Thiel Owners

tomthiel,

More interesting info.  Thank you.

I once had Thiel CS6s in my house, in Pau Ferro and they were beautiful.  Still one of the nicest speaker finishes I've seen.

Pau Ferro (Amberwood / Morado) is an excellent-sounding wood. My main business is supplying tonewood to guitarmakers. We introduced Morado to that world in the mid 90s and it is considered by many to be the sonically-preferred fingerboard stock, as well as highly regarded for acoustic guitar body wood. Like Maple, it has virtually no open pores and is a joy to finish. Be careful, about 15% of people exhibit a poison-ivy-like reaction to the dust. Wear gloves and a mask when working it.

Very nice! jabnothing wrong with owning a Thiel museum. Hope your CS 1.5 finds a good home. I have always thought that the 1.5 and 1.6 models are perfect for an apartment or small sound room.
Happy Listening!

Very interesting information, tomthiel, thank you for the science/history lesson.  I've always loved the nice woods that make up the Thiel cabinets, particularly in the x.7s where they actually curve on the side and inward towards the front of the speaker--simply breathtaking!  My 2.7s are definitely the darker, redder version of the Morado whereas the finish on the PCSs is just slightly lighter and less red. Perhaps UV exposure has caused the change in color, causing them to be different?  (The PCS are older and I purchased them second hand.)

Jab, your lumber dealer will call the wood Pau Ferro, Bolivian Rosewood or Santos Rosewood. You may find some light colored boards, but the upland variety is more rare. You can bleach the darker wood to match your Amberwood.

Prof, Morado can be quite dark naturally. Thiel generally stained to match a standard sample, so some cabinets may be natural or some stained at varying levels of coverage to match the target.

tomthiel,

Thanks!  That explains why the grain pattern of the Morado I have is so similar to the Amberwood finish.

But just to be clear:  Do you mean the dark red color of the Morado wood is natural?  I'd always presumed the speaker started out with a lighter color and some type of red stain was added to give the red color.

tomthielThank You for the history lesson. Very interesting information indeed.Hope you are well and playing good music today.Happy Listening!

Good to see you - jab.Which (2) sets of speakers do you own?Happy Listening!

Here's a little wood trip for those sort of folks. There is a wood in Bolivia of two principal species, Machaerium schleroxylon or acutifolium, the former upland and the latter lowland. Since mid twentieth century the Germans have exported it to Europe as Santos Rosewood, named for a port in Southeast Brazil as its "source". Lots of intrigue there, but not today. The Danish "Rosewood" finish has been this wood since the beginning. Not a Dalbergia (rosewood species) it acts and looks a lot like rosewood. In the 1980s I developed a direct Bolivian source including a substantial plantation project with the Chiquitano Natives. They distinguished between the upland and lowland types and I applied the names "Amberwood" to the lighter colored, more contrasty upland type and "Morado" to the darker, more purple, homogenous lowland type. Note that they are both photo-sensitive and lighten toward amber with exposure to ultraviolet. The photo tagged above seems to have a fairly dark stain, which looks like the "Dark Cherry" color, but Morado and Cherry are structurally different. Amberwood generally has no stain.

hi Jafant,   thanks so much.   I am selling the 2.7's here and on audiomart just in case someone does not know that but wants a beautiful pair of them. The electronics are all upper end PS Audio which i swear by.   the rack is a beautiful piece i got from Mapleshade. 

prof
you are a very fortunate soul to have that kind of access to all of those dealers/retailers!Happy Listening!

batmanfan,

You possess more equanimity than I...

jafant,

Thanks, glad you got a kick out of my wacky journey.

Good to see you again - jon_5912Happy Listening!

ronkent-
nice ad on U.S. Audio Mart my friend. Tell me more about the gear in those photos. Hope your Thiels find a new home soon.
Happy Listening!

prof-I enjoyed read your Devore speaker audition -list thread. You certainly covered some very sweet loudspeakers. Well done.
As you can attest, it is tough to better a Thiel loudspeaker.

Happy Listening!

