Thiel Owners

I ask because the 1.7 is in a 1.6 enclosure. The chief differences are an additional bucking magnet on the tweeter, and the star-plane woofer. I hope to find a 1.7 to dissect, listen to and measure.

What is on my radar is to recreate Jim's CS1.7, which exists in prototype form. New Thiel modified the crossovers somewhat away from Jim's intent and I wonder what a Jim Thiel 1.7 would sound like. Gary Dayton says Jim's was better to his ear.

There's always something.

Tom

andy2 - Up and down is a weak point of minimum phase, multi-driver transducers. The coax is much better than discrete drivers, but coax to woofer geometry still comes into play. Right-left-depth is their strong suit. The up-down problem is exacerbated when the speaker’s aiming is marginal. You want its propagation axis pointing at your ear-plane such that you are at the center-sweet spot of its vertical propagation field.

The design axis assumes an ear position of 3’ off the floor and at least 2.5M - 8+’ away. You can mount a builder’s square, laser, etc. on the speaker at 36" up and parallel to the floor. Sight along that line. Adjust speaker tilt such that it sights to  your ear height.

Now it gets trickier. The effective set-back of the drivers changes relative to how much the speakers are toed in, which is dictated primarily by your room’s side walls. If the sight line points at your ear when the speaker is aimed directly at you, it will act lower if pointed more perpendicular to the front wall. (Visualize looking at the side of the speaker rather than the baffle. There will be zero driver setback in that case vs 6° (depending on your model) when looking at the baffle.

Explained another way, if you use setup software, the proper height and tilt is the one that produces the best square wave, step response, etc. at your listening position. That optimized geometry will put your ear at the mid-point of the vertical wave propagation arc. Your soundstage height will be at its best, as well as frequency response and everything else.

Hello Folks,

For those of you who don't know, Gary Dayton has bought CSS from Rob Gillum who has retired for family needs. The transition has been January through May.

Gary has made a formal announcement and provided more detail on the Thiel Audio Legacy facebook page being run by Micah Sheveloff, Thiel's long-time publicity and PR agent.

Thank you.

Prof - Gary can handle all your needs. He was a rising star at Thiel and after resigning in the early New Thiel era he became Bryston's USA sales manager and then worldwide Marantz brand manager for Sound United. When that company became turbulent, he was convinced to pick up the reins as CSS, my first-choice outcome for our beloved brand.

When at Thiel Gary was the out-facing technical service rep / the other half of Rob's repair department. They worked together. Since this past January Rob and Gary have worked together to increase Gary's fluency with hands-on techniques. Rob will also remain on call as needed. No worries. Gary was also Jim's lab assistant and the lead man for the development of the CS2.7 after Jim's death as well as the CS1.7 with its next-generation RadialWave coax and StarPlane woofer. He knows his stuff.

To your question, all Thiel speakers can be serviced in the field. Some mechanics may not be obvious; but once exposed to the solution you will be able to do what's required. Again, no worries.

Correction - the CS1.7 is the CS1.6 next-generation tweeter (not coax.)

In the early years, Thiel considered reflex bass as a necessary cost-compromise only for entry level products ie home theater and models 1 and 2. When it came time to replace the CS3.5 with the 3.6, I resisted going to reflex bass in the 3, which had always embodied our highest aspirations. The equalizer needed improvements which were judged too expensive for the target price. Fair enough. I lobbied (unsuccessfully) for a modified CS5 style bass with overall system impedance high enough such that the falling bass impedance could stay above 4 ohms. The prevailing argument was that ports (a performance step down from our passive radiators) were ubiquitous, even in speakers selling in $6 figures.

Nonetheless, our foundational commitment to time-alignment was compromised. Reflex puts the deepest fundamentals a full cycle behind the action. As duramax has said " the bass player is out in the parking lot". Thiel’s reflex bass is implemented as well as I’ve seen at any price, but it does unavoidably delay the deep bass.

So you know, we have prototyped an equalizer using Jim’s excellent topology but adding regulation and more beef to the power supply,  higher grade caps and metal film resistors - while still remaining affordable.

Another problem with straight bass (non-reflex) is that very large driver excursions are required, which works against our underhung, low distortion motors. My assessment is that if push comes to shove, an overhung woofer motor is far better aligned with Thiel values than is the reflex timing error.

