The Harman JBL L100 takes you back to an era where sonic purity and volume was all

JBL L100

£4,000, jblsynthesis.com 

Not many adverts are as iconic as the ‘Blown Away Guy’ from the Maxell tape adverts, with hair and tie streaming backwards from a chair in a vaguely atomic blast from a speaker.

It’s 41 years since it appeared in 1978, and I somehow can’t imagine (for instance) future decades looking back as fondly on the car insurance meerkats.

But while we can’t time-travel back to the days of C90 cassettes (sadly), the now Harman-owned JBL has relaunched the equally iconic speaker used in the advert shoot.

The new L100 has a Quadrex foam grille and white 12in woofer, the design of which screams Seventies at about the same volume these 58 lb speakers can put out. Which is considerable.

Cranking them up (you’ll need a proper amp and player, plus tolerant neighbours) takes you back to an era where sonic purity and volume was all, and noise regulations were something to be ignored.

The L100s were the offspring of a widely used studio monitor, and sold a million over the decades, marketed as delivering the ‘west coast sound’ – ie, the booms and roars of rock.

The now Harman-owned JBL has relaunched the equally iconic speaker used in the advert shoot

There have been a few tweaks inside, with a new one-inch titanium dome tweeter, 5in pure-pulp mid-range driver and 12in pure-pulp bass driver – and, like the originals, they seem to be at home with the hairier end of the rock spectrum.

At £4,000 a pair, they’re obviously very expensive indeed – and for the full experience, you’ll obviously need to add your own Le Corbusier chair (and Eighties tie).