Scoring on Used Thiels here

Have to agree with beetle: With the opening of Rob’s Coherent Source Service, legacy Thiel speakers now have a brand new lease on life. Rob is from the days of the original Thiel company & has been servicing/restoring Thiels for years. Since Thiel (in this latest iteration) went kaput, he was able to acquire all the assets to the service part of the business. He has a stockpile of parts, crossovers & drivers that will allow him to pretty much rebuild any model. He is also offering cabinet re-finishing services, which, if you have ever seen a pair of Thiels, is awesome because the cabinetry on them is not only integral to the coherent source design, but in a class way above the price point even when new.

As always when looking at pre-owned equipment, buy the best conditioned pair you can afford. Cabinets are real-wood, so scratches & scrapes can easily be addressed; a good cleaning & polishing will make the wood shine! Drivers are very unique to Thiels...Jim Thiel designed them all himself & in later models, they were completely sourced & built in-house. More importantly, crossovers are First-Order (meaning the drivers handle a wider range of frequencies), so make sure the previous owner(s) didn’t blow out a driver & end up replacing it with something from some catalog. Having said that, if they were treated with care, Thiel’s build-quality & engineering resulted in very robust speaker designs...they are heavy & very well-built. Shipping usually costs a fortune.

I have a set of CS 3.5’s that I bought locally from a vintage stereo dealer this past November. I am only the second owner. Even with their age, the Thiels have been such a revelation, have been such a joy to listen to, that I’ve decided to make them the focal point of my system with regards to components & upgrades. They are ruthlessly revealing of poorly recorded material & poorly engineered components. But, if you have the goods & the high-quality amplification they require (Thiels love watts & especially, lots of current), you will not find better without spending hundreds or thousands more. In the last three months, I’ve swapped out most of my gear for Audio Research seperates (amp, line stage & phono pre-amp), all in effort to make the Thiels sing that much better. Even with all this, I have not once considered "upgrading" from my 3.5’s...the Thiels sound that good.

Good luck in your search...Enjoy the music!

Arvin

mapman - Your Bel Canto integrated should be fine.  It's rated at 60 watts @ 8 ohms, but double to 120 watts @ 4 ohms...always a good sign of a well-engineered amplifier.  More importantly, it's able to deliver 30 amperes of peak current, so it should be able to handle most any Thiel quite well, even the notoriously demanding 3.6's & 3.7's.

Bel Canto's amplification products typically measure much better than they rate them, so you may be well surprised at how loud you can make the Thiels play.  Again, just be mindful that the woofers, mid-bass & tweeters are handling a wider range of frequencies than usual due to the First-Order crossovers, so blowing a driver is a concern if you ever move on to something with 300+ watts.  At 120, you should be fine... 

What I've found is that, while they instantly captivate & amaze at lower & moderate listening volumes, the Thiels really "clear their throats" as you start going past 12:00 on the volume knob.  They LOVE to sing with some real volume being applied.  It sometimes becomes a bit "uncomfortable" listening this loud, but it's astonishing how easy & detailed the presentation is at these sound levels.  Amazing speakers...

My wife wasn't exactly thrilled when I moved from stand-mount monitors (Martin Logan LX-16's w/Dynamo 300 sub) to the full-range 3.5's, but she appreciated the fact that the wood & cabinetry was much more "high-end", looking more like furniture than electronic equipment. Also, as my Thiels are truly full-range, I was able to ditch the sub as well, which resulted in a much more cohesive sounding system (the Thiels seem to play lower than the ML system ever did with the sub!) One less box in the room made my wife happy.

Please keep us updated as you search for that perfect pair!