Thiel cs3.6 keep blow up mid/tweter driv

I had the same problem with my 3.6's. In my system it turned out to be a micro-short in the interconnect between the pre and amp. Thiel told me the 3.6 drivers will pop everytime if there is a problem in the upstream electronics.

thiels are wery demanding of quality amplification & lotsa current - normally, i'd take the adwice of drtmth58 & cornfedboy. but, in this case, yer amp is up to the task. so, i'd suspect ewe have a problem similar to that referred-to by rmml. call thiel, & they should take care of it for ewe.

good luck, doug s.

I have a Thiel 3.6 as well being driven by a Krell FPB200 and so far I only have one tweeter go bad on me in almost 2 1/2 years that I have it.I called Thiel and they shipped me a new one right away after I called and told them about it.Give them a call and I'm sure they will give a better answer than any of us here.Thiel is one of the best when it comes to customer service.
On a side note I also read on another forum about somebody who had the 3.6s and had 3 or 4 sets of mids and tweeters go bad in a couple of years time. If I remember it correctly he sent them back to Thiel and they found that their's something wrong with the speakers crossover. Thiel fixed the problem and he never had a driver go bad on him since.

drtmth58 is quite correct in his admirable post. amp clipping is, indeed, the most common cause of speaker failure. it takes high ouput and high current to drive difficult loads to high spl's. my advice: change your amp before replacing another driver. -kelly

I strongly suspect the problem may be with the amplifier and not with the speaker. The Thiel 3.6s are terrific speakers, but because of their occasionally very low impedance are quite difficult to drive. The manufacturer recommends Classe, among other designs that have sufficient current to handle 2 to 3 ohm loads. I would imagine a Bryston 7B-ST would also be satisfactory, as might a Sunfire. But if you attempt to play the speakers at loud levels with a less than satisfactory amplifier for this specific application, the amplifier is apt to clip (which is generally the most prominent cause of tweeter and/or midrange failure) or perhaps even go into oscillation, which would also burn out higher frequency drivers.

I have a pair of 3.6's and have never had a problem and I listen quite frequently to Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture with the digital cannons at fairly high levels. I would call or write Thiel. Good Luck, Chuck

Man, that stinks! I have a 3.6 and "knock on wood" haven't had any problems and I crank it pretty good on occassion with a classe ca200. Unless you really crank it until you hear some breakup I don't see how it blows, it sounds like some sort of short somewhere. what does Thiel say about it? lots of components in that crossover that's where I'd start. good luck.