Has anyone heard Celestion 3mkii and knows how good they are?

Hi, I'm writing from the UK and this is the first on this forum. I have a modest little system made up of Marantz m-cr 603 and Celestion 3 mkii speakers (more of which later) with Audioquest 12 guage cables. I enjoy range of music (from acoustic and rock to jazz and classical). My speakers are 22 years old and just sound sublime with nearly everything I play on them (except maybe poorly recorded low bit mp3). Because these were only £120 back in 1994 I got curious and wondered how things had moved on in the speaker world. Obviously, I would never get rid of my little gems, but I went ahead and bought a few modern highly rateds.
My experience with modern stuff up to £400 has been dismal - first up were Wharfedale Diamond 9.1, pretty bad but not half as lumpen and uninspiring as Diamond 220. Then I tried Rega rs1, a very well-respected mini monitor and this had quite a pleasing sound but couldn't do the dynamics of my Celestions and when I did an A B comparison, it sounded as if the Regas were doing a poor impression of my old faithfuls. Finally, I thought I'd check out the hype of Dali Zensor 3 - oh my, don't get me started, it sounded like they were designed by a committee of bass loving idiots.
So really this post is just putting it out there, does anybody know or have these and how do they rate them? Perhaps it's just a very happy synergy thing with the Marantz but I'm wondering what modern speakers under about £600 ($700) could better them.