I just scored a sweet pair of CS 2.4SE loudspeakers. Anyone else currently or previously owned this model? Owners of the CS 2.4 or CS 2.7 are free to chime in as well. Thiel are excellent w/ both tubed or solid-state gear!
Tom Thiel - Thank you for your response about the SS2. I'm sure I will love it too!
Jafant - Right now I have a pair of CS2.7s in natural cherry and I am using a Hegel H300. I also have a pair of CS3 and CS2.3 (with the upgraded coax). Right now the CS3 and CS2.3 are in storage but I plan on using them or gifting them eventually.
Thank You for taking time to adress SmartSub SS1 and SS2. Hope you and your local repair shop are able to figure out Jim's design and crack his cryptic code.
Nuzzi - I love mine. The seamless integration with the main speakers is practically unbelievable. I agree that you 'should' be able to get them fixed when they break. Do that and tell us all and make lots of friends. I have tried two industry warrantee and repair shops to no avail and now have my SS1 at a local shop which has been quite knowledgeable and successful for other repairs. That ballot is still out, but the first two couldn't crack the code. Jim used a thermistor circuit to compensate for thermal compression from voice coil heat, plus his own circuitry for room boundary compensation. Both are "not normal".
The development documentation, patent applications and schematics are AWOL. It is possible that Jim kept that close to his chest; I know that he did all the repair himself and I can only speculate why. I am trying to find and recover documentation, which would make repair feasible and provide a foundation for working on quieting the background noise. Anyhow, enjoy your woofers and please share your experience.
tomthiel - Thank you for the info about the SS2. I already purchased it from Rob and I really just wanted you to tell me it is the best sub I can buy for the money. haha. I am a little confused about why repairing it would be an issue. If the amp theoretically failed, couldn't I just put a different amp in it and keep the drivers and cabinet? I have had sub amps repaired before and usually it is just a blown capacitor or something simple to fix. I am getting the PX05 with it so am excited to hear it in action! Thank you again!
So putting in the temporary midrange drivers just so I can enjoy them till there’s a better replacement do I just sink them all the way in?... cause I did that...
thoft - the heat effects apply to all speakers, somewhat more so to first order due to the drivers operating over broader ranges. Your crossovers are inside the cabinet where ambient temperature gradually rises and the XOs are often behind insulation. There might be trouble since your driver voice coil was toasted, usually by under powered amp driven into clipping.
If there is any permanent damage to your XOs, it would usually be obvious via inspection such as popped caps or charred resistors. If it sounds OK it probably is OK. But since your drivers were toasted, It wouldn't hurt to look around.
tom heat sinks on the crossovers? Should I check my crossovers for damage per the condition my speakers were in with disconnected voice coil on the woofer and one tweeter that was toast?
All - a little progress report from the hotrod garage. This past week I got first batch items of both the new terminals and the heatsinks. I think I mentioned the high purity copper bolts for terminals. But, heatsinks you ask? I know that heat is broadly everlooked as a problem in hi fi, since we’re not filling stadiums at 120dB. But, heat is a problem nonetheless, and it keeps showing up as audible. I knew we replaced lots of burned voice coils at Thiel. I knew there were charred masonite crossover boards. I knew that styrene caps melted when too close to crossover resistors. And I knew that Jim actually goosed the Smart Sub output to compensate for VC heat to compensate for reduced output, with a thermistor feedback circuit to the amp. Good and fine remedies as far as they go. But it got really real when I was experimenting with crossover components hung by twine to mess with proximity and directionality for my new layouts.
Allow me an aside here. Over the years we explored feeding coils from ID or OD and gradually landed on OD feed and ID tap. That’s opposite from received wisdom; but my present experiments confirm. I like confirming experiments and conversely hate coming up with any different result than Jim did. So, I’m happy. But here’s an interesting thing: it seems that the coil orientation in geo-space seems to matter. I placed the coil under test quite distant from any interacting fields, and the sound changes as the coil is rotated and turned in space. I don’t know if I’ll gather actionable knowledge, but stuff does get weird. Everything is audible.
