Kjl,
As a former Quad owner, in my experience it's pretty hard to go back to dynamic loudspeakers. The openness and clarity and natural ease of the Quads is a tough act to follow.
I try not to always post a "buy something I sell" post here at Audiogon, but based on what you've said, you might want to consider the Sound Lab line of full-range electrostats. They are probably the ultimate expression of electrostatic technology, and they do have genuine deep bass (while they don't give you the chest-caving whump of a good 15" woofer, their pitch definition in the bottom octaves is superb). Their limitations are low efficiency (in the same ballpark as Maggies) and a difficult impedance curve; unfortunately your Thors might not be sufficiently powerful.
On the plus side, Sound Labs give you world-class clarity and inner harmonic articulation; they do a superb job of letting you hear the individual voices in a large choral ensemble. They give you a very wide sweet spot and (with a bit of room treatment at the first reflection points) will give you a wide and extremely deep soundstage. Sound Labs excel at getting instrumental timbres and textures correct. The do not give you the pinpoint imaging of a world-class minimonitor, but they do a better job of recreating the feel of a live performance with their rich ambience. They do a better job of conveying dynamic contrasts than most planars speakers (including the Quads). The Sound Labs are utterly fatigue-free; you can listen to them for hours and hours on end.
I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have.
Best of luck in your quest!
Duke
As a former Quad owner, in my experience it's pretty hard to go back to dynamic loudspeakers. The openness and clarity and natural ease of the Quads is a tough act to follow.
I try not to always post a "buy something I sell" post here at Audiogon, but based on what you've said, you might want to consider the Sound Lab line of full-range electrostats. They are probably the ultimate expression of electrostatic technology, and they do have genuine deep bass (while they don't give you the chest-caving whump of a good 15" woofer, their pitch definition in the bottom octaves is superb). Their limitations are low efficiency (in the same ballpark as Maggies) and a difficult impedance curve; unfortunately your Thors might not be sufficiently powerful.
On the plus side, Sound Labs give you world-class clarity and inner harmonic articulation; they do a superb job of letting you hear the individual voices in a large choral ensemble. They give you a very wide sweet spot and (with a bit of room treatment at the first reflection points) will give you a wide and extremely deep soundstage. Sound Labs excel at getting instrumental timbres and textures correct. The do not give you the pinpoint imaging of a world-class minimonitor, but they do a better job of recreating the feel of a live performance with their rich ambience. They do a better job of conveying dynamic contrasts than most planars speakers (including the Quads). The Sound Labs are utterly fatigue-free; you can listen to them for hours and hours on end.
I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have.
Best of luck in your quest!
Duke