strange Gino's subwoofer

(April 2008)

When Znort invited me to visit Gino and his new soobwoofer I didn't know what on earth the JBL PARAGON “loudspeakers” were. But knowing Gino and how much eclectic he is, I decided to join the company (Pappa was the third guy). Gino is an eclectic collector of many thing, but in particular he like tape machines. In his home you can find many studio tapes, like Studer, Nagra, Telefunken and so on...

Nagra T2...
Telefunken M10...

He also like vintage turntables and he has more EMT ones, but also Garrard, Thorens and a almost “modern” Goldmund Studio.

EMT 950	Goldmund Studio

Faber have sent me also a picture of the BEZ bottom and of its “brother” power amp, based on the 300B (which I have not yet auditioned). Look!

Ortofon SPU on EMT arm	Dynavector on SME arm

Gino loves also horns. He has many AlNiCo drivers and woofers, many of which are from JBL. He usually uses a tri-amp system: a big woofer for the bass, a wooden horn for the midrange and a supertweeter. The amp system is done by an electronic Piooner crossover fit beween the preamplifier and the three different power amps.

Thorens	Tri-amp system

As loudspeakers Gino likes horns, most JBL based, but he has also an open baffle dipole made with the JBL LE8T.

The Onken + Iwata old speakers...

This time, we have found a different loudspeaker, that is a vintage JBL Paragon, that you can see in the following picture (note also the very nice carpet!):

Well, the Paragon are only the “lower” forniture, while the two horns above it are the Gino's midrange horns and above them there are placed the small tweters.

This is the Gino's midrange unit and above there is the tweeter.	This are the original Paragon midrange and tweeter units
Here you can see the output of the Paragon horn loaded bass section	The Paragon midrange unit is oriented toward the center

We auditioned before the original Paragon and after the Paragon bass section (which is loaded inside the “forniture”) with the Gino's usual midrange horn and supertweeters. We used in particular two records: the Bach Coffe cantata made by Harnoncourt (Telefunken 6.41359) and the Bottesini Tarantella played by Streicher double bass (Telefunken 6.42230).

Well, the Paragon original sound is something very different from usual, in particular because of the midrange orientation (toward the center), so you need some time to learn this different way of sounding. In any case, the majority of us preferred the Gino's midrange and tweeter units more than the original Paragon ones, because they were more revealing and with a better soundstage. But what was really impressive was the Paragon bass section. I never listened the Streicher double bass in such a way. It is not a matter of power, or dynamics or things like that. Is is simply a deep-deep sound coming from a wooden instrument: you can really feel it!

The JBL Paragon were a really expensive loudspeaker system. Gino is using only their bass section and not their midrange and tweeter units. So you can think he is using them like a subwoofer (not to say as a stand for the other horn units)! Is it worth? Definitively!