You're right, of course...

Made my recommendation because it's cheap to do, a good learning experience, and I think it really would make a big difference as far as making the speakers listenable until they could be replaced. Might not sound bad at all with the crossover smoothed out and a sub. A 12" woofer is pretty big for a 2-way system where the high frequency driver isn't a good-sized horn or something though... Might be a pretty big "hole" in the mids, causing the speakers to sound "thin" no matter what...