All of the upgrade technologies we are developing in the SCS4 workhorse will be applicable to all Real Thiel speakers. The 7.2s weak link is a 400uF bank of electrolytic caps in a parallel notch filter. Although considered less audible than series-feed circuitry, shunt filters are audible. I have developed two fixes. 4x100uF film caps, which is expensive and large enough to only apply to an outboard crossover. But another fix is to replace the 4 x 100uF electrolytics with 8x50uF higher grade Els in a bundled layout concentric around a new Golden Cascade 1uF bypass with its coaxial sections decreasing to 0.015uF. That’s the minimus value we landed on and used in the CS3, 3.5, 2, 1 and 1.2. The cost and footprint of this fix is accessible for an inboard crossover. Lovely improvement.

Regarding duramax’s silver cabling. I have also found silver to be magnificent and free of any excess brightness - depending on design - many elements are in play in cables. I have some custom silver plated copper wire that plugs right into my BiFlow topology. The extra cost of silver is significant, but my geometry has cost-effective manufacturability. So a silver option is on the radar. 

Our behind-the-scenes rate of progress has been called ’glacial’. It’s really slow, but also quite large.

Unsound - I agree with you. The equalizer does everything right sonically. The bass extension rolls off at the bottom at 12dB/ octave like real unamplified output. The upper frequency electronic ’tizz’ is solved with the new unit.

Our problem, especially in the early days, was under-pricing what we were delivering, and therefore living under very strict budget limitations. Note Dunlavy’s price multiple vs a similarly-reviewed Thiel. I did some cabinet consultation for Dunlavy. Behind their curtain, Thiel’s component quality and overall performance / cost and was far higher. The Audio Upgrades re-design of Jim’s EQ is significantly better, but would have come in at about double the cost of Jim’s design.

As you know, our plans include reintroduction of retro-fittable midrange and tweeter to remove the obsolete product concern, and then offer this new EQ as an upgrade for your upgraded model 3 equalized models. There were 10,000 pair of model 3s with that equalizer (combined 03a, CS3 and CS3.5). Quite a few of those are still in use.

As background, I advocated for a higher performance line of our speakers which would have allowed greater budgets. Think Lexus / Toyota. That idea didn’t fly primarily because they felt it would cheapen the perception of our stock products. Marketing would have been more dimensional, but I think we would have shone brightly in that arena. I would have preferred that business model vs diving into Home Theater for survival as value-priced 2 channel faded against emergent HT.

John - Jim worked hard in the CS1.6 to bring the sensitivity up. His spec was 90dB@2.83V. Stereophile’s review measured 94dB. So, amps far less powerful than for normal Thiels will work on the 1.6. The impedance runs just under 4 ohms across the board; that’s not as punishing as some other Thiels like the 3.6. Note howwever that the reflex slot is far more reactive than any other Thiel. Consult Stereophile’s review for details and considerations.

The binding posts with their big brass knobs are sonically destructive. Upgrade your sonic experience by backing the knobs all the way off and putting some locking bananas on your cables. When the time comes, there will be crossover upgrades for substantial improvement at reasonable cost. The 1.6 drivers and enclosure are better than its crossover component quality.

foamcutter - your best source of further information is Gary Dayton at Coherent Source Service.

The model 02 woofer had a rubber surround on a paper cone. It was made by GEFCO of Illinois.

Woofer: Gefco 4829 6.5” 6 ohm 1” aluminum former

Tweeter: Peerless KO 10DT 8 ohm

Second Thiel speaker released in autumn 1976 at $220 / pair

audiofilo123 - the 'funny' part about your Copland amp comment is that Thiel speakers require current-source power rather than the ubiquitous voltage sources. An amp that will drive a Thiel, including your little CS.5s, should double its 8 ohm power rating into 4 ohms and at least 1.5x its 4 ohm rating into 2 ohms. 

The Copland might do well with higher impedance speakers, but not have the current delivery capability that your Thiels require.

Frustrating? Maddening? Yes. Solvable? Yes.

Thanks for the instruction on the Copland. What do you suppose accounts for the Kinki Studio superiority with Thiels?

foamcutter - congratulations on your purchase.

The CS2.2 is dear to me, having served as my location recording monitor and small venue playback for 35 years. I have recently been developing performance upgrades, and the 2.2s have served as workhorses for much of that work. There will be user-installable performance enhancements available one of these days.

Note that Thiel developed this tweeter from the ground up for the CS5. Although its technology was later surpassed, it served brilliantly in the CS5, 3.6 and 2.2.