yyzsantabarbara
Nice catch! Hope these beauties find the next good home.
Happy Listening!
Nice catch! Hope these beauties find the next good home.
Happy Listening!
Thiel Owners
Guys-
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!
Keep me posted & Happy Listening!
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!
Keep me posted & Happy Listening!
13,808 responses Add your response
I have a pair of cs2.3's. Had them for the last 20 years. I upgraded the coax mid/tweeter to the two magnet unit, this was pivotal in me keeping them, as I had a heck of a time taming the brightness. A tube preamp helped considerably also. As per most Thiel products, very high resolution and lack of coloration. Makes poor recordings sound poor, but good recording sound fantastic! I have a high current amp (Bryston 4bsst). Not sure of the differences between 2.4's and 2.3's. Make sure you are sitting at least 9-10', as the drivers need the distance to blend appropriately. After 20 years, got the bug to get a new pair of speakers, ended up buying a pair of Tekton Moabs, still waiting for delivery, Eric is very busy! Hopefully it is an upgrade over my Thiels, as the return shipping cost will be considerable. |
Jhouse - your speakers certainly do look altered, that's not a Thiel factory finish. The veneer looks to be Mahogany, which has a natural color in the salmon spectrum, which is generally stained some shade of red-brown. It looks like yours have been stripped, leaving some color in the scratches and pores. They could be refinished professionally or DIY with readily available finishing materials. Thiel used very little Mahogany due to a combination of low demand and high hassle factor. There are many types of figure, grain, color and embedded expectations regarding Mahogany. Mahogany with its terminology and nuances is well understood in the world of fine furniture, but practically invisible in the world of audio. We would have needed an education and interface department to promote Mahogany, and chose instead to just offer it as an option on demand. Hard to guess why your cabinets got stripped. |
Thanks @tomthiel and @thielrules. My first thoughts they were the lighter color that Thiel offered then they stained this color. They don’t feel like they have been sanded and you can see on the edges where the runoff was. I guess once I get them sanded down carefully, I’ll be able to see what’s underneath. |
FYI: Thiel stained bare wood; if stained, the clearcoats would be on top of stain. If natural, the clear sealer and topcoats would be on bare wood. Refinishing is serious business. Are you experienced? You might consider some form of over-coat, like a pigmented topcoat, or translucent or opaque paint. Keep us posted on their resurrection tour. |
Hello everyone! Wow, what an informative thread this is! I’ve really enjoyed reading through here and learning so much about Thiel speakers. Such a wealth of information. I picked up my first pair of Thiel speakers a few months ago. I found a pair of CS7’s locally and couldn’t pass them up. When I bought them, they were described as fully functional, but, as soon as I got them home, I realized there was an issue with one of the 12" woofers. I could hear the coil rubbing the former on bass notes at moderate levels. Thankfully, Rob Gillum was able to help me out. I shipped the woofer off to him and he rebuilt it back to factory spec. Turns out the suspension was a bit tired and allowed the cone to sag which caused the VC to rub. It’s good as new now. I may rotate the other woofer 180 degrees as preventive maintenance. However, removing these woofers is no easy task. Definitely a two person job to minimize the risk of damaging the concrete baffles. The woofer alone weighs 30 lbs! Anyway, I’ve had them up and running for a few weeks now and I’m really enjoying them! They’re much different from the other speakers I have in our home. In a good way! Excellent detail and imaging. Some of the best I’ve heard in that regard. Bass is clean and tight with no trace of boxy boominess. Really exceptional speakers! I’m running them on a modest setup at the moment; Tidal/Amazon HD, Bluesound Node 2i, SMSL M8a, Anthem Pre 2L SE and Parasound HCA-3500. I’ll be changing things up in the coming week. Curious how the CS7’s will respond. :) Here’s a shot of them in situ: https://flic.kr/p/2jeBrwZ https://flic.kr/p/2jeEdNK And check out this woofer: https://flic.kr/p/2jipdwi The woofer is secured to an internal cross brace via a 3/4" bolt through the phase plug/magnet. https://flic.kr/p/2jimg5Y Also note solid core wiring used throughout: https://flic.kr/p/2jimjGC Happy listening, All! |
