I have an old pair of CS-3.5's that I bought used about 4 years ago. I decided to check out the drivers the other day and took off the grilles. When I bought the speakers the drivers looked perfect. Now the center domes of both mid ranges and one of the woofers are dented in. There is also a small, linear tear in one of the midrange surrounds. I have never had the grilles off since I first bought them so it doesn't seem possible that the drivers suffered some physical trauma. Is it possible to have the center domes of drivers collapse just from using the speakers? By the way, the speakers still sound great in spite of the minor damage.
I am shopping for a replacement mid range for the one with the torn surround. I'd like to hear from someone who may be parting out some CS-3.5's.
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I am thinking of replacing my 3.5's with 2.4's or 2.7's. Will they be as smooth as the 3.5's on soprano voices and masses strings?
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Well, I'm waiting to hear from Thiel if they have either a replacement driver or if they can repair the driver. I found someone who has a new Thiel driver for $225 but even this seems a bit much for a speaker that only commands a $500 resale value. It's kind of like putting a $5,000 transmission in a twenty-eight year old Volkswagen. If I don't find something for $100 or so, I will just drive these babies into the ground. For now they still sound fine. I am mystified on how the drivers became damaged.
Mr. Unsound:
If I parted out my set of Thiels what would you be interested in, at what price?
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I haven't received an estimate yet, but if it is $400, I would say it's a reasonable cost for the work, but it's a cost I won't be willing to pay for speakers that won't be worth more than $500 after the repair. If I part them out I would imagine I could get $3-400 for the three undamaged drivers, equalizer, crossover and boxes.
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Rob from Thiel got back to me with a quote of $300. I have a lead on a NOS driver for the 3.5 for $225 which seemed high at first but now seems like a good deal if it is genuine.
In anticipation of replacing the Thiels I auditioned some Sinus Faber Olympica II's. They sounded a lot like my Thiels and not enough difference for me to sink $10,000 (new) or $6,800 (used). Into them. I'm not even sure I liked them more than the Thiels. I also listened to a friend's Quad 57's with custom woofers. I have heard these several times over the years and was just refreshing my memory to use them as a reference. To my surprise I actually prefer my 3.5's that I have paired with a Velodyne DD12 sub-woofer that cost more than I paid for the Thiels. The woofer setup got rid of a bump in the room/bass response that really cleaned up the midrange. This may be because I took the bass load off my ARC VT100 amp, or because I got rid of the Thiel equalizer, or because I got rid of the bump. |
Unsound,
Why do you think the equalizer is so important? In my room the speakers without the eq. or the sub measured a valley at 60Hz and a peak at 40Hz. I needed the high pass filter from the sub to flatten the response curve. What you suggest will put a bigger bump in the low frequency response curve than I started with, add another layer of electronics to the signal path and create more load for my little 100-watt tube amp. The guy offering me the mid driver even suggested that the equalizer could be responsible for blowing the mid range, a suggestion I took with a grain of salt. My midrange appears worn out, not blown.
Yeah, I could have moved things around to get a better response at my listening position but it's my living/TV/listening room and I have a partner to live with so there are more considerations than just my obsessive audiophile needs. |
I feel the need to make some comments on the CS-3.5 equalizer. Mine broke a few years ago. When I sent it to Thiel they said the repair part was no longer available so they sent me a used unit and charged me about $70. That was big of them to do for speakers approaching 30 years old.
This year I decided I would like some more clarity, less haze, so I decided to get rid of the equalizer. I remembered the old Stereophile review where the writer suggested the equalizer had some compromises. So I bought a Velodyne DD12 sub woofer last summer. This has some excellent measurement and balancing tools. I found that my original Thiels wth the equalzer had a bump in the bass response at about 40 hz in my room at my listening position. I am not willing to rearrange my room for the sake of my audio proclivities. The Thiels without the equalizer still had a bump at 40 hz. I set up the sub to flatten out the response curve in the bass. Subjectively this gave me less bass but it gave me more clarity across the board including the bass.
