I too, if not already owning Elac’s, would add the cost of modding Elacs to my budget and buy better speakers outright. But if I already owned a pair, and like their basic character enough to spend a little dough to improved them, I would look into the GR Research Elac mods. One of them is free---just remove the cosmetic plastic woofer surround. It is there to hide the drivers mounting frame, gasket, and screws, but creates diffraction and frequency aberrations---removing it costs nothing, and improves the sound of the speaker.
Danny Richies Level 1 Mod is relatively cheap, improving the Elacs out of proportion to it’s price. The Level 2 Mod is considerably more money, and is a more ambitious re-engineering of the Elacs. Andrew Jones is a talented designer, but he needed to meet a parts cost that allows the speakers to be sold at certain price points. Danny Richie, a renown speaker designer himself (hired by other companies to design their speaker products), an expert especially in crossover design, has a customer base of more enthusiast/audiophile/perfectionist DIYers who usually buy Danny’s Mod kits and install them themselves, making the mods more cost effective. Anyone possessing basic soldering skills can do the same, and improve the sound of the Elacs considerably for relatively little $. For anyone who doesn't, a local tech should be able to perform the mod in an hour, costing the Elac owner only whatever the tech charges for his time. Or maybe a 12-pack for a friend who can solder!