Back to business. All that handling with pink noise and music at 100dB, and guess what? The coil got hot enough to start unravelling when hung by a lead wire, and hot enough to burn my fingers when I caught it. That’s hot. Further experiments confirm serious heat in various places in the XO. This is fairly old news that I’ve reported before. But where it lead me is quite sweet. Both the speaker and the XO network will have heat sinks. The speaker’s 'hot snowflake' sink will be on the outside of the cabinet behind the drivers - which comes later. Now, I am building out various levels of XO and by a twist of fate, all will have spot heat sinks, rather than a hot snowflake on the top models only. The trick is scrap. The layout of the hexagonal trapezoids for the hot snowflake on the cabinet yields some offal which lends itself to individual small sinks near heat generators in the XO, which being outboard, can dissipate heat to room air. I had already decided to replace the final output solder lugs of each driver section with bolt-down terminations in conductive grease. Performance seems as good as solder, plus each board can come out without de-soldering. Each of those three bolt terminals (hot lead for each driver) now has a round pin heat sink on the opposite side of the board. Soon I’ll know if I can now touch those coils and resistors without getting burned. At any rate, we’ll dump considerable heat at the XO spot sources before sending the signal down the wire to the speakers.
The heat sinks and the pure copper bolts for terminals showed up this week.
JA - I’m holding one in my hand. Thiel used Dynaudio’s D28 AF (D 2806-2A) in both the CS3 and CS3.5. Its diaphragm is 3mm greater diameter than the ubiquitous D25. The bottom end of the D28 has higher output for that shallow blend with the midrange.
jhouse - There is no gasket of any kind behind the basket rim, and it is not in a rabbet. Mine was stuck hard to the painted baffle - force of habit I suppose. I used a thin bladed artist spatula, a putty knife will do, to work under the edge and pop it out.
Hey guys, I thought about rotating my CS3.5 woofers a 180 degrees since they will be going into storage for a little while, and it’s probably never been done. I have the screws out but cannot get that thing to break loose, any hints? My CS2.2 had little trim rings, but these I can’t tell. @tomthiel , any recollection on these?
Old Thiel was probably always there but the URL www.thielaudio.com was redirecting to the new Thiel IP address for the last several years. That probably expired and the url is pointing back to the old IP address somehow. URLs like www.thielaudio.com are just pointers that point to the real web address which is a user unfriendly number like 10.023.23.4003.
That's the old site when Kathy sold to New Thiel. Those are the old phone numbers, and notice there are no dealers. Might be a spontaneous archival regurgitation.
Hey folks, what's up with Thielaudio.com? When the "new" lifestyle-product owners took over it of course showed those products. But I seem to remember it went dead once Thiel folded. And I expected the site wouldn't even exist now. But lo and behold:
https://www.thielaudio.com/ Has someone, somewhere, resurrected the original Thiel site (which looks to be the version just before new owners took over)? Who? Why?
Hey Fellow Thiel Gonners! Wanted to concur with Prof and Tomthiel about just leaving the 3.6s spikeless on hardwood floors. I experimented with spikes for a while and all the warmth got zapped. I've just left them alone on my hardwood ever since and the interaction with the wood is quite appealing . Sure would've been fun hearing them in the farmhouse though.
Been a while since my last 3.6 XO update for you so thought I'd fill you in. As a professional musician (violinist)/instructor by trade, I probably spend anywhere between 6 to 10 hours a day in critical listening mode. Whether it be in my own personal practice, engulfed in preparation with a chamber or orchestral ensemble, or with my many students, I find great joy in hearing musical progress along the journey towards the finished product. This has also been my mindset with regard to my ever changing audio systems and especially this most recent project. Kind of reminds my of when I was much younger and digging around in the trunk of my Olds Delta 88 installing Precision Power amps and JL subs actively crossed with KLH 24 db sloped XOs. What fun!