Hey Thiel 'Gonners! Just finished my last round of updates for my 3.6s including the big 100uf ClarityCap CSAs and a handful of Mills MRA-12s among other componets. The sound has, for a lack another word: CLARITY! The bass is much more controlled with better low extention. With the lack of a muddier midbass, the upper mid-band and treble extention are also more revealed. It's quite a trip to listen to them now and more to come after my back-ordered bypass caps and more Mills come in another month or so. In the mean time I'm sending my midranges to Rob at CS for rebuilding next week. While I wait though, I ordered and received a set of ScanSpeak Discovery 12w/4524gs to use in the interum. They were recommended for 3.6s by a reputable distributer but I hadn't seen mention of them here on A'gon nor has Rob heard them used in 3.6s before. I've had them for testing for about a week now and my summed mono A/B comparision reveals them to be forward and too narrow a bandwidth thus far. I'm running them through a pink noise generator for another 100 hours or so but have suspisions they'll fall short of the original, as to be expected. Perhaps some voicing in the crossover would help however, since I'm only using them in the interum, I think I'll just wait it out; yerning for Rob to send back the Vifas ASAP. Anyone else had experience with these ScanSpeaks before or have sugestions? It sure has been fun catching up with you guys on our forum over the past few days. Looks like the 3.5 continues to get a lot of love and, with the Great Unpleasentness among us now, all these creative minds with more time on their hands, are comming up with so many really wonderful ideas for modding. Keep it up guys! It's so fun to follow your progress and hope that my 3.6 project helps others in some small way as well. |
I finally got around to trying to figure out what was going on with the ViewPoints I bought in March. I had bought a replacement tweeter and installed it but it wasn't working right. I took the speaker apart and played around trying to get it to work. There was a signal at the tweeter terminals and at the plugs where it is installed. After being mystified for a while I noticed that the new tweeter had the same problem the old one had - the wire that connects the voice coil to the plug was broken. Hmmmmm. I played a 60hz test tone and measured the AC voltage at the woofer terminals and the tweeter terminals. They both had exactly 2 volts. I'm thinking this means that one of the capacitors or the resistor in the tweeter path is a full short. Anybody have this experience? |
Jon - I haven't had your experience, but I can comment.Broken leads are usually caused by excessive excursion.Your 2 volts AC at the tweeter and woofer with a 60Hz test signal is improper. Tweeter should be near zero.Caps and resistors usually blow open, not short. Hmmm. Shorted feed cap or resistor would cause direct feed and tweeter destruction.If your XOs are on PCBoards, the short might be in a trace, not component. Rob Gillum at Coherent Source Service might help troubleshoot |
Tom - Thanks for the feedback, I think the crossover must be what is described as point to point. All of the components are soldered directly together on the back of the board. I don't see any other possibility than one of the three components has a short. There is another path but it goes through a resistor, pair of capacitors, and coil in series. I'm guessing it's some sort of secondary path to deal with some specific problem. It's really annoying. I guess now I bust out the soldering iron, take the components off the board and measure them. I have a hardware store multimeter that won't measure capacitance. Picture of cs2.4 crossover with same type of construction. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/333477547409233370/ |
Here's a picture of the other side. While it is on a PC board, there isn't really any significant tracing. All of the components are connected via solder except one short spot on the left. That appears to be part of a secondary path to the tweeter that I'm guessing is supposed to carry a very small signal. It appears the importance of the printed part is mainly to help with assembly. Viewpoint back of crossover: https://imgur.com/e3YK20g |
Forgot to mention serial number 259 and dates on backside of tweeter domes 3/06. (both the original tweeter and the one I bought a few months ago, and written by the same person.) back https://imgur.com/a/tt0o7XU front https://imgur.com/IUIyi2A |
