Widget, I agree that the wood veneer has a slight synthetic or manufactured look like S4700's or 4365's. It still looks good but not as dimensional and real as, well, real veneer.
You are also right that some other speaker vendors offer a more luxurious finish in this price range. On the other hand, I suspect that JBL has significantly more parts cost in their drivers and horn assembly than other speakers here. As you know pro driver quality woofers and compression drivers are not cheap. If for the money I can't have both the luxury finish and the better drivers and resultant sound, I will take the better sound. Still an upgrade to the finish would be nice. I sometimes wonder if the more high end cabinet finishes of the past were a victim of JBL not being made in the US anymore. Alternatively perhaps one could argue that higher manufacturing costs in the US would mandate an even cheaper finish for same selling price if everything else is left the same.
I guess it comes down to cost and what kind of manufacturing capability they have now versus prior.
Ian and pos: I will continue to try different positions/height in the problem room as well as experimenting with placement in some smaller rooms. I suspect your "banana curve" hypothesis might have some validity. My engineering credentials are pretty thin, but I think that some level of low frequency boundary reinforcement was assumed in their design to augment flat response to 40hz and below. You would get more of this in small or medium rooms where one can not get far from a wall when listening. In the 24 x 22 room I tried a wild listening position with the couch about 4 feet from the back wall and the speakers pulled WAY into the room to maintain about a 12-13 foot listening distance from the baffle board. This sounded very promising with almost powered subwoofer like bottom end. I did not get a chance to measure though. Unfortunately it was a totally impractical layout to leave this way but it sure was fun to listen to.