Nice! system  - batmanfanYes, I like Batman as well. The Sony SCD-XA9000ES is a special player indeed. I have always wanted one. Anthem makes a very fine processor, as does, Bryston SP 1.7, SP2 and SP3.  Looking forward in reading more contributions to this thread from you.
Happy Listening!

No worries, Prof.  If you decide to trade them in, sell locally, or even to the person who was the first to show interest, whoever that may be, then it was just not meant to be for me to own your pair and the quest will simply continue.  Life is too short to get hung up on these things :-)

Ok batmanfan. Noted.  I've had interest from others too.

I'm also  still deciding whether to trade them in for some Devore speakers, or sell locally (both those options meaning no shipping hassle).

hi Prof,
My 2.7s are the exact same color. The original shipping box shows the finish as "Morado" but in reality it is Morado Rosewood, and looks just as you describe and matches the image you referenced.  My PCS, while also in a "Morado" finish, is not rosewood, so it has less of a reddish color and is more brown.  In natural sunlight, you can see the difference between the two finishes, but with my recessed lights at night, the Morado finishes look very similar.
Now that I know that your 3.7s are in the same finish as my 2.7s, I know they would fit nicely in my system.  Please consider me when you decide to sell your speakers: batman.fan.ebay@gmail.com

hi Jafant,
Besides the Bryston amps, I have a very modest system that was originally tailored for home theater.  It currently consists of Anthem AVM20 as a pre-amp processor.  For source, I have a Sony SCD-XA9000ES SACD for 2-channel but a cheap Sony DVD player, the model number of which I don't know.  Both the Anthem and SACD player have been giving me electrical problems (not turning on a few occasionally), so I've been thinking about getting a Bryston BDA-3 to be used as an external DAC or possibly getting the Anthem AVM60 to upgrade my surround sound processing, either of which I would use the cheap Sony DVD player as a transport until I find the funds to upgrade that.  I've got Straightwire between the Anthem and Bryston amps, with Kimber Kable for the rest of the interconnects, and generic 10awg copper speaker cable I think I got from Blue Jeans.

hi Prof,   thank you so much. great reading.  i think the better our systems get,  the more tiny changes are audible.  why swap power cords if your speakers are Bose or something like that.  i use a Lafuma reclining chair as it is not thick and does not seem to mess with the sound too much like my leather couch does.  i like to recline and so i am laying back when listening which is why my ear is lower than most.   i find that when i go other homes, or to dealers,  that i end up sitting lower and closer than anyone else.  what device are you using that you mentioned moving around a bit.

ronkent,

The speakers are so easy to move around on my rug (one thing nice about not using spikes) that I often fool around with different listening positions.  I may settle on one for a week, or a month, or many months, then move them around. 

Right now I have my 2.7s a bit further from my ears than I thought - 7.4' - probably because they are spread out a bit more - 8.4' from the inside of each speaker.  Due to the wider spread, I have them toed in a bit to maintain some sparkle and image focus.  When in a narrower setting, I tend to have little to no toe-in.

I also find listener height can alter the sound a bit, but much less so on the Thiel's concentric driver arrangement vs a lot of other speakers (sound gets a bit more "plummy" rounded and warm with a lower seating height.  I've slightly angled my 2.7s downward to account for a bit of this).

I'm really a nut about tone and timbre and it's easily diminished by room acoustics and speaker/listener positioning.  I want warmth, roundness of tone, but with a realistic inviting sparkle as well.  To that end I find imaging, soundstaging and tone are almost always best for me when there is nothing behind my head - e.g. my sofa cushion comes up to my shoulders but no further.   Leaning my head back in to the sofa pillows, more reclined, while comfy, also changes the sound due to the reflections - makes it a bit more whitened and lively and spread out.  Which actually can be fun sometimes.

I've looked for pillows to lean my head on that don't alter the sound in an unappealing way, but there are no "neutral" pillows because it's going to change the sound reflections around my head.  Physics is physics.

That said, I just discovered that one of the small, narrow arm-rest sized pillows on my sofa, which is only the width of my head, actually works quite well to lean on.  Doesn't destroy soundstaging and imaging - though alters things a little.  Tone gets a bit more zing and aliveness, lightens up a bit, and a bit more focus.  So for instance a cow-bell or wood block hit will actually sound more lively and immediate.  And the tone doesn't "whiten" so much as leaning against a big pillow, but goes a bit more into the "amber" territory (I tend to perceive sound in colors this way).  Which I quite like.

