My Ribbon Monitor 1 speakers will probably stay with me for the rest of my life. Do not need anything bigger in my modest sized living room, and the larger speakers would probably produce too much bass. Mine are driven by C-J EV-1, PV-14L and MF-2250 combination.
The RM1 speakers have proven reliable and are easily tuned to my environment. I had my doubts that a single midrange driver that covers such a wide frequency band would hold up for long under my preferred listening levels. I do intend to locate some lambs wool and stuff the midrange driver cavity with that substance, as Brian said it was the best midrange damping material in existence. However, it already sounds better than anything else I ever heard, with the factory supplied fiberglass material. Crossing my fingers that my neopanels keep holding up. They are the key component in the post-2000 range of VMPS loudspeaker models.
I am too old now to seriously consider the opportunity, but so many people will want to hold onto or acquire a good working example of the later neopanel VMPS speakers that some sort of repair and rebuild business will most likely exist as these loudspeakers age and need service. B-G makes some panels that can substitute for the neopanels, at least for my loudspeaker model. Still, I would think that if the neopanels could be manufactured, they can also be repaired economically.
High End Audio has survived on a relatively few people being constantly dissastified with their system components and trading in for something else on a regular basis. VMPS sort of flew in the face of that mindset and it resulted in VMPS being a small part of a relatively small market to begin with. When I acquired my VMPS speakers driven by my C-J amplifiers, I made an exit from the equipment upgrade brigade. The audio rags who depend on manufacturer ads for survival do not support this thought pattern. However, if the audio rags had fully supported companies such as VMPS, the total number of audiophiles would be much bigger and the tendency to promote audio nervosa not so overwhelming.
Due largely to VMPS, I am free of audio nervosa and loving it.