OK! DIY! I have now rebuilt a half dozen serious pairs of speakers. From the 4 foot high towers by 1970s Bose Corporation to AR-3s and a pair of Advent's, both by Henry Kloss. There are others that I call my 'Zombie' line as all are really fine boxes that I strip of everything. The cheap junk you can pull out of these old masters is surprizing and mostly way too cheap. With classic cabinets I have all the data I need to proceed.
What I do is so far superior to what I have found in units like the 7speaker Sansui frat house monsters with poorly insulated 28 AWG cheap copper wire not fit for the lights I put on my boat trailer.
My last began with a full real wood new veneer on a Henry Kloss Advent that was vinyl on MDF. I treated the vinyl with bleach and painted with primer for wood glue to hold. Many coats of Total-Boat water based 'varnish'. The veneer was Birch and finished in a light shade. New frames were cut for the screens and new screening was applied. The interior was fully lined with the sound absorbing 'egg crate' style damping. I mark out where the plate for the crossover will go and I painted 2 or 3 coats of Acoust-X on the surface to protect and pad the crossover.
I put solid brass fittings cut and plated with gold with a mounting plate for speaker wire termials. Multi-able with banana plug fittings. From the terminals I connect in the box between terminal and crossover connection with 12 AWG premium speaker wire. I use the same 12 AWG to connect crosssover with Mid and Woofer. This time I used 20AWG pure solid silver speaker wire from crossover to the tweeters. ($80 for 6 ft and worth every penny). The wiring alone is a major step up from all but the ten grand or higher priced commercial offers. And even some of them!
I installed pre-made Eminence 3-way crossovers rated for 200 watts. This went on to feed planar ribbon tweeters, an 8" Emenince mid and a 12" Community VERIS series woofer. Got a deal on the woofers and all drivers for under $500.00 Another $75 for each crosssover and $3.75 per foot of speaker wire sans the silver.
All in for under $1,000 and would blow Henry Kloss away to hear this now! And well driven with a 70 watt Marantz intergrated amp. My Peachtree X-1s with 440 watts per channel can make the really sing out too. I live in a house with neighbors and people and find that 70 watts is more than plenty.
My first real effort some time ago taught me a lot about what goes on in a speaker cabinet. I had gone to Radio Shack and bought pairs of mids and woofers to fit the old Bose Inter-Audio 4s. Got all four drivers for about $50. That sounded better but the overall sound was bad. I replaced the tweeters. Still bad. I got new Mids. Better, not good. Now with some experience I returned to Parts Express and put all B & C components in after stripping the box again. These are a highly articulated set of speakers and only took about 4 rounds to get to what sounded just right.
And if I had $20,000 each for speakers, where would they go? I love the big Focals, but that is not 'home style' listening and I would need another $100,000 for amps and speaker wires. And then a gun to keep everybody the hell out of here when I want to listen to some Yusef Lateef jazz or any and all of Joni Mitchell's catalogue. I will take it to my 'bunker' (aka man cave but I don't live in a cave) that is just the right size to sip a bourbon and burn a Michigan joint and be blissed out with what I have managed to 'put together' and now own. And with the money I did not spend I bought a new Rega 6 turntable and a new CD player and a Vincent 701 phono pre-amp upgraded with a rare Brimar tube.
Just got my copy of the vinyl set from Frank Zappa and a release of what is called his last concert in the U.S. before failing health and death. I think it is late enough to head to my 'studio bunker'.
The folk tune I remember about "...You got to walk that lonesome valley, you got to walk it by yourself; ain't nobody gonna walk it for you, you gotta walk it by yourself! DIY!!!