Further...while on the subject of acoustics, I keep meaning to make a little thread about diffusors.  A single small diffusor that I bought a while back has proven really fascinating to play with - the way it can alter and dial in the sound so minutely via any number of positions in the room.
Placed right beside the speaker, I get a more alive sound, but also a bit more blanched in tone.  Placed just beside and behind the speaker and I get sonic images snapping even more together, and sounding a bit more dense and lively, but without loosing much of the organic roundness of the presentation.  Really fun.

Sorry...way more than you asked for.

hi Prof,   how far apart do you have the speakers?  also i really find that the distance from my ears to the floor,   though subtle,  affects the SQ

I sit even closer to mine (7 to 6 1/2 feet)!

Though I disagree a bit with some of the things stated on the mapleshade site.  For instance the idea that sitting closer gets you better bass impact and slam.  I've tended to find the opposite with almost every speaker - the closer I get the more linear and less bloated the bass, but also the less kick and impact (the more headphone-like it gets).  So I'm always trying to balance - close enough for smoothness, distant enough to keep impact.

there are some great tips on the Mapleshade web site.  Pierre thinks we sit too far away and too high and i have been using his suggestions for years with all my various Thiel speakers. 
I have the speakers  114"  apart (tweeter to tweeer),    90" from my  ear to the tweeter,  and i sit where my ears are  about 32"  off the floorhttp://www.mapleshadestore.com/freeupgrades.php

Regarding color, my 3.7s are Morado and I also have an MCS1 in what they call dark cherry.  If there is any difference between these two finishes it's subtle.  When I bought the MCS1 I was hoping it would be a matching center with the 3.7s as fronts and, for all practical purposes, it is.  I didn't set them side by side and do a careful comparison but they look the same.  I'm just posting this in case anyone else has wondered if mixing these two finishes in a multichannel setup would look ok.  

batmanfan,

Yes my Thiel 3.7s are in the Morado finish!

:-)

But just so we are talking about the same thing: I’ve seen one or two people mix up the "Morado" finish with the Amberwood finish.
Mine are in what Thiel called their Morado finish, which is the darker reddish stain with the nice wood grain patterns, as shown in the very first image on this page:

http://mancave-stereo.blogspot.ca/2013/10/the-thiel-37-part-1-visiting-old-friend.html

In preparation for selling them a while back I had a top level furniture re-finisher go over them to make sure they were tip top. They came back looking essentially "mint" like they just rolled off the factory floor. I was so impressed by this that I actually couldn’t let them go and it’s one reason I held on to them that much longer!

My wife likes the look of these 3.7s more than my 2.7s. (My 2.7s came to me second hand a bit scuffed so I intend to bring them to the same place to get the "like new" treatment).

Still, my 3.7s gotta go at some point.

Believe me, I know how tough it is when you want a rare speaker and ALSO put the constraint of a certain finish on them. That’s what I did with the 2.7s and had to wait 3 years or so for them to pop up in Ebony, and even then never seen another pair for sale, so I feel like I found my Unicorn.

not sure exactly  but i think i set mine around 45-50

I have a REL stentor III placed in the front left corner.  I used an SPL meter to match the volume and have the crossover set at 30Hz. Speakers are 3.7s, and room size is 16x20.

With all the talk about integrating a REL subwoofer and SS2, I’m curious about anyone else’s setup if you have one. I’ve got a Martin Logan Descent that has nice, tight bass complemented well with my previous 2.4s and which hasn’t skipped a beat integrating with my 2.7s. It’s amazing on musical passages and most movies but I have heard other subs, beasts intended to necessitate an annual budget for window repair, that really do sound better for certain blockbuster-type movies. Not ready to give up my ML just yet since these movies only make up less than 5% of the time I use my system.  Of course I would consider replacing it with a Thiel sub but that’s probably lowest in my list of changes. Bass is something I must plead ignorance because I’m not sure I could tell the difference between two high quality subs (unless one is in just another league or serves a very specific purpose like blowing the roof off your house). That said, does anyone else have ML that supplement the bottom of their Thiels? I would be curious how you came to your settings? I know everyone’s environment is different, but would like to know the process itself and if there was anything unique with respect to integrating with Thiels, particularly the 2.4/2.7.

