JBL 504 GTI, 404 GTI User Manual

Table of Contents

Welcome to Club GTi............................................3

About this Manual .................................................3

Autosound at its Best ............................................3

Designing Your System.........................................5

Coupled Component

Installation Warnings and Tips ..............................6

Mounting Instructions............................................6

Installing the GTi System Crossover.....................6

Woofer/Midrange Driver Mounting ........................7

Mounting Speakers in Custom Locations..............8

Wiring..................................................................10

System Connections ...........................................10

Crossover Tweeter Level Adjustment..................12

Speaker Break-In ................................................12

A Note on Power Handling ..................................12

In Case of Difficulty .............................................13

Specifications......................................................14

Thiele-Small Specifications.................................15

Placement.........................5

Welcome to Club GTi

About This Manual

Autosound at its Best

Thank you for purchasing the finest

Automotive Coupled Component

Systems JBL has ever produced. As a GTi Competition Series owner, you are a member of a select group of people who enjoy the most advanced mobile audio products available. We call this group “Club GTi.” By sending in the customer information card, which you will find attached to your warranty, we will automatically register you as a Club GTi member which will give you access to exclusive Club GTi apparel and other special offers we will make available from time to time. We suggest you fill the card out at your earliest convenience.

Also, be sure to save your sales receipt in a safe place. It will be necessary to use this document as proof of purchase in the event that you ever need warranty service. It is also useful for insurance purposes and for establishing value when you re-sell your vehicle.

Because of the performance capability of your GTi Competition Series product, and the variety of potential system configurations, we strongly recommend that you have the system professionally installed. You will also get a better warranty if your equipment is professionally installed by an authorized GTi dealer and you have your warranty card stamped. This manual provides information on installation and usage to help a skilled technician get the most from your GTi Competition Series product. This manual does not cover basic information about installation which is common knowledge to a professional installer, except for information which is unique to the 404 and 504GTi systems.

If you feel you possess the necessary skills, and prefer to install the equipment yourself, this manual will provide you with the necessary specifics to properly use the 404 or 504GTi in typical installations. Consult your JBL dealer, or a qualified technician, for more information.

The 404 and 504GTi Coupled

Components

are built to meet the same rigorous standards of construction and performance that have long established JBL’s renowned home and professional speaker systems. Coupled Components

are the first to provide true component driver quality in a format which mounts in a single hole. The GTi Coupled Components

combine the reference standard 400 and 500GTi Woofer/Midrange Drivers with a cantilever mounted 20mm Pure Titanium tweeter and outboard 2-way crossover. The tweeter is mounted at a 15° angle which, combined with the exclusive Intermount

mounting system, allows orientation of the speaker for optimum imaging in any vehicle. The near-coincident mounting provides the considerable advantages of equal soundpath length from the woofer and tweeter to your ear, but without the horn loading effects that create a distorted midrange in designs with apex-mounted tweeters.

The 404 and 504GTi Woofer/Midrange Drivers incorporate advanced JBL woven Kevlar cones which are especially suited to the unique acoustic and environmental conditions which characterize automotive sound. The 20mm tweeter incorporates advanced JBL pure titanium technology which works extremely well in the unique acoustic environment of modern vehicles. The 404 and 504GTi have been engineered to provide excellent power handling, good dispersion and balanced frequency response, along with minimum size and flexible installation options for optimizing placement within the vehicle.

Treated Kevlar fiber cones are used because of their combination of low weight, high stiffness and resistance to resonances. The 404 and 504GTi Woofer/Midranges are topped off with a treated fabric inverted dome for smooth reproduction of upper midrange frequencies.

The cone motion of these high excursion woofer/midrange designs is controlled by a Aromatic Polyamid fiber spider. Because it is 3 times stronger than

conventional spider materials, this robust material is able to control the up to 0.6" motion of the cone while maintaining musical accuracy.

The small size of the GTi Woofer/ Midrange Drivers is made possible through the use of a Neodymium magnet assembly with JBL’s Stray Field Containment Geometry. By minimizing stray magnetic fields, this closed circuit magnetic assembly design concentrates the magnetic field on the voice coil where it provides superior performance. In the woofer/midrange drivers, this high concentration of magnetic power is coupled to a 2" Edge-wound Aluminum Wire High Temperature Fiberglass Voice Coil. This coil uses lightweight aluminum wire to maintain the agility to reproduce high frequencies while its large diameter and fiberglass former assures extremely high thermal power handling. The tweeter uses Oxygen Free Copper wire immersed in a thermally conductive bath of viscous Ferrofluid

. This fluid not only conducts heat away from the voice-coil to improve power handling, but damps the

fundamental resonance of the dome for optimum sound.

The tweeters in the 404 and 504GTi feature domes made from pure titanium. Pure titanium has long been known to have a very high stiffness to weight ratio, making it ideal for treble reproduction. However, only JBLhas “tamed” titanium through a special manufacturing process. The dome of the 404 and 504GTi Tweeter is created using special nitrogen gas cooled forming machines which can create a uniformly paper-thin dome without the work-hardening or deformation which causes resonances in domes made without benefit of this process.

Equally important is the 404 and 504GTi crossover design. Each crossover was meticulously optimized in JBL’s stateof-the-art acoustic laboratory to guarantee a seamless blend of the woofer/midrange and tweeter output. Unlike generic or general purpose crossovers, the design of the 404 and 504GTi Crossovers was performed with a full knowledge of the performance characteristics of each driver, allowing frequency, phase, and power

response to be completely optimized for each combination.

What does all this technology add up

to? A Coupled Component

system with ideal frequency balance, excellent off axis response, and high output capability in a small, elegant package. The result is exceptionally smooth and detailed music reproduction over the full range of frequencies and clean sound that cuts through road noise.

These Coupled Components

can be placed in stock locations yet still deliver the punch and performance of a component system. The near-coincident, low profile tweeter mounting and small size of the driver allow these Coupled Component

systems to be mounted for optimum imaging in ways that cannot easily be achieved with separate component systems.

Designing Y our System

The overall quality of any system design is a result of how well all of the components work together, not just the result of the performance of any one component. JBL GTi Series woofer/ midbass or subwoofer transducers are the ideal companion products to your 404 and 504GTi systems. Each of the GTi Competition Series products are designed to complement the others to provide the highest performance with the simplest and most predictable system design. To use the 404 and 504GTi as the satellite transducers in a high quality system, we recommend you use either a high quality active crossover such as JBL’s GTX47, GTX4 or GTX2 to provide optimum matching to your subwoofer or woofer/midbass loudspeaker. If you prefer passive crossovers, we recommend that you use only high quality audiophile grade film-type capacitors and Low DCR inductors to get the most out of your system. The most popular system configuration is a hybrid using an active

crossover for the subwoofer to woofer/ midrange crossover point, and the passive crossover included with your Coupled Components

for the woofer/midrange to tweeter crossover. Your GTi Competition Series dealer is uniquely qualified to help guide you on the best system configuration for your needs.

Coupled Component

Placement

The location of each of the loudspeakers plays a vital role in achieving proper frequency response and spacious imaging. The near-coincident design of the Coupled Components 504GTi systems an extremely wide and smooth dispersion pattern. As a direct result, excellent performance may be achieved in any vehicle. Due to the wide variety of vehicles, there is more than one “right” way to locate the 404 and 504GTi. Knowledge of the following considerations will help you get the most from your system:

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