What makes an expensive speaker expensive

Charles, I too love SET's, but only from the lower mids on up.  That's why I fell in love with Vandersteen's new amp on the 7's.  I've heard plenty of great reference amps on that speaker, but his just blows me away.  He too loves the sound of the SET amps in the mids.  Just so real and palpable to many of our ears, but the bass isn't quite impactful, so doing a hybrid made sense. I know he'll have a smaller amp eventually if he follows his normal business practice and I'll have to give it a whirl, that's for sure.  SET's can make speakers that normally fry my ears, listenable.  Some folks don't get it though and again I appreciate that POV. lol.

What are the prices of vandersteen replacement drivers? Who makes them? You say paper cones have a lot of breakup? Can you please give example of driver and speaker model? I do not regularly see it as a direct problem for end user. I also looked up Sabrina 3 as possible example, but did not see real evidence of that on stereophile’s "spectral delay" plot. May be I do not know what you mean. I would bet the damping characteristics between particular carbon fiber and paper driver models vary and possible overlap much as their costs.

You may be interested in Reference 3a driver implementation if you have not heard of them already. They have carbon fiber driver "hyper-exponentially shaped to avoid cone break up modes". Its run full range.

Hi ohlala, 
I didn't address ctsooner's comments about paper cone "breakup" as I want to avoid going too far off topic  (which is easy to do ). No matter the driver cone material of choice there's always a hierarchy of quality and performance.  Designer talent, knowledge and most certainly implementation are the determining factors. 

Paper cones done poorly will have obvious failings, if done right they'll sound wonderfully natural. Carbon fiber, aluminum, beryllium  etc.  The same principle holds true,  there's good and bad examples of all materials. 
Charles, 

ohlala
They vary depending on which speaker. The range is from $136.00 to $2700.00, but that is the cost for rebuild. New drivers are not priced out. 

Paper cones are always in break-up at all frequencies, but because of the cone profile and the fact they are paper, it is smoothed. A lay way to know if a driver is pistonic is if the frequency curve rolls off at the same rate the voice coil inductance increases with frequency. Single layer carbon fiber, woven kevlar, poly and paper have very low frequency break-up modes. The shape of a cone is primarily to smooth and spread out the break-up modes for smooth response, but does not eliminate break-up. Early articles done by Celestial, when metal tweeters first came out, compared them with soft domes which break-up at approximately 8K.

I just wanted to get you an answer, but this really has gone too far off course for this thread.  Sorry for the hijack. I will stay on topic.  Again, sorry all.

Darn, I'm sorry, but it won't let me edit a post that's over 30 minutes old. I forgot to answer you on the drivers.  Their drivers come from ScanSpeak, but they don't have part numbers as they are not standard models. All of them are custom or use custom components made by Vandersteen like baskets and cones.