watt puppy 7 / sophia?

The Usher uses far superior drivers to the WP, Kharma, or Marten. Usher is one of the largest speaker builders in the world they just have been concentrating on the Asian market for years.

The new Be series uses pure Beryillium midrange and tweeter drivers which offer unmatched speed, detail and clarity.

The Eton woofers are also superior to the Wilson drivers.

Please don't take this the wrong way, in my day I sold a boat load of WP, but Wilson has allways used good but not the most expensive or the best drivers in really good, inert cabinets. The fact is if you use MDF in the right way you can accheive an inert cabinet for much less money.

Also isn't it a bit suspecious that they changed one expensive tweeter for another and then raised the price of the speakers by over 20%!

Usher builds some of the worlds greatest loudspeakers as do several other not as well known brands as Wilson. Wilson is a terrific product but the industry and customers should be aware that you don't and shouldn't just be looking a the big names that you know. There are many here that love the Zu speakers, I am not one of them, but would scream from the hilltops that affordable and excellent speakers are here.

I started my business to find the best sounding and reasonably priced audio and video products out there. I beleive in serving the client and not the client serving the dealer. So I will allways champion products like the Usher's and try to convince people that great products come from all over the world and not just the US or Europe

If this is about getting the most bang for your buck, turn the page. Wilson doesn't offer that.
Tvad is right, as you seem to know, about buying used. Thankfully, there are still people who buy new so that the rest of us can buy used.
Try another thread asking for cost effective alternatives to Wilson WP-7. You will get a lot of responses and many of them will be valid. I'm going to recommend Zu Definitions because I own and sell them. However, my first bit of advice won't work there because nobody ever sells them used.

Macrojack, I'm not going to hit this point too hard, but now that you are a Zu Audio dealer you really are obligated to mention your role in any threads in which you write about Zu Audio loudspeakers.

Tvad - I think you are probably right and I just did so.This is rather a different situation however. I am not a dealer per se but I do stand to receive a commission if anyone who listens to the speakers in my home buys a pair from the factory. I have no inventory other than my own pair of speakers and no investment to protect. I do not negotiate price and I live in a fairly remote location. All in all, I'm not likely to benefit directly from my comments.
But just as the matter of whether or not Zu uses a crossover evolved into a vast controversy, I fear that this one could as well. So I'll take your advice.

I have owned the wp7 and the sophias. I had the original sophias and not the sophias 2. I can tell you that no one can honestly say that the original sophias sound even nearly as good as the wp7. I would agree that the sophias are sweet speakers but please its like comparing a Porsche Boxer to a Porsche 911.

I currently have the wp7 and was debating moving up the food chain to the wilson maxx2. I heard the maxx2 in two different listening rooms. One time they were driven by expensive vtl siegfried tube amps and once by less expensive but real powerful krell 750 mcx ss monoblocks. It was apparent to me that the maxx2 were a better speaker but I was shocked that even with incredibly expensive vtl state of the art amplifier, I thought the difference was modest not substantial. Since it would have cost me roughly $20,000 to upgrade the speakers, I have pretty much decided to quash the idea.

The wp7 are a bargain at $15,000 used. I had posted an ad to sell my wp7 for $14,000 on audiogon last month in anticipation that I would be floored by the maxx2. I was surprised that the wp7 were not bought within a few days at that price. I am pretty happy though that they were not. I am not sure if its the economy or the wilson bashers out there that are cooling the demand for wilson but its a pretty sweet speaker.

Cheers

Mike