Great write-up, thanks! I'm thinking that the reason the JBL K2 S9800 wasn't run is probably nothing like what you were told. Could be that they were afraid of the environment, and that the speaker might not sound good there. Could be something else, who knows. But it certainly wasn't that a good amp would have been a problem. That's the wierdest thing I ever heard.Speakers with first order crossovers can sound pretty good. They have dense interference between drivers, so things balance out. They're pretty simple too. But as for me, I wouldn't want to run a modern 1" exit compression horn with a first order crossover. At least not the JBL 2426 or PSD2002 on a 800Hz or 1kHz horn. Using first-order crossovers with them doesn't sound very good, and power handling drops so dynamic range does too.