Wilson Watt Puppy, which version?

I have heard and owned both the WP7 and the WP8 and feel the 8 is clearly superior to the 7 in transparency, musicality. In other words, the WP7 is harsh and a bit metallic.

Majority of praises for the WP7 (versus the WP8) are from Wilson dealers and/or Wilson dealer/owners who are/were keen to sell their older and inferior WP7, especially the trade-ins and store demos.

The short life of the WP8 had everything to do with its performance - the improvement over the WP7 was tremendous that Wilson wanted a NEW name rather than the implication of incremental benefits which the "8" version may allude to. In short, the WP8 is closer to the SASHA than the WP7.

Current availability of the WP8 in the 13-15K range (depending upon finish) offers a tremedous opportunity to attain near SASHA sound. Hours and hours of smooth, non-fatiguing musical bliss awaits the purchasers of WP8.

Upgrade1394 - I obviously don't agree with you that the 7 sounds harsh and a bit metallic, as I don't think the 5s sound that way either. But as to the 8 vs. 7 or the 8 vs. the Sasha, I think you may be correct in your assessment that they are closer to the Sasha and may have had a short life for the reasons you indicate. Though I have not listened to either enough to offer my comment - both models are above what I am willing to pay and also above the OPs budget.

As to what the Wilson dealers say, I would be very careful about listening too closely to those comments. For the most part they carry the Wilson marketing and reasoning script. I don't necessarily fault them for this, but just beware it is hard to find a dealer (of any brand) who will tell you that you are better off going out and buying used equipment of a prior generation vs. the current model of the same brand - which they carry.

Upgrade1394---you are mistaken. the short life of the 8 was due to the Magico V3 which was a better speaker at a lower price.

Wilson 5.1 can sound terrific. Easy job to switch out the interconnect between the crossover and Puppy enclosure which can produce a much cleaner lower midrange.

One warning: Wilson international dealer support can be terrible. I've been trying for two months to buy a set of correction resistors listed as a standard option. UK Wilson importer has so far not even managed to get them on order. ~Wilson US cannot supply direct because of their dealer contracts so rather than just pop them in a bag and mail them, they are happy to see customers like me move away to other manufacturers because of Wilson's poor overall service.

With the service point in mind, if you are outside the US, take care with older Wilsons because parts are impossible to get hold of.

Only one of the above posters addresses the primary weakness of the WattPuppy, and only does so indirectly - up through and including version 7, the speaker used a Focal tweeter that suffers from an audible resonance in the mid-treble, and this makes these speakers sound fatiguing to many people. The version 8 and Sasha use a different tweeter that is much smoother. This problem has been widely written about - I suggest that you go back and read the Stereophile reviews of the various versions of the speakers, and especially, John Atkinson's measurements in those reviews.

I think the WattPuppy 6 and 7 are great speakers, don't get me wrong, and I seriously considered buying a pair of 7's, but the dirty tweeter is the main knock against them, and it is a legitimate criticism. Not to pile on, but the midbass hump, the low impedance in the bass, and their phase performance tend to be the other complaints - these issues remain with the 8 and the Sasha. They do many things extremely well, however, and it's important to judge them on the totality of their performance, which, overall, is excellent.