That is a bonus with Audio Note in that you know exactly what the speaker will cost. You can actually go an buy the drivers and wiring option and box material of your choice.

You can dictate a large portion of what you pay - or you can opt to have the Audio Note builders do it at a premium - but at least you know how much you're paying. Naturally they are going to make a profit either way but that is only fair - it is a business.

Labour is always the biggest cost - but it's not rocket science if you have the direction and the tools and all the parts to simply put it together. Audio Note's glueing process is a bit tricky to right from what i understand - but to a non-novice probably not too hard.

And as you say you can have people build the box cheap - especially if they're your friends. Plus you get to choose the quality of wood, quality of wiring, quality of drivers etc.

The advantage of all of this over any speaker company that builds everything in-house is that you have control of upgrades and you can always get parts.

If I own a B&W or a Paradigm Etc now - in ten years when the tweeter blows they could stick me with a $200.00 bill to replace a tweeter or in naby cases they don't have any rreplacement - "oh well sorry sir but we no longer use metal tweeters we use silmk and that won't work - so do please look at buying one of our brand new offerrings.

I'm in this boat with my Wharfedales - the company went under after i bought them and the name was bought by the verity group - I can't get a replacement for my drivers - oce dead they're dead. Now i can no doubt get something close - but not exactly the same.

I digress.

If you REALLY want to save money try and find some used original Snell models - and simply replace the drivers - ask Peter Q about the adjustment to the tuning port and you should get pretty much the same sound. Or better yet try and find the Snell AII - all Audio Note speakers amplifiers and everything else are designed off of that speaker which had a rear firing tweeter etc.