Thiel Owners

I believe Jim Thiel was using Straightwire Maestro’s before moving on to the Goertz speaker cables. Both can be found for relatively inexpensive prices on the used market.

The Goertz cables models/gauges choices will depend upon the power output of your amplification. As @tomthiel previously touched upon the Goertz cables can put some amplifiers into self frying oscillation. This can be avoided by using Goertz own small, fairly inexpensive “RC networks” (zobles) at the speaker binding posts. Should you go with the Goertz, I strongly (!) recommend you use their RC networks. There is no sound reason not to.

As different as these designs appear, they share some characteristics. Both keep the positive and negative poles in constant close proximity with Teflon barriers. Both have somewhat similar technical properties of low inductance / high capacitance. FWIW, to my ears, despite their very obvious differences, they sound more alike than different.

Happy Friday! All

unsound - no doubt you're right. Jim gravitated to the Geortz from StraightWire. I think it was Tony Cordesman or John Atkinson who borrowed those Goertz for their reviews and considered them an improvement.

I haven't gone there myself because I prefer to stay in the middle lane with ancillary products that are likely to be in widespread use among Thiel owners and fans. However, I would love to audition some flat-ribbon cables for comparison.

My recent wire excursions have me cross-checking driving speakers with and without crossover networks. The SCS4 is quite well behaved with no XO at all. And, guess what, cables interact differently with bare drivers vs networks.

How would you characterize 'their very obvious differences'?

@tomthiel, I would characterize “their very obvious differences” as how they appear visually. :-)

I believe the Straightwire Maestro’s use individually coated strands layered in side by side groupings that are then woven in an interleaved fashion ultimately resulting in a co-axial configuration.

Only the 2 & 3 series of Goertz speaker cables separate the positive and negative with Teflon.

Your description of the Maestro sounds very sophisticated. I don't see it in their present offerings. Steve has told me that they no longer use individually coated wires due to centering difficulty, expense, etc. Their present core technology is to compress the bare copper wires to maximize and unify contact, then insulating those groupings and applying their various cable geometries. My StraightWire is way down the line at Octave which utilizes their core compression technology, their insulation mix, geometry, etc. He characterized the Octave II (now III) as most of their available performance before climbing the cost ladder of 'designer sound'.

I don't remember which SW cable we had at Thiel when I left. I do know that the music room was outfitted with the Kimber Black Pearl when I auditioned the 3.7 vs nearly finalized 2.7 in 2012. Those cables are astounding - at $5 figures.