@donavabdear , about to run out the door, but the high end Focals, like some other speakers in that space, B&W comes to mind, have too much off axis energy at high frequencies and by today's standards poor directivity control. Unless they are in a heavily damped room, they will come across as bright. Same problem with Focal professional monitors like the aforementioned Solo/Trio6 Be from Focal. The Focals probably could sound very good in the right room.
w.r.t. tearing out crossovers and DIYing, back to one of things I said early in this thread. To make a good active speaker, you still need to start with an acoustically good speaker. If using simple external active crossover, then you need to start with good low distortion drivers too.