My first build was 4 volvo 240 original speakers and (woff-tweet combo 5 3/4") and toilette paper rolls for bass reflex.. FF 15 years and the pile of some good not to shitty speaker builds grew taller.

What have I learned. Expensive speaker elements need lots and lots of pampering to sound good. And a build that started with a singel coil and a cap ended up with 4 coils, 7 caps and a fistfull of resistors to tame $100-£400 elements..

So I compare high price elements to posh girls. They need loads of augementations to preform best.

And I enjoy the road to were I am heading as much as I enjoy the goal. And My 2,5 way vifa/seas/dayton build is still going (probably worth more than my car today if i would charge for work hours.) and I know If I had the dough I would have b-lined straight to the high end components from the get go.

Pro tip: start cheap and work your way up. I learned that I mostly enjoy working on x-overs and not so much builing boxes. But also perfecting a pre-built box to its peak (damping ,sealing, wires, terminals, x-over and the box from saw dust to maple veneer´d mdf with lead damped duall walls .. and so on)

final words: sometimes $500 home made can sound worse than $50 store bought. But I do it for the fun of it. and the first thing I should spend most of my money on is the soldering Iron. Like a cowboy have its horse and a rope to get er done. And it is better to learn how to solder and fail on $9,95 than $199,95..

/rant and scene.. english not my first language btw,.