Should I try to improve speakers at $2000.00 range

Doug
You are right on. I can hear the shrill of those aluminum tweeters while I am typing this.....Ouch!

And... I mention the Quad ESL 57's and no one even gives them a thumbs up....
If I wasn't a dealer I would surely have a pair.

Johnny Audioconnection, Wow!, don't you think a disclaimer is in order?

Nostalgia kills great audio aspirations. Sometimes I get stupid and go for a nostalgia purchase; bad move in terms of sound. About two years ago I saw some Mission speakers nearby - had to get them. I ended up selling them about three months later since they didn't sound good. I've had a lot of vintage/nostalgia gear and without fail it all goes away since it never measures up. Working with older gear intentionally to develop one's best system makes it virtually impossible to accomplish the task.

Budgetary constraints are an absolutely valid consideration, but aside from that variable I don't believe I would ever seek older gear (i.e. past 3-4 years) to build my best rigs. You let yourself get off the pace of innovation and things fall apart sonically fairly quickly.

I'll take a different approach - and largely steer clear of the value debate (new products vs old products/technology advances vs. high end price inflation) - and point out that you can probably add an octave of bass extension to your system (even in a smallish room like yours) for $2k. I think I remember the SL 700s pretty well - they were very good speakers and, though they had better extension than the 600s, they still came up short in the bottom end.

Johnny's Vandy recommendation would definitely get you better low end extension, but so would carefully chosen subwoofers (with a controller).

Personally, I suspect that $2k, carefully spent either way, would pay off for you. I know it would for me.

Marty

BTW, in addition to the Vandys, there are many other $2k replacement speakers that would also get you more bandwidth than the SL 700s. Many small $2k floorstanders (I own the very fine omnidirectional Ohm 100s, which are one example) are available to do that trick.

Marty