Would you Upgrade?

I always want to hear how well a speaker upscales.  Then I need to hear how it sounds with my own gear.  One place that needs to be looked at is your room and your set up.  Those are two areas that can be inexpensive to tighten up as long as you are able to (family can mess that up at times).  

I have liked and owned JMLab Micro's (their original company that was started in '77 (Thiel and Vandersteen were also 77 and 78).  What an era, but I digress.  I too have found their bass lacking in some of their models in the range you are probably looking at.  

Dealers can sit here and tell you to listen to something they sell instead of what you are asking and that's fine. They are partly correct.  You should get out and listen to as many speakers as you can in your price range. Then go another step up in price and see how much different they sound.  Try to bring your source with you if you can and have them use similar components.  Your ears will tell you IF it's time to upgrade and what direction to go.  

There are a ton of great options and since we all hear differently, you need to figure out what is truly missing with what you own and what do you NOT want in a speaker. That is a different way to looking at things, but I've found that we dont' always know what sounds right until we hear it, but we do know what compromises we won't be able to live with.

if you want a speaker that makes any recording sound 'better', then you need a proper analog EQ.  If you want your speaker to make a poor recording sound better, then you don't want a revealing speaker or components.  Better components amplify the signal, warts and all and by the time it hit the speakers it's not 'fixing what's wrong'.  All top speakers are made to be as revealing as possible.  That means it won't fix the 70's rock albums that the engineer rode the high gain on.  That's just physics and can't be changed.

I love listening to Harbeth and Spendors, but have always passed on them for Vandersteen's or others in the past that gave me the same listening pleasure, but also the details that I'm paying for.  I'd stay way from anything that uses a ceramic, diamond or any metal type of drivers on top as they won't sound their best on poorly recorded music.