Now on to the nuts and bolts of my most recent iteration. I Finished the transfer from the stock ERSE bypass caps, updated with ClarityCaps CSAs, and Thiel resistors updated with Mills MRA-12s. The only stock parts remaining now are the Acousta-Coil inductors and the Versa-Tronics shunt caps. One of the really fun things I ended up doing was running the XOs outboard, via longer twisted pair 18AWG harness extension leads from Rob, for easier swapping. What I wasn't prepared for was how much the sound changed going outboard The sound-stage and presence are just breathtaking! I even ran a preliminary A/B comparison to hear the difference just covering one XO with towels and a plastic washtub and leaving the other al fresco. The results were very much in favor of the uncovered and assume that the added heat contributed to a slightly restrained sound with less air, especially in the center mid-band. That said, the air movement from the woofer inside the cabinet should provide sufficient dissipation to keep the heat at bay else we'd certainly know if there were alarming issues. Incidentally, I did remove a pair of the original Sorens caps to find some minor scorching from the on-side Thiel resistors so at some point heat was a problem, though my 3.6s are early production. I was also made aware that an updated XO layout was later released with spacings between these culprits. Glad to know the team was still vigilant after first run productions. With this in mind I'm sure you can imagine that I've indeed setup adequate spacings with my updates. When all is said and done, I'll perform a more thorough A/B test, with XOs inside/outside the cabinet, in a few weeks to verify sonic differences.
Probably preaching to the choir here but, at this juncture, I can't say enough how rewarding this entire regiment of updates, though challenging and laborious at times, has been. The improvements are well beyond my expectations and far beyond any source update or tweak offered me to date. Over the past few months I find the Mills resistors give the sound more girth and presence adding to the dynamics, transients, and timing. The ClarityCaps give the sound more detail and refinement adding to the clarity (for lack of another word), sound-stage and extension. For instance: in Diana Kralls "Start all over again", being able to more fully discern all the pitches in the muted trumpet/piano intro and more of the subtle nuances in Diana's sultry voice, albeit heavily processed I'm to understand. Or in Steely Dan's "Black Cow" hearing Walter's pick etching the D'Marzio by the bridge on his Strat eliciting an almost teardrop decay in the beginning lead. Also first noticing the fade to right, - just ABOVE Donald's almost southern dialected voice - of the backup vocals mid-stream in the first verse. Quite inspiring and uplifting, in the Telarc Robert Shaw/ASO Stravinsky Firebird, is to hear more of the rosin dissipation from the bow's horsehair giving way to the elegance of the melody in the solo strings. The same for the breathy transients toward a seamless unending line, being much more engaging in the winds. All this enhancing the dialogue exchange in the "Round Dance". Of course the impact from the bass drum in the "Infernal Dance" is just plain SCARRY now! Alas, I wax rhapsodic... As I progressed, I fully expected diminishing returns the further down the rabbit hole I went however, my A/B summed mono comparison tests continued to reveal quite noticeable improvements every step along the way. For now, I'll probably let things settle for a few weeks to assimilate the new sound and resume with doubling/combining the Mills resistors, at stock values, in mid October just to see what else is possible. Continued appreciation for all the help and support along the way!
TomThiel, tried to pm you but had difficulties. Will try again some other time.
jazzman7 - if those CS.5's were mine, they'll be singing not silenced in storage, lol! I love to keep my speakers busy on rotation.
And last but not least, a big elbow bump to jafant! I'm not much of a writer but hopefully my occasional musings will add a little more life to your Thiel thread. I haven't really gone through the other posts but I'm sure I'll have fun reading them. Thanks for the warm welcome!
