Speakers that are a great value!


I’ve been researching off the shelf speaker drivers quit a bit lately and smaller speaker companies as well.  I’ve been finding that companies like Fritz, Salk and Tekton offer incredibly well priced products.  I’m finding that with certain models, there really only appears to be small profit margin.  I understand that when you buy large quantities of drivers, you can get a small discount but still.

For instance, I’m seeing speakers that sell for $2000 might have $700 worth of drivers in them.  When you add in $100-$200 worth of crossovers, $100-$200 in cabinets, $50 for miscellaneous components like binding posts, damping material, wiring, solder or connectors you come up to around $1200 worth of raw components. Now add in labor to construct the boxes, possibly put veneer on them, solder and put together crossovers, install drivers and then ship the speakers, the value is really quite good.  I haven’t even talked about obtaining the woodworking tools to do such a product, rent on a building, utilities on that building and the labor costs if you have any employees. 

My point to all this is to open a discussion and to help people understand that there may only be a $400 profit margin on a $2000 pair of speakers.  I think that these are an exceptional value at full asking price and that should be taken into consideration when thinking about buying speakers from these manufacturers.  
I sometimes hear that these speakers are overpriced and that the value is not good and I would tend to strongly disagree!  
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Has anyone heard Zu Audio's Dirty Weekends? They run about a grand depending on your choice of finish. 
@kenjit I have to agree and clarify one point. I do believe that if you have a master speaker designer and tuner you can't go wrong.  Just ask Fritz! His no crossovers design requires him to tune by ear the wrappings on each coil to get each speaker to sing as he see fit. Thats why his speakers and the Carbon 7's are so sought after for their price, quality of build and selection of high quality speaker choices. 
Add Nola boxer to the listed ! I have compared to focal , fritz and the Nola not far behind excepted for it not handle too much power like Fitz or focal 1008 

Sigh. Another thread nearly derailed by kenjit.

Remember: what we're talking about here are not just good-sounding speakers, but good-sounding speakers where it's really demonstrable that you're getting real value for money, not some ineffable built-in value.

Fritz and Bache are model examples; add in the extra cost of fine cabinetry, and Salk is too.  Think about all those other threads where people wail about the cost of the raw drivers vs. retail cost of the speakers.