Few months ago I bought JBL 4341 Studio Monitors with original alnico drivers that I think are pretty rare. Technically these are working brilliantly but by closer inspection the grey finish is not so good with the holes from studio mounts and other equipment. Also the bases were damaged badly and at the moment I'm just using some wooden furniture feet as a replacement. Already decided that these speakers are keepers and ordered heavy Kenrick Sound style bases for the speakers from local carpenter that does also speaker cabinetry and also new black studs for the nice shape grills that came with the speakers. Hopefully these will arrive in few weeks.

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However I've been thinking should I start small project to renovate the cabinets to suit my living room little better (or atleast use some kit and original style paint). The biggest question is should I also do some upgrades to crossover to replace the capacitors, internal wiring etc. at the same time. One of my friends has even suggested to make these semiactive at the same time by adding some quality plate amp for the bass containing possibly DSP, and drive just the mids and highs with my McIntosh gear.

Performance wise this sounds like a valid thing to do as these speakers and especially the bass driver seems to like fair amount of grid from the amp and this could be easily done with some modern D-class amp etc. On the other hand I'm bit conservative in these issues and decided to ask your opinion here. Has this semiactive mod been done by somebody for the 434x model monitors? Or just tell me what do you think of this?

Thanks.