There was a pretty wide range of speaker building skills. I used to buy drivers, build crossovers from VERY detailed instructions, build cabinets and make a mess with veneer.

One of my more talented friends used to go "dumpster diving" at the local Philips warehouse, dig out the defective woofers and rewind the voice coils to get longer travel / better linearity. There's always one in the crowd.

M60ti, VP180, QS8, M2ti, EP500, PC-Plus 20-39
M5HP, M40ti, Sierra-1
LFR1100 active, ADA1500-4 and -8