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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@cesheid, I have not heard the dirty weekends but they look awesome as well, and you don’t see them come up on the resale market...tells me something.

i would def try a pair and almost did this past year but things weren’t in position for me to do so. 
👍 another great bargain!  Good one
On a performance per dollar basis , I never fail to be impressed by the Vandy 2’s.
the big companies have the budget to design better products, but to get dealers to carry them they need huge markups. Buying used is the only value, I’m enjoying a very expensive system I would only dream about owning and because many audiophiles get hooked on having the latest thing us little people can enjoy sota. Anybody believe a $25k speaker from 5 years ago is any less musical than a new $12k speaker today? 
Vandersteen beating inflation since 1977

but seriously with > 200k pair of 2’s sold, run that down a 90% improvement curve and see what you get....

Amazing you can get Treo CT for $8,500
model ones are just $1,400. I sold One B retail
for $660 Pair in mid eighties...