vintage versus modern speakers

Actually many of these so called poorly recorded rock albums you mention of yesteryear sound much better than the poorly engineered and compressed rock and pop albums put out today. That does not mean I don't agree that most great speakers of today can sound better than the great speakers of yesterday......there are some exceptions.....and some that still sound great today........but generally one can spend less today and get much better sound per dollar than yesterday.

btw...there weren't any speakers in the 70's that cost $20,000. If I remember correctly I think 4,000 to 5,000 was about the highest price on a very few speakers. The uber high end didn't happen until much latter. That's not to say that there weren't some great sounding speakers.

If I were you I would grab a pair from the 90's. Maggie 3.3, BW 801 or Ariel 10T's and be done with it.

It doesn't matter to me at all. The OP stated that buying 20,000 speakers from the 70's should be a good value. The problem is that there were none.

Replacing foam and caps are difficult....if that is what needs to be done after a while. Speakers from the 90's should be fine.