If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It

All I can say is, I have personally helped upgrade 6 different pairs of speakers using GR Research's upgrade kits (I am a DIY'r and love to do this sort of thing).

Everyone of the upgrades made an appreciable improvement. And despite the cost of them, were a great investment. 

Think about it this way; if someone spends $1000.00 on a pair of speakers, then another few hundred on an upgrade kit, the end results are much better than if the person spent $1300.00 on a pair of speakers in the first place. Those $1300 pair of speakers were still designed to meet a certain price point, and will still have crappy parts in them, so they will still be compromised.

Back in the late 90's and early 00's, a friend and I used to have a cottage business upgrading speakers for people, mostly for fun, but we did pick up a few spare dollars.

Although the advanced measuring methods available now, did not exist, we still were able to get noticeable improvements just by swapping parts with better parts, adding bracing to the cabinets, adding damping to the inside walls of the enclosures.  

About 1 year ago, GR “upgraded” my beloved Wilson Watt Puppy 8 speakers which I power with a pair of McIntosh MC275s in mono mode.  These speakers are + - 3db across the frequency range, 22 hz to 22.5 kHz, 92 db sensitivity from the factory.  We absolutely love the way they sound directly from Wilson.  The GR solution was to make the tweeter play lower (longevity ?), take the low end out of the midrange speaker, and attach separate subwoofer plate amps to each woofer.  GR claimed that it would sound 10 times better and it seems that he did not even hear it in that configuration.  He also made derogatory comments about Wilson Engineering capabilities.   I thought the whole thing was unfair to a legendary speaker, legendary company, legendary founder, and to the legendary reviewers who highly rated this speaker.   For me, GR basically made a new set of 4 speakers.  Transforming 2 full range tower speakers into 2 book self speakers or monitors and 2 subwoofers powered by additional amps.   I think if he would just have said this and articulated why this was a more flexible configuration, it would have been more interesting. 

A lot of Hurt Feelings here…

@hjdca I'm sure with those changes the speakers sound different. Does it sound 10 times better to you? I can't tell from your post if the "upgrade" was worth it to you.

You can simply adopt the John DeVore approach and stick the crossover components in a can, fill it with resin of some sort, and then it takes somebody with a hammer to find out the "secrets" of the component pile.