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!
Thank you all. On to business. JA - the answer to your 'how many 2.7s' question lies with New Thiel, which no longer exists. I speculate based on conversations with first New Thiel operations manager Bob Brown and its best CEO Tom Malatesta that the number is probably in the hundreds of pairs. Very few indeed. Someday I am likely to find out and will share. If each of you can note the serial numbers of any pair you can. I'll put it on my list. Thiel serial numbers always began with #1.
Who here bought that pair of 3.7s directly from Rob? That's probably the high water mark for 3.7s. Number please.
My 3.7s are 41 and 42 I think. The SNs look to have been put on with a sharpie and are almost completely worn off. I'm guessing they were the original demo models from audio consultants here in Chicago. I assume they were part of the first production run.
thielrules - you would be in a legitimate position to ask Rob for your serial numbers . . . to answer our 3.7 question. And while you're at it, perhaps the 2.7 count.
jon - 41 and 42 is early, type 1. If you have not had work done, there were 2 XO updates of the 3.7. If you don't know their status, I could talk you through what to look for, or Rob might know from memory.
History anyone? Some might be interested in Thiel's batch size / manufacturing run strategy. First of all, speaker-making is fairly simple if you aren't making cabinets, especially cabinets as complex, technical and precise as Thiel's. So cabinetmaking manufacturing dictates batch size. In the beginning everything was manual with custom tools and fixtures. At the beginning our cabinet batch size was 40 with custom veneer species quantities from orders and hunchimations. Batch limit was for throughput and limited by shop size, which was my 28'x 30' garage with 5 people in it! What a zoo. Pretty soon finishing was moved to the farmhouse back porch and final assembly to what had been the girls' bedroom. Shipping was either out the bedroom window or off the front porch which we had modified for a drive-up truck dock. We were shipping containers to Europe out of that arrangement before 1980.
The addition of the Nandino Boulevard shop in 1981 allowed parallel production which was another zoo to manage. New shop batch size grew to 200. As we adopted CNC and other technologies around 1985, I set upon reducing batch size for a more intimate customer-demand process. By the time I left 10 years later, we had reduced our batch size to 1 pair. Of course, pairs were ganged when back-orders permitted, but our work unit was a matched pair. All processes including cabinet making, from custom veneer faces to crossovers and so forth were real-time demand propositions. For those who know manufacturing, this change is a huge one. These times were at the leading edge of Just In Time inventories and so forth, and we were a leader in the field. This process-flow concept rather than batch-run concept allows smaller batch or trickle inflow of raw materials and parts. It allowed our worker footprint to decrease from about 500 square feet to about 200 square feet with all that entails regarding storage access, supplier quality feedback and so forth.
From an end-user / customer perspective, products seem to just show up at the dealer. But from a manufacturer perspective, every process decision takes on live or die importance, especially when managing continual rapid growth. We doubled each year for the first 5 and then capped our rate at 30% / year for quality and sanity concerns. Quality always stayed high. Sanity, especially mine, suffered. Typical weeks were 80 to 100 hours with some months reaching 20 hours / day - 7 days per week. Growth isn't easy.
I don't know how old my pair is, bought them over a year ago - apparently a dealer pair - though I know the 2.7s were introduced in 2012.
Can you give me some insight as to how long I might expect these speakers to last, in good working condition?
I bought a spare coax, woofer and passive from Rob for just-in-case scenarios. But in terms of just speaker wear and breakdown over time, how long should they hold up and what parts are most likely going to need attending first?
My little Thiel 02s circa early 80's still work great, so I suspect the 2.7s should stay the course. Though perhaps their added complexity makes things different?
Prof - Speakers have very few issues which I'll summarize here. The cabinet is basically permanent, as long as you avoid furniture polish with silicone, which breaks down the finish. Also avoid sunlight as practical. The drivers can last a long time - many decades. Thiel surrounds are natural rubber, the best of form. But direct sunlight degrades it. Keep the grilles on. The moving cone / dome /coil is connected via braided leads. They eventually fatigue and break. I hope to get and Rob does have the various lead braids. The usual cause of unabused driver failure is broken leads, which can be replaced. Voice coil burnout is caused by distortion or accident, which necessitates rebuilding. Avoid burnout.