Hi Prof, by any chance are your 3.7s in the Morado finish? While I used my 2.7s in 2-channel most of the time (which had increased after I upgraded my amplification), they’re a component of an entire home theater setup which includes MCS1 handling the center duties (hidden) and a pair of matching PCS in Morado that bring up the surround, and four HigherPlane 1.2 up in the ceiling (painted to match the ceiling). As a result, I wouldn’t be getting any 3.7s unless they are in the same finish.  Looks like a part of the audiophile curse is not just the endless tinkering but also layered upon that limitations beyond budget (of course) and real world restriction such as physical size in a room, color matching, or the WAF.
If they are in Morado, please keep me in mind if you decide to sell to another Thiel fan. If I’m the chosen one, they would be in a loving home with others of their kind ;-)
If they’re not in Morado, then my search for the holy grail will have to continue. I may very well never come across a nice pair of Morado 3.7s again (there was one that came up before I completed my home theater but were long gone before I did), but at least I have a fantastic sounding system as I continue that quest.

hi Arnie,   the person you got them from had the same problem i had with mine when i first got them.    i thought,  my goodness these are not near as good as my 2.7's. they were just as he described and i was not sure i would keep them.   now after about 6 weeks or so of very intensive time being played,  they sound like a whole nother speaker.  every time we are gone from the house,  i put the Reference Recordings burn in cd on repeat (cut 9) and let it rip.  sometimes i will leave a Michael Jackson cd on repeat as well as it is loud.  so anyway,  they are fantastic and cds that sounded okay through them 6 weeks ago, now sound like they have been remastered. 

batmanfan,

I've made numerous comparisons of my 2.7s vs my 3.7s in this thread and I'm presuming you've read them already (as you said you've read through the thread).

Of course I empathize with the audiophile nag in the back of the mind "could I have gotten something better?"   I'd originally been deliberating between buying a pair of used 2.7s in beautiful ebony, vs the 3.7s in other finishes (very nice finishes, but none in my preferred ebony finish were available).

The 2.7s would be an obviously better fit for my room size/aesthetics wise.  But I thought if I bought them I may well end up thinking "these sound so great that I wonder how much better the 3.7s would have been."

I chose 3.7s over 2.7s so that I wouldn't have that niggling doubt that I didn't go for the best I could get.   The 3.7s turned out to be awesome and sonically fantastic in my room.  But the funny thing is, especially due to the 3.7s physical size in my room, I started wondering "maybe I should have gone for those 2.7s after all."

It's a curse ;-)

So when the 2.7s in ebony showed up on audiogon I couldn't resist to try them out.

And it turns out, it seems: yes, the 2.7s are the one that best fits my needs.  

As for selling my 3.7s, I have decided I'd like to sell them soon, but still haven't decided which route I'll take - trade in, selling them only for local pick up, or opening it up to selling them to someone on Audiogon.

hi Arnie,   i suspect i need to bring my settings down but i would encourage you to raise yours.  i had some correspondence with John Hunter of REL and he gave me a rough idea of what he thought i should set the crossover at.  read below starting with my letter to him first

John Hunter (REL Acoustics)

Jan 10, 10:16 PM MST

Sounds as though you are in the right ballpark. Might have the crossover a tad high and the volume a tad low. To get the crossover just right, bring it down about 2 clicks-- if it is too low it will sound cold and hard immediately.

Increase the volume about 1-2 clicks and see if it doesn't get richer, fuller and more consistently fleshed out.

 

Kent

Jan 9, 12:28 PM MST

I have set the crossover at 12 o'clock (no idea what that actually translates to), and the volume around 11 o'clock.

