looking for upgrade suggestions - 12,000 to spend

Jadem6. I am not going to quantify this particular type of mod as a "success", because NOW WE ARE talking about potentially changing the "voicing" of John's original design intentions. Therefore "success" regarding this particular mod is "in the eyes of the beholder".

The only mods that I unequivocally support are mods that improve on Dunlavy's original design intentions, without any detrimental sonic aberrations. After all, I do think Dunlavy is one of the best speaker designers out there (are you hearing me Audioguy?).

I know of NO other speaker designer that has assembled such worthy sounding speakers from average low cost midrange and tweeter drivers. Every other highly regarded speaker manufacturer has to use much better drivers just in order to sonically surpass Dunlavy's speakers. Dulavy's design facilities are some of the best in the business, and so are his measurement techniques and quality sorting conventions.

Now if we could just convince Dunlavy to use really excellent drivers, coils, caps, etc.. I've always said to many of my friends: "If I ever win the lottery, I'm going to pay Dunlavy a ridiculous amount of money to build a pair of SC-VI's with top of the line drivers and crossover components". (I'd probably also have the cabinet made from something much more dense and inert, than the cabinets that he currently uses).

Note: If you look at Montana's line of speakers (which have received many glowing reviews), you'll see something very similar to what I would have Dunlavy build. If I didn't know better, I'd swear that they just copied Dunlavy's original design parameters and used much better drivers, cabinets and crossover parts.

Sorry I couldn't answer your question with a definite "yes" or "no", but I DO NOT want to be part of the "potential mis-information, based on a subjective opinion" crowd. There's enough of that already!

I have done simular mods that Ehider mentions. I replaced the Vifa tweeter with Scan Speak 2900, the revelator is not a direct drop in for the 4,as. I also replaced those CHEAP sand resistors John uses with Ohmite,s and all the caps with Zen and others along with bypassing on the tweeter.
These mods get rid of the congestion in the mid to high region, the bass has better definition. These mods give the Dunlavys mutch better resolution thrugh out the frequentcy range. I brought these mods up early last year with no response.
Steve

Lordgorian,

What? Rowland voices his stuff with Talon? Also, At the NY Stereophile show, the Talon Xs sounded the same as the old ones to me.

Lordgorian,

What? Rowland voices his stuff with Talon? Also, At the NY Stereophile show, the Talon Xs sounded the same as the old ones to me.

My first observation;before reading any of the posters, was loose the plane jane 4's;-- dated. A guy who thinks in terms of 200 dollar ic's and like runs of speaker wire gives me a problem,--as in we would not be on the sme page-- and such a guy using lesser parts within the speaker -- well, to me, they go hand-in-hand.No,I don't have John's expertise;--nor that of many of the posters,even!!-- Just ears.