Thiel CS3.7 repair


I am thinking of aquiring a pair of Thiel CS3.7 used speakers from a local seller. I live about 1 hour from Nashville where Thiel used to be. My question is: is Thiel still in business; and if I need some repair job to be done with my speakers, will Thiel as a company be able to do it?

The rest of my system is a McCormack DNA2-Deluxe amp (recently refreshed) and ARC Ref5 preamp.

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Your amp should power the Thiel CS 3.7 and then some with no issue. Anyway, Thiel speakers are well-built, especially their midrange and woofer drivers, however, the aluminum tweeters, on the other hand, could pose a problem if you subjected them to too much high distortion. But McCormack is known to make a well-design power amp so in a way you should be okay.

I blew one of the tweeters of my Thiel CS 3.6 speakers without even knowing it. I was using it on my HT set-up that has a Karaoke machine connected to it. I’m not sure which component was the culprit whether it was the bad movies or the bad singing that causes it or perhaps both. But in any case, the tweeters probably had enough and decided that one of them should commit harakiri. Lucky for me Thiel was still around as a company and my speaker was still under warranty they honored the warranty and send me a new one in exchange for the blown one with no charge except for the shipping.

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@yyzsantabarbara I am just about 2hours away from CSS location in KY. Having said that, the CS3.7 is a very old speaker, and the owner is selling me for $6,999 a pair. I do not think it is a very atrractive price. Right now, I am still on the fence with that deal.

I bought a used pair of CS3.7 and it turned out that it was massively messed up. I was able to rebuild everything with the remote help of Rob at 

Coherent Source Service – Specializing in repair and restoration of THIEL Loudspeakers

He is in KY.

I was able to confirm that the end result was perfect by the services of Mitch Barnett at 

Digital Room Calibration Services, Convolvers, Headphone Filtersets (accuratesound.ca)

It was not difficult to get the speaker back to perfect working order. I had to do some soldering of the driver connections and also the crossover.

I think my situation was a worst-case scenario, and it was not that difficult to get the speaker back to proper order.

 

 

@drrsutliff

Thanks for that information. I know that there is an on-going thread of Thiel owners, but I want to start another discussion just only for maintenance purposes.

I will contact CSS people to see if they are still servicing the CS3.7 speakers. Those are expensive speakers, and I do not want them to become perishable assets.

Coherent Source Service

Thiel was originally based out of the Lexington KY area.  A previous employee started Coherent Source Service to maintain legacy Theil products including rebuilding drivers.  I was able to remove and submit my 2.4 Theil drivers for a rebuild  a few years ago with excellent service and results.  In addition there is an ongoing thread of Theil owners on AudioGon with other excellent resources for present and future owners.

In case you haven't yet researched them https://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/1208thi/index.html

Now that aside, as I recall they are quite demanding of amplifiers (see review)

I would source drivers first and consider that if the tech is not local, it will cost a small fortune to ship, and worse (maybe) is many trucking companies are shutting down operations

hth