Today I went back and put the equalizer back in the system and removed the sub to see if I still felt the same. I found on a jazz album that had some heavy kick drum and string bass that with the equalizer set at 40 hz. the bass was overwhelming and it rang longer (boomy?).. I found that on choral music the sopranos were slightly smeared with the equalizer. On orchestral music the bass seemed a little heavy and the strings were not as clear with the equalizer. So far I haven't found any downside to replacing the equalizer with the sub woofer that I selected. Bare in mind that I have a difficult problem with my room setup.
Using the sub I got rid of the equalizer from the signal path, flattened out the bass response, and took some load off of my tube amp (ARC VT100). I did put a high pass filter in the signal to the Thiels but this appears to be done with a passive filter instead of an active filter since I get the same signal out of the sub with or without power to the sub. A passive filter maybe does less harm to the signal than an active filter that has transistors or opamps. I now have an equalizer in the signal path to the sub, but I surmise that an equalizer at these low frequencies is probably less audible than one at high frequencies.
So for a thousand dollars I feel that I made an improvement in my system that I would have had to pay much more for if I had upgraded to different full range speakers. I can't recommend this as a good upgrade for all CS-3.5 systems since I was starting with a troublesome room and a relatively low-powered tube amp that may be wanting in the low end department. I do feel however that getting rid of the equalizer should be strongly considered. Try playing music with no bottom end without the equalizer and see if strings and sopranos aren't a little cleaner.
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I scored a replacement midrange driver for my 3.5s by placing a WTB ad on Audiogon. I soldered it in and voila! no perceivable change even though the mid driver I replaced had three holes on the surround. Since I thought the speakers sounded fine even before I started looking for a replacement there was no surprise. I will send the wornout driver to Thiel when the other one starts to fail. That way there is no down time for the repair. Now that I have the equalizer out of the circuit the other| driver may last forever.
By the way I've noticed a slight narrowing in the sound stage without the equalizer and a little better focus in the image overall. Everything involves a trade-off. For the moment I prefer the extra clarity in the sound to the slightly smaller stage. I have tube electronics so the highs are still smooth.
I also added a little more bass back in the system by raising the woofer crossover point. It may not measure as flat at my listening location but it moved the bass response closer to the original.
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Flatter is better. I did some careful listening to mens and women's voices comparing the boosted bass mentioned in a previous post (which sounds closer to the bass with the CS3.5 equalizer ) versus the bass adjusted to have a flat response and guess what? Flatter is better. Women's voices are less chesty and Frank's voice is smoother.
If anyone wants to add a sub woofer to his system I strongly recommend one with the measurement and balancing tools similar to those that come with the Velodyne DD series. The auto-balancing feature is not so useful; you really have to get in there and manually adjust the phase angle, crossover frequency, crossover slope and several parametric equalizers as well as the subwoofer volume to obtain a flat response. And you need a microphone and a signal generator and software to display the measured response on a TV or computer screen. All of that comes with the DD series.
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I have been reading the strong opinions about the 3.5 equalizer that I eliminated from my system by using a subwoofer so I tried it back in my system again. I get the same result as before. The midrange is a bit more veiled and the instruments, voices and over all image appear slightly larger, When I go back to my arrangement with the Velodyne sub and no equalizer the midrange seems cleaner and the bass is tighter.
I would conjecture that the slightly larger image that the equalizer produces in my system is due to a lack of overall focus. I can't be sure if this would apply to all 3.5 systems because: a. I am dealing with room responses that I can't really alter; but others could; b. I have a 100-watt tube amp that may be bloating the boosted bass load from the equalizer that a larger, solid state amp could better handle; c. the tighter bass due to the massive solid state amplifier and active feedback in the Velodyne system may be doing less smearing and enlarging of the midrange image or maybe not; and d. the midrange driver is no longer getting carry over of the boosted bass through it's first order, 400-hz crossover.
The Stereophile review of the CS3.5 has a graph of the equalizer response that indicates it only affects the frequencies below 300 hz so I question the notion that it is somehow improving the midrange response and image. In my situation i think it is an extra link in the signal chain that adds an extra layer of veil to the sound. So much to know, so little time.
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Unsound,
I have had audionervousa for some time now; don't worry you're not the cause.
Cheers,
Rick
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