Funny, I almost backed off from the deal when I saw how tiny the Thiels were. I knew they stood all of 8"Wx11"Dx31"H but they looked even smaller in person. But when I heard the opening notes of SD's Black Cow, I was in total disbelief. To be totally forthcoming, I read all the positive reviews so I was there ready to hear good sound but not THAT good! The.5's totally exceeded my expectations.
For perspective, I have a few pairs that are not bad-Dahlquist DQ-10's & 30i's, Vandee 2CE Sigs, Carver ALS-lll+, Snell Type A-ll , ESS AMT Tower 1's, and a few other pairs. I guess I could say I know what sounds good to my ears.
I've had the CS.5's for about two weeks now and they just continue to fascinate me. I can't help shaking my head and smile whenever I hear these lilliputians on steroid do their thing.
The sound comes out so smooth and balanced that I could listen to them for hours and not feel fatigued afterwards.
They may be the bottom of the CS line but I feel very fortunate to have these gems in the house. They were designed by Jim Thiel himself and that's what counts.
Now if I can only source a set of cheap spikes that will fit them. Their 8"x11" footprint is not exactly carpet-friendly.
@nicco Had a pair of CS .5 in my living room rig from 1996 to 2011 before graduating to the CS 2.4. The CS .5 is indeed a remarkable speaker. I’ll never forget when a professional musician friend of mine dropped by, a saxophone player, and Paul Desmond just so happened to be playing on the stereo. His jaw practically dropped as he remarked that he couldn’t believe how good the sound was. When I upgraded, my dealer offered me $200, but I couldn’t bare to part with them. Have them bubble wrapped, sitting in my crawlspace, ready to be handed over to my son once he has a place of his own to put them.
Just for kicks and because I don't absolutely have any space left in my man cave but have wanted to own a little piece of Jim Thiel's legacy. I spent less than 2 Fraklins for a pair of CS.5. which are in very good condition for their age. It's hard to believe that such beautiful sound could be coming from a pair of speakers that look like toys! If these could sound this good, I can just imagine how the big boys sound like. Much as I long to go for the proper sized Thiels, there's just no room for them. Love my Mighty Mites!!
I just wonder when a proper prospective investor/buyer, that will stick to thiel’s original ideology/ideas with love and care, Will buy the company and make the retro designs and begin the stride to new designs building on Thiels ideas properly. Oh god I would love to see thiel audio come back to life making the proper products rather than what came after the x.x models. I wish I had the money to do this personally cause I love audio and watch videos on making speakers all the time.
Thoft - The 3.5 was introduced early 1986 and sold approximately 5,000 pairs until replaced by the 3.6 in 1992. Those first woofers failed immediately and were recalled and replaced free of any charge (plus the Hedges album). But heat failure presented constant trouble with all Thiel models, especially the equalized 01, CS3 and 3.5. Slow roll offs use more power and the equalizer worked the woofer far harder than any normal demands would place on it.
Now I'll conjecture a little. I don't know whether that voice coil is underhung - I kinda doubt it since Jim's involvement in finite element analysis only started around the mid 80s when the 3.5 was coming out. Irregardless, underhung voice coils produce 90% less distortion (of some forms), but their short, multi-layer (4 layers!) geometry inherently stores heat. Add to that extra heat the eddy current problems with aluminum voice coil formers which took Jim to using Nomex (which doesn't conduct heat) and you have a stacked deck for heat failures. Your separation is most likely from heat build-up for all these reasons. A re-cone has more advanced adhesives.
In my Thiel Renaissance (admittedly very slow) redevelopment work, thermal management is a serious area of attention. I have measured wire temperatures at over 200°F and they are quite probably considerably higher locally. I'm excited about a solution (which I'll describe at the proper time) which dumps a lot of heat out of the crossover and drivers.
Cardas, is on my list as well as Transparent Cable, for openers. Where do you have the Golden Reference (GR) placed in your system? Neutral Reference placed?
You must have a verified phone number and physical address in order to post in the Audiogon Forums. Please return to Audiogon.com and complete this step. If you have any questions please contact Support.
