A pet peeve of mine is when people use percentages to describe improvement...Saying an upgrade was a 20% improvement is really meaningless to me so I will avoid using that description. What I can say with confidence is that if you are making the Cornwalls your long term reference, it's time to get to work. Leaving them stock really gives you a fun and engaging speaker that has brightness you will always fight to tame, watercolor imaging, and tone/timbre that is decent but not truly convincing. I don't mean to disparage the stock Cornwall as I truly enjoyed it but I found listening fatigue would creep in after about an hour and I would find myself walking away to do other things.
With the crossover upgrade that nagging background brightness is absolutely gone. The speaker now has a relaxed and muscular confidence that is absolutely enthralling. High efficiency speakers can have a tendency to trade relaxation and tonal saturation for speed/dynamics. Now you get them both which almost seems like an oxymoron. Instrument tone/timbre is so much more convincing it's hard to believe and voices are scary real. The ultimate compliment I can give the Cornwalls is that over the last 20 years I tend to listen with my eyes closed...I think I now know why. For various reasons there were things missing in the music that my mind was unconsciously rectifying to make it sound convincing. Since the upgrade I listen with my eyes open. My mind does not have to "connect the dots" of the sins of omission and commission. It is so much more relaxing and I can just sit back for hours with jaws unclenched and shoulders loose rifling through any and all genres of music.
I would consider the crossover mod an absolute necessity as an upgraded, burned in Cornwall is night and day different to a stock pair. Do not leave that much improvement untapped. If you don't feel comfortable doing the upgrade, pay someone to do it for you. That is money well spent.