Can we beat modern Hi-Fi with vintage for SQ without dumpster diving?
I think you can and offer up my garage system as an example. While the resale value might exceed your 30% number, I believe one can still drop the modern system's list price in half.
As you might gather from my moniker,
I am a fan of electrostatic speakers and have been since I first heard Dayton-Wrights in '76. Bought a pair of Acoustat X in '77 and have used various full range stats exclusively in the main music system. As for details and my points of reference, I'll plead laziness and
link to a full description (including pics in the gallery) of my systems from AA.
As for the Martin-Logan's my issue with them has to do with my passion for coherency - which is why I prefer
full range electrostats. I always find audible and annoying discontinuities when narrow directivity dipolar electrostatic panels are mated with wide directivity monopole woofers. With many instruments and voice that span both drivers, it's like an
auditory version of Dr. Evil along with Mini-Me. . Some of the sound has one character while the rest of the sound has another. Which is why I favor vintage Acoustats. While there are two panels in each speaker, they are identical and operate electrically as one. Moving your ears around any part of the speaker - front or rear - sounds exactly the same. The panels are virtually bullet-proof, they operate as a true line source and have pretty high output capability if you've got the power. The Stasis feeds them a good 200 watts each. They do beam, but do so
uniformly from top to bottom. I use a single powered Eosone (Arnie Nudell designed using Polk driver) sub operating below 50 hz.
Continuing to move backwards from the speaker, I use a Threshold Stasis 3 purchased new in '81. Other than proactively replacing the big Mallory power supply caps, the amp has been utterly reliable over the decades while driving the complex reactive load of the Acoustats ( I originally used the larger 2+2 before replacing them with Sound Lab U-1s in the main system). As a point of reference, I paid a similar amount of money to the H-K ($1950) at time of purchase.
The preamp I use is not exactly vintage, but was a very cost effective solution. I paid $250 for the NAD C-160 and find that while it is a touch opaque as compared to better units, its sins are of omission and it does have a decent moving coil phono input.
The Aristion table / SME 3009 arm is pure vintage also purchased new in '76. I use a Soundsmith retipped 80s vintage Shinon Red MC cartridge with it. Beats the crap out of a Shure M97 I most recently used until getting the Shinon retipped.
For digital, I use a Logitech Touch player networked to my Dell i7-860 server via a wireless Cisco "N" bridge through the ethernet input. I may be an old boomer, but I really enjoy having immediate access to my digital library via my iPhone or iPad.