Hello, JTC. Like you I am a long-time ESL57 user and have recently come to the sorry decision that I need to find something else. In my case it is because I no longer have a room big enough to position them well without them taking over the space. They are simply wonderful speakers, but I'm not willing to make my living room into a shrine to hi-fi for their sake. So I have been looking for something else that will take up significantly less space, can be positioned without making the room look stupid and still deliver a performance I can really enjoy. I have gone in a different direction to the way you appear to be thinking - Shahinians and Larsens are still big old speakers - and opted for tiny BBC monitors. I bought the pair of Chartwell LS3/5s advertised on here by member Athos, and I have to say I am absolutely delighted. Obviously, they are dead easy to position - sealed boxes so they can stand out in clear space a couple of feet away from the wall at the back and they still look very discreet - and my word, what a wonderful sound! You say you like things other than ESLs, and it is true that these are quite different. But there is so much about them to enjoy. They give away virtually nothing to ESLs in terms of midrange transparency, they have very acceptable bass extension (but that isn't going to be a priority if you liked ESLs anyway) and the imaging is, in my view at any rate, the best of any loudspeaker I have heard and noticeably better than ESLs. I would say they are slightly less "forward" than ESLs, so perhaps a little bit more of a relaxed sound, but I don't find that to be an issue at all.
It could be that this is a direction that doesn't interest you at all, but it has really worked for me, so worth a thought!
ML
p.s. If you find that for you the solution really has to involve moving the speakers back against the wall, Audio Note Es and Js cope with that very well, plus very efficient and love valve amps.