Kent Tager

Hi ronkent, thanks! I’m still tweaking the RELs settings myself but find that when I go too high on the crossover I start to “step-on” the 3.7s low frequencies, and that’s the last thing I want to do. That S5 is a beautiful looking sub, enjoy!

BTW, how are your 3.7s sounding? I purchased mine “used” but they really started to open up after a few months of enthusiastic play! The previous owner complained about them being “bass shy and lacking dynamics”.. I don’t think he actually gave them a chance to break-in. These speakers really do need a good amount of play to reach their full potential.

hi Batman,   good to hear from you.   glad my  response got you into this group.   i have learned so much from reading all this and it is great to discuss our wonderful speakers with fellow Thiel lovers.   I use the BHK electronics from PS Audio and could not be happier.  They are a great product at a very fair price.  

hi Arnie,   i checked my settings on my REL  S5 and they are high compared to yours but i am always "fiddling" with them.  I think you might want to raise your crossover setting as that does seem low to me.  
i have mine at about 9:30 for the crossover and about 1:00 for the level.  I had set them originally for the 2.7's and probably need to adjust down a bit.  

Hi everyone--long time reader but never posted. Have loved the Thiel sound ever since I got my CS0.5s back in 1996 which was all I could afford back then.  Gone through several generations from the 0.5 to 1.5 to 2.4 and ended up with a beautiful pair of Morado 2.7s.  After mating them with a pair of Bryston 28B-SST2s, I was in heaven and I couldn't be happier, but in the back of my mind I've always wondered if the 3.7s should be my end game. (That's partly the reason I got the Brystons--they're certainly overkill for the 2.7s, but I've heard they are a fantastic match for the 3.7s.).  That's when I saw Ronkent's ad selling his 2.7s, and I exchanged emails with him re: his thoughts between those and the 3.7s.  He then introduced me to this discussion, and I was blown away!

Over the last few days, I've been reading everyone's comments and not only have I learned so much from this group, especially from Tom (thank you), I was also pleasantly surprised that there is still a loyal following to what I guess I should call the "classic phase-coherent Thiel sound" (as opposed to the current, modern Thiel Audio sound).

Awesome discussion regarding the upgrading path.  Didn't think this was an option until now!  Looks like the 2.7s are last on the list, which is fine because I don't usually like to mess with anything unless I think there is a problem...or unless there is something better, whether it's measurable or even if it's just perceived to be better.  But alas, that's the audiophile's curse, is it not?  To tinker, mess around and upgrade in an endless search for better sound.

That said, I'm guilty as charged, with having this curse!  Heaven knows, if I had put the money I spent on audio equipment over the last 2 decades into Apple, I would be able to retire now, hahaha!  Still, this endeavor makes life interesting.  Again, thank you everyone for contributing to this discussion re: Thiels.  Keep it coming!

P.S. Prof, have you decided to sell your 3.7s or trade them in for another pair of speakers? Last I can recall you were still deciding. Let me know if you end up going with the former route--I may be interested in those 3.7s.

hi arniespin,  i have the SHO s/5 and it is a killer sub.  the REL guy was here last week for a demo and said it was the sweet spot of their audio oriented subs.  i will check my settings later but have them much higher than you do. 

Hi Ronkent, I have 3.7s and am also using a Rel subwoofer. Mine is an older REL Storm III. I like the fact that it takes a high level signal from my power amp and seems to mate very well with the Thiels. I have the Gain at about 1/4 power and the crossover set at a low 23dB to just add that foundational Bass under the frequencies that the 3.7 can produce on its own. Curious as to how you have your REL setup.. crossover, gain, placement? Thanks

Magico Q7 Mk II. They are $223 K

I’d like to think these would outperform a $15k speaker! But the SQ gap, if any, is not anywhere near the $$$ gap. All the more so if the crossovers are upgraded to premium parts. Maybe some of you CS3.7 or 7.2 owners will try Dueland or Path resistors. Anyone wanting to explore the outer limits with Dueland caps, however, will certainly need to go outboard (see Jim Smith’s outboard 

http://jeffsplace.me/wordpress/?p=5464). In the meantime, Tom Thiel’s parts choices will be significant quality upgrades while still in line with Thiel Audio’s performance/price sensibility.