If you can wait until Sheila Berdan is up and running in her new Seattle-area location, she is an Eminent Technology dealer. The ET LFT-8b has gotten great reviews (especially in the UK, but also by Robert E. Greene in The Absolute Sound, and by Harry Weisfeld of VPI, who declared the $2499/pr LFT-8b to possess the best midrange he has ever heard). Too bad it cost $501 below your minimum budget ;-) .
Brooks Berdan thought (R.I.P.) very highly of the ET magnetic-planar speaker line, choosing it as the planar speaker line over Magnepan for his shop (along with QUAD ESL's, and Wilson and Vandersteen box designs). I have both (Magneplanar Tympani T-IVa, and both LFT-4 and LFT-8b's), buying the LFT-8b after hearing it in the shop. For some reason U.S.A. audiophiles continue to ignore this great speaker value.
Unlike Maggies---whose low impedance characteristics prefer a solid state amp, the LFT-8b is an easy 8 ohm load, the magnetic-planar panel itself (which sits atop a sealed 8" dynamic woofer for 180Hz down) 11 ohms, great for tube amps. Two pair of binding posts---one for the m-p panel (housing a true push-pull magnetic midrange driver and ribbon tweeter, unlike the single ended drivers in the similarly-priced Maggie 1.7i), the other for the woofer---makes bi-amping or bi-wiring easy.