Technical Differences: JBL L16 Decade, L19, and 4301 (Introduction)

Similar speakers: JBL L16 Decade, L19 and 4301 series

What is the difference between these?

Magazine scan credit: Nesster, flickr. License: CC BY 2.0 DEED.

Introduction

In this post, I plan to cover some technical differences between several similar JBL speakers.
Each of them is a two-way speaker with a 1.4-inch diameter pulp cone tweeter and an 8-inch diameter pulp cone woofer.
I will use JBL's official documents on these speakers for reference, along with my own knowledge of the speakers. Here are the JBL documents I will be using:

• JBL L16 Decade
• JBL L19
• JBL 4301 (direct download to pdf)
• JBL 4301E (Independent website www.cieri.net archive copy, higher-resolution)
• JBL 4301E (U.S. Library of Congress archive copy, lower-resolution)
• JBL 4301B (direct download to pdf)
• JBL 4301BE (direct download to pdf)

Additionally, I have included some other links to articles; credit for those goes to their respective authors and publishers. The links will take you to the appropriate pages to read. I have read the articles and will utilize some information from them in my explanation -- you may benefit from reading them, too.

Another thing to note about the JBL models before I begin:
There is also a version of the 4301 called the 4301 WX. As far as I can tell, there is no official JBL document on the web for this model. In fact, the WX suffix, which appeared on several other JBL speakers in the 43XX series, is a bit of a mystery. I may look more into the WX suffix later. For now, all I can offer is that it does not appear to have any difference in specifications from the JBL 4301 (no suffix.) If you, reader, know anything about the WX suffix, please comment below. It would be helpful to both me and the rest of the vintage JBL speaker community!

Please stay tuned for Part 1: JBL L16 Decade!