Douglas, certainly you cannot compare your F's to the original F's, as none exist as a new F anymore. No one can be sure of its sound once the putty dries out, or the foam in the cone falls apart, as compared to a just-manufactured F speaker.
There are other ways to check, such waveform output. The F has the ability to output a "reasonable facsimile" of a square wave as one reviewer put it, and as shown in the Ohm literature. If one is able to restore the cone to like-new, it should be able to output this kind of waveform, to validate the restoration. If a speaker could pass this test, that would demonstrate phase accuracy over a wide range of frequencies.
Since you hear a sound that you find not to your liking, like the treble response you noted, you took some of the foam out of the enclosure, and said that helped ("The rebuild was successful in the end mostly because of my foam removal. The driver was terribly constrained until I half emptied the cabinet to let the driver work more freely.") That action changed the system Q, and could reduce the damping to the driver in the bass frequencies, perhaps increase ripple in the frequency response.
But as you said in the latter part of your posts, as long as it sounds good enough for you, you really don't care if the fixes approached the original F sound or not. I thought you wanted to preserve the F sound to as close to original as practicable. My comments were directed to assist in that direction. Sorry if I misunderstood your intent.
The HHR speakers use the platforms of the Ohm A and F designs, and take them farther that could be done in a commercial setting. I think Dale sells his speakers on a build-on-order basis. If I get the opportunity, I'd like to hear his speakers, as I've heard the first Ohm A's and later owned F's.
