The Focus has gone through several versions since it was introduced (1992?). The version in this thread, and the ones I owned, were the original version. The next version, and the first ones Stereophile reviewed, were a major update; the 20/20 version. I had a chance to audition a pair of 20/20s near my home at the time (Legacy was still direct sales only), and they had some really different characteristics than my originals. One big difference seemed to be that the originals use a very gentle (1st order maybe?) high-pass filter on those Eton midranges, and they put out a lot of what was really bass. In the 20/20s it was clear Legacy used one of the 12" woofers in the front to reach into the lower midrange and rolled off the Etons much sooner. To my ears that changed everything for solo piano. The leaf tweeter was a different driver, and the low range tweeter was a new design, but by the same company. I was told the Eminence woofers had been "updated".
After the 20/20 came the HD, and Legacy got rid of the third woofer in the back, and swapped out the Eton midrange drivers for a custom design. The tweeters went custom too. IMHO, the HDs may look similar to the original Focus, but they on a different planet as far as performance. (A better planet.) I haven't heard the SE version yet.
The story with the measurements on my pair was that a friend of mine at the time was into speaker design, and he was trying to become a manufacturer. (He never made it.) He was so curious about the Focus he asked to measure my pair. He came over with equipment and mics, including a scope, and measured for a few hours. He thought the Focus was "an electrical disaster", and joked it must have been designed just to show off the Class A Krell monoblocks I was using at the time. Yes, he measured impedance and electrical phase. I didn't keep the curves he printed out for me all those years ago. He wanted to take one of them outside to better measure the frequency response, but I wouldn't let him. My pair had custom rosewood veneer that was simply gorgeous, they were big and weighed 165lbs each, and I didn't want them scratched. He used some sort of software I don't remember the name of to measure simulated anechoic frequency response above 200Hz, or something like that. At my listening seat he used an RTA to estimate frequency response.
One bright spot was that the scope revealed very low distortion everywhere he measured. The frequency response, however, always looked like a classic saddle curve. These speakers were clearly "voiced" to sound a certain way.
We are in complete agreement, it was not a very practical speaker. But if you had the amps to properly power them, I never found another speaker at that time for anything like the price that sounded as good, especially in the mids and highs. I later liked the Carver Amazing, but I didn't have an appropriate room for them, so they were out. My previous speakers were from ADS, but by the latter half of the 1990s ADS had lost their way, and the ADS tweeters weren't very good. I didn't like the B&Ws I could afford. I liked the Martin Logan Monolith, but being a solo piano nut revealed their driver transition weakness too much for the price. And my room was a problem. In fact, I found anything that would fit in my room or that I could afford weren't substantially better, they just had different weaknesses I found more annoying.
