Thiel Owners

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.

tomthiel

Do you know the current SW catalog? Entry level to Top Tier?

Happy Listening!

tomthiel

Thank You for citing Kimber Balck Pearl. This one slipped under my Radar.

I was thinking that Kimber Select (KS) is/was the Top line? Exciting times at Thiel circa 2012 with Models CS 2.7 and CS 3.7 loudspeakers.

Happy Listening!