@beetlemania Update on the wool quilting batting , basically a total failure . No matter how much I used and compressed in the mid/tweeter cabinet the very high piercing notes came thru , in the bass it seemed to muddy up the upper bass . While it is great to work with , it just isn't the right batting for sound . Maybe I'll try wool insulation after replacing the resistors and electrolytic capacitors . Solved the brightness after replacing the wiring , changed a tube on the phono preamp . Question , does the 2.4 have fiberglass batting that is cut into squares and rectangles then stuffed in or is it heavy and cut placed aroung the walls ? Rob |
This post is addressed to all who participate in this thread, but more than likely mostly to Tom Thiel for assistance. I was thinking that it would be nice to have a timeline of Thiel product development. A list that would provide the years of manufacture for each of the products in the various series. I think that it could help provide context for many of the discussions on this thread. It would also be interesting to have the corresponding price points at the time as well. Thoughts? |
I guess this is the time to ask, or confirm, that the incredibly comprehensive hyperlinked database of all speakers that was a part of the 'real' Thiel's website was immediately destroyed by the new owners? As I recall, it had every speaker's production dates, white paper, instruction manual, print marketing material, technical specifications, and all the positive reviews they could find from US and foreign sources. If anyone mirrored or archived it, I have yet to find it... |
@jafant I made no comparison. Just assumed that the previous volume was “optimized”, a dubious assumption given that the volume can easily be modified by compression, ie, there is no one OEM volume that can be discerned. I merely made it as close as possible to how it was when I first removed the radiator to view to boards. |
For the record, wool acts quite differently than fiberglas, as does polyester fiberfill or spun mineral wool, especially in transition to the deep bass. Final placement and voicing of damping was always made by results. Listen to it, and if you have the means, measure the output smoothness. Insulation schemes will unload at various frequencies due to complex resonant behavior, especially in reflex systems. Fiberglas behaves more simply and predictably than any other scheme we found. In my time, and possibly onward, the first reflection of the midrange driver off its rear enclosure wall was absorbed with dense pure wool felt - it worked the best for that purpose and its considerable expense was worthwhile. Our evaluation of wool batting for absorption was not as good as fiberglas. |
Rob - I saw and heard the first pair of 2.7s at the factory in 2012. I believe there was an angled dividing board between the lower (woofer) and upper (midrange) chambers. I should add a thought to the insulation riddle. Many people assume that wool is best, the other synthetics are next and fiberglas is worst, due mostly to cost, where fiberglas is the least expensive. I've previously mentioned that Thiel's fiberglas is a best of form type. I don't think that I've mentioned my reasons for confidence that it's pretty good, perhaps best for the task. In the late 80s during development of the CS5, I took on the project of comparing, contrasting, testing and choosing an 'optimum' batting / insulation scheme for the CS5. Such research always trickled down to less expensive products where an as cost-effective. I had some pretty luck help. Toyota was coming to town with their Camry plant. Also IBM keyboard products was down the street and the University of Kentucky had developed a School of Advanced Engineering in support of Toyota's success. I've mentioned the happy quirk that Thiel Audio was a 5th member (of 5) of UK's Advanced Manufacturing Roundtable, to which I was Thiel's representative. Lots of stories there, but today's is that Toyota, of course, was bigtime in the sound deadening business as was IBM. In addition to picking their brains, I brought my cousin Teddy (the GE Jet Engine guy) to the party for his knowledge of aircraft noise abatement. Needless to say, there was horsepower in play. Less likely, is that the scheme we had originally developed in the late 70s won the day. Many of the reasons for choosing other materials have to do with odor or fungus or handling or airborne particulates. Those issues were all manageable and wool felt and fiberglas is what we kept. There are many new subsequent products and concepts. Thiel never approached constrained layer damping or suspended case in case construction. But we did explore various surface damping schemes. I found nothing to make any appreciable net improvement over what we had. And it seems that future products kept on keeping on. Although I am investigating air movement and panel resonance, I haven't considered re-addressing the original wood felt / fiberglas batt chamber damping. For now at least. |
