Used vs New vs Vintage vs Floorstanding vs Bookshelf vs ..... OMG!

I'll keep this in terms of less expensive or used/vintage gear.

First, decide whether you like your music rendered in terms of tonality/big sound.. or, being rendered with pin-point imaging, depth, resolution, and accuracy.. aural-spatial effects, basically. These are the poles of the audiophile spectrum. That will narrow things down quite a lot. Also, the room again. Accuracy and imaging at moderate/high volume requires a large-ish room with carpet, higher ceilings, and not many reflective environmental surfaces. However, if you're generally listening at lower volumes, then no problem.. esp if you listen closer to the speakers, but then you're talking small monitors so the individual drivers can 'mesh' together.

Efficient (and generally large) speakers, such as by Cube or Zu (using single 'wide-band' drivers, maybe augmented by a tweeter) or even horn loaded speakers (such as vintage Klipsh's..exciting in their own way but not particularly accurate), are tonally more alive, and will be in the first group. Let's just call them 'fun.' Here, you're listening to YOUR room.. and the music. You're not thinking about the equipment. Metaphorically, you're shining a very powerful flashlight into a dark room and seeing the light bouncing off the walls and lighting adjacent walls.

Less-efficient speakers (which require a high-powered amp and a good distance from your walls.. 3ft+), will be in the second group. These are (in no order) Scansonic, maybe Andrew Jones designed Elac's, Green Mountain (Rio), vintage Merlin's, select vintage B&W's, Thiels, Spica's, NEAR's (rare, finicky, probably need ferrofluid service by Lewis Athanas), vintage (also large) Von Schweikert VR series (w/ rear tweeters off, bass ports stuffed) lower-tier Vandersteen (such as old Treo, 2c) and vintage Spendors. They typically have multiple drivers and a sophisticated (but inefficient) crossover to portion out the freq bands to at least 3 drivers, but will provide a semblance of the illusion of what happens in the studio your music was recorded in.. your room disappears and you see into another. It's a fascinating experience. Here, in the right room, metaphorically, you're seeing a light show in the middle of a black space.

The Tekton's are sort of a hybrid.. relatively efficient but may use many drivers. Whether they reproduce music as being cut from the 'whole cloth' is up for debate. I haven't heard them. Magnepan is probably their evil sibling.. inefficient and only uses (depending on model) a single driver.. but very coherent and need lots of power, and a subwoofer which is another trial, in itself).

Also keep in mind that efficient speakers using simple crossovers benefit from high quality but simple low powered amplifiers.. ie Triode tube amps or very simple mosfet or v-fet or static inductor transistor amps. These amps aren't cheap, but high efficiency speakers will put any amp's design under the microscope (so to speak.. you might hear dust particles hitting the floor) so these amps need to have a very low noise floor and be phase-linear and preferably single ended, which gives you coherence and tonal purity. Still, in this scenario, you may not hear the progenal recording space if your room fights against your equipment.

Inefficient speakers can do better (for a given budget) with a less expensive but powerful modern Class-D amplifier from companies like Wyred4Sound, et al. There are many companies now producing these relatively low cost but well-designed powerful amps, actually. Inefficient but well-designed speakers seem to mask the deficiencies of lower quality components in well-designed amps.. yet future upgrades to the upstream equipment chain can still improve the sound.

I do get vtv..’s concern. If you have (and are willing to part with) the money, buying new is preferrable. However, given the 5 and 6 digit prices good (new) full-range speakers command these days.. buying used can save you several of those digits.. but you definitely do have to go see them first, personally. You have to listen to them with good, educated ears. This means traveling. That is most likely only a 3 digit expense, hwvr.

Most often, given butyl surrounds (not foam), all you’ll need to do for service is ferrofluid (which is simpler on woofers and tweeters than it is on small mid-ranges). For those you’ll need an expert.. but again, this is only a 2 or 3 digit expense. Capacitors are fairly robust on good quality crossovers.. esp if they’re under 20yrs old. I’ve gone through my original film caps on my 25+ year old x-overs boards, and suprisingly, they all still measure within what’s printed on the outside.

Also, if you live in a humid climate (40-50%+), I would avoid old paper coned speakers, unfortunately. They’re great when new, but awful when the coating disintegrates and local humidity has ravaged them.. adding mass to their membranes.

Carbon, Poly, and most certainly Ano’d Alu would be better as used in humid areas. The old NEAR transducers, which Lewis Athanas patented and designed (albeit finicky given no centering-spiders), were extremely robust and later used in gardens as outdoor speakers.. even somewhat exposed to hydro-misters, they can still work for many years. But yes.. buyer beware.. due diligence, etc.