Thiel Owners

Just for the heck of it today I stopped in at my local bricks and mortar shop right here down in good old Lake Grove,  NY.  I'm about to invest in SOMETHING new.

Anyway,  after talking with my sales guy for a while regarding new amps I spotted a used Conrad Johnson MF200 solid state amp with a really good price tag attached to it.  I came home and hooked it up and...pretty darn good!  

The only amp that my Thiels did not like was a NAD 375bee integrated.

Anything NAD is not going to have enough "juice" for Thiel loudspeakers.

Keep me posted as you massage your CJ amp into your system.
I am interested in some of the new models from CJ.

unsound, jafant, others,

Thanks very much for the encouragement. I think the next step will be to borrow some very long cables from the local shop and try various speaker locations. I am pretty much in agreement with everything said and will post (when I have time over the weekend) any progress. Thanks again!

You might consider a Belles amp.  Perhaps the Soloist 1 integrated even.  They have a full, tuneful and robust sound to me that would mate quite nice with Thiels.  However, as a previous Thiel owner, I'd go with a solid state amp, think Levinson, Krell, Conrad Johnson, BAT, Classe or Belles.  Then add a tube preamp which will help to flesh out the sound from the Thiels.  As Thiel's Kathy Gornick was once quoted as saying, " I never heard a Thiel speaker that didn't sound better with a tube preamp."  For cables, go Straightwire, Transparent or MIT.  Keep us posted and enjoy your Thiels.....they're worth it.  Best.

jafant...
I played the CJ MF200 for a few hours yesterday and I can say that it's a pretty impressive amp for its age.  CJ doesn't offer a power rating into a 4 ohm load like my Thiels,  but with 200 watts into 8 ohms I will assume I won't be stressing either.
Anyway,  I'm currently using an ARC LS 3 solid state preamp,  and it may be only my aural imagination but I am not getting any of that "warm" CJ sound - which is a positive.  (Not that the warmth of CJ equipment ever bothered me.)  I thinks its more their preamplifiers that impart that trait in many user's opinions.  (I've had other CJ amps and preamps as well.)

I also have a Classe preamp...model number eludes me right now,  and THAT imparted warmth.  I'll be hooking that up and comparing sometime this weekend.

Overall the CJ and the ARC preamp are a good match.  I heard excellent low end response from my Thiels at a very moderate listening level.  I sit approximately 10 feet away from my speakers so that's a good thing.  I use Ginger Baker's "Cyril Davies" cut off of his most recent release "Why?" as a canary-in-a-goldmine reference since it has dynamics all over the place.  I then use some New Orleans jazz - if an amp can render this and that well its a keeper!

PS:  I got the amp for under $700...