Thiel is officially closed!!

Just noticed this thread.

As I mentioned in the owners thread, I’m now very concerned about
getting the spare drivers I was just intending to order. I’d been in touch with the legacy parts department just a few weeks ago and the feeling was the drivers would be available for the foreseeable future.

But...now?

On one hand I’m thinking they would still want to sell off whatever they have including spare egacy drivers.

On the others, I’m pretty clueless about how companies usually go about liquidizing assets. Aren’t they sometimes "seized" and that kinda thing, so they disappear?

beetlemania,

Given the way Thiel has been run since the new ownership, I’d presume the worst case scenario in terms of finances.

Jafant mentioned Rob Gillium was working on become a proprietor for Theil legacy parts/work...but I don’t know that was completed, or what the closure of Thiel means for that venture.

Though, I’m guessing that it was clear Thiel wasn’t going to be in the business of servicing legacy speakers and with writing on the wall, I’m hoping Rob was actually preparing with this day in mind, so he could still service legacy Thiels, not linked to the fortunes of the current Thiel company.

I hope.

Thanks for the insight beetlemania.  Seems reasonable.

As for post-Jim speakers:  Jim must have passed on some engineering as the 2.7s were completed (and I believe designed, or partially designed) after his death.   I can't remember the name of the guy(s) who worked on the 2.7s but I seem to remember reading of them at one point.

As I’ve written about in the Thiel owners thread:

I’m not a Thiel-only guy by any means. I’ve owned all sorts of other brands of speakers I love, and I still own not only Thiel, but MBL, Spendor, Waveform, Monitor Audio, Hales.

They all do something great, but different.

But the Thiel 3.7s and 2.7s I’ve owned for a while now are about as close to the ideal as I think I’ve owned thus far, in terms of the things I love: timbral beauty and faithfulness, liveliness and drive, image density, soundstaging and just "disappearing" as a sound source. And their looks for my tastes are just about the perfect combination of traditional and contemporary, refined, elegant, with impeccable build quality and finish.

Before I got the slightly smaller 2.7s I went on a binge this year of trying to find a slightly smaller speaker to replace the 3.7s. I demoed the latest speakers from Audio Note, Raidho, Audio Physic, Harbeth, Paradigm (persona), Revel, Focal (from stand mounted to the Kanta), Monitor Audio, and others I’m sure I’m forgetting.

And every time I returned home from the demo and played the same tracks on the Thiel 3.7s my jaw would just drop again. I found every other speaker I’d auditioned had some excellent quality, but also some sticking point, usually some lumps somewhere in the frequency response or a sense of the cabinet at some points, etc. But the big 3.7s in my room truly disappear as sound sources from the top to the very bottom, with beautiful organic tonality, transient incisiveness, and a mammoth walls-gone soundstage filled with dense, air-moving images.

Every time it was like the Thiels were saying "This is what all those other speakers were trying to do." And I am still left with the feeling that, although of course speakers within the same range as the 3.7s will have their own virtues, in terms of what Jim Thiel accomplished in the sense of low perceived speaker distortion, and fidelity to the signal....he was far ahead enough that many speakers are still trying to catch up. He was just that good of an engineer!

@dgarretson

Yes, I remember Phi posting about his experience helping design the 2.7
but I’d forgotten his name.

He posted in this thread:

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=122636.0

Here’s his post:

I designed the crossover for the CS2.7 upgrade to their coax mid/tweeter driver. It was not easy. I was present at the voicing sessions in Lexington, after some listening in my own house.

I can vouch for both the CS3.7 and 2.7 speakers having a 2dB/decade downsloping response from 200 to 2kHz, transitioning back to level in the treble. This is a tonal balance curve similar to many high-end speaker brands. However such a speaker still does not sound dark (there are other more technically involved reasons for this).

One shining performance feature that I can vouch for with the CS2.7 -- the bass is spectacular. Their 10" woofer RULES, and the cabinet alignment is excellent. Play acoustic bass or drums on this speaker to believe me.

Also, the coax unit is impressive in its own right. The midrange is actually flat to 20kHz (without crossover). I think the time-coherent acoustic alignment and fast response drivers may lead to the listeners’ reaction of bright or forward.

Thiel also spends for PP and polystyrene bypass caps for additional transparency. For these reasons, system matching is a bit more critical with the upper Thiel models. Also, all 3 drive units have aluminum diaphragms. I promise you that I addressed the woofer ring, and achieved excellent time and phase coherency - Thiel was quite demanding of this as you can imagine.

While I performed some reverse engineering of a few of their models (part of a technical familiarization of Jim’s work) I am not intimately familiar with the design and history of all their models. I suspect that their models over the past dozen year vary in tonal balance, and that it is a mistake to conclude that the company voices speakers to be bright/lean/forward overall. IOW, I think the time for audiophiles to conclude that Thiel = Bright should come to an end.

I am no longer under contract for Thiel, and I gain no benefit from their sales. These are just my own objective and subjective observations.

Philip Bamberg

I can certainly attest to his comment about the bass of the 2.7s. As I’ve written in the owner’s thread, one of the areas the 2.7s excel over even the 3.7s, at least in my set up, is in the punch of the bass, and the general "drive" to the music. It adds a foundation for everything from kickdrums, bass on up to the midrange, giving a particular density to instruments - especially woodwinds in their lower registers! - that is uncanny. You just feel the instruments are right there in front of you, vibrating the air, vs the wispier version of most speakers.  Most speaker will image a voice between the speakers, but with the 2.7s it's like someone has run in and set up a center channel just for that central image, because the sound is so dense and "there."  There’s also a bit more dynamic life to the 2.7s I find (even though they are lower sensitivity), giving drum solos etc a bit more realism in that sense.

The 3.7s have the overall smoother and more controlled bass though. They do use the updated slightly ribbed bass drivers created for the 3.7s and perhaps that’s part of the equation.

If I want to hear the last word in detail, air, fingertips plucking the strings of a stand up bass, and a purely holographic presentation of a stand up bass - that goes to the 3.7s. If I want to have the sense of the instrument being "there" in the room, vibrating the air, and feel the efforts of the musician playing it, the scales tip a bit more to the 2.7s.

beetlemania,

Yes,  Phil's reference to a 10" woofer had confused me.  Thiel's own literature on the 2.7 state an 8" woofer.  (I would open up my 2.7 grills and confirm, except that I've got them fitted so perfectly they are a bit hard to take off).

So I've always wondered if perhaps Phil miswrote either "2.7" when he meant to refer to the 3.7, or miswrote "10" when he meant to talk about the 2.7's 8 inch woofer.

BTW,

Rob Gillum returned my reply and...whew!..he is indeed taking over the THIEL Service department and service will continue to be available for legacy Thiels.

Awesome,  thanks for the update Tom.