Crossover parts, used within power limits are virtually permanent EXCEPT electrolytic capacitors, which have a life generally considered 15 to 50 years. Your 02s are near end of life. Thiel always used best of form electrolytic caps, and we have never heard of a single failure to date, but the bomb is ticking. They are replaceable with care with original or equivalent or upgrade to ERSE PulseX propylene for permanent solution.
The 2.7 has a large cap bank feeding the midrange to roll its low end out higher than the same driver in the 3.7. The 2.7 XOs were Lexington built, so highest quality caps were used. I would budget 40 years life from accumulated experience.
Side note is that much of my present upgrade development revolves around heat management, which will extend life greatly and reduce age-related value drift. Electrolytics become less effective with age which shifts XO crosspoints. If shifted downward, then additional power can heat the driver motor to failure. Your O2's port helps cooling.
Thiel's historical experience is that most Thiel customers who bought from first-rate dealers (use education) never had a single problem, short or long term. About 10% of the customers had near 99% of the problems. The great majority drove into distortion with under-powered amps. Our warranty covered, in fact, such abuse ONCE, with an explanation and warning. Next occurrence was not covered. Rob is educative and generous, but most failures are user created.
When I purchased my 2.7s I was able to pick from the last 3 sets available thru Thiel serial #s 229 & 230 , in Cherry wood veneer . That same day the last new 3.7s were listed for $7,000 a birds eye maple, if they were only $6,000 . The story was that the 3.7s were being kept incase there was a Thiel museum . The 2.7s were seconds or blems for $3,000 , so I don't think that these were the last produced . Anyway they had been moved to Tennessee but I had to purchase them thru Rob in Kentucky .
tomthiel - happy belated birthday! If I am doing things similar to you when I am 70, I should be a happy man!
prof - glad to find you are listening again - hope the rest of the recovery is speedy and total.
gasman117 - glad to hear about the PS Audio amp - it is on my short list of products to try, glad to hear about its positive impact to your Thiels. (Also makes me wonder what happened to ronkent?) And I also run w/o a pre, have yet to convince myself it is necessary, much less worth the relative investment. Like anything else in hifi, might help, might not.
mr_bill (and jafant) - I do indeed have CS 2.3s and enjoy them greatly, but I don't know any better, these are only my second speakers (third if you count midfi HT) in the hifi journey, so I don't know what they lack in SQ relative to 2.4s etc. One thing about the 2.3s, you might feel a bit left out of these discussions, as I think I am the only 2.3 owner who posts, and only rarely. On the other hand, they are a piece of Thiel history, being the first with the coax tweeter/mid, and they are generally lower cost. And with all the xover upgrades these guys are planning, maybe they could be just as desirable as the other models.
Tom, thank you! Very informative, and that's a note I will save.
As for the expiring of the electrolytic capacitors in my 02s, what type of symptoms occur when the capacitors start to expire? Not sure if I should bother replacing them.
vair68rober,
Thanks for that info. I finally bothered to check and my 2.7 serial number is # 244. So looks like they continued after the ones you bought.
The 2.7s were introduced the same year - 2012 - that Thiel changed ownership and Jim's designs were discontinued. So they sure couldn't have made many of them (I wonder how many if any were made after 2012).
I sure feel lucky to have snatched up a pair, especially in the rare ebony finish, as these feel like a "forever speaker" for me.
Some amp news - about a month ago I acquired a BAT VK-55, it replaced my Krell 200wpc integrated. I know a 55wpc tube amp is not a conventional choice for Thiels, my 2.3s being no exception. However, every time I spend time in audio stores, I always am drawn to speakers powered by tubes. I saw a great deal on the VK-55 on another website, convinced myself that the BAT design had decent chances of working well (so easy to do when lusting for new gear), and was immediately happy when I powered it up - it really opened up the mids, with no loss of bass relative to the Krell. High treble is still my room's weakness, the VK-55 helped a bit, but as not much as I had hoped - complex passages still get smeared in the top end, and too much sibilants esp in female voices. Alas, room treatments will need to continue. One thing I am really enjoying is the resonance and detail - for example, I can hear the sound of strings and the resonance of wood behind them. Also staging detail, especially height and depth, improved. If someone has a more technical explanation of why this mismatch sounds so good, I'd love to hear it. And, just for you jafant, I researched and purchased what I hoped to be a good power cord for this amp - Cardas Clear M.
Oh, I did make two tweaks to the VK-55 that helped a lot, probably not newsworthy for many of you - plugged it right into the wall outlet, and isolated it from the rack with a giant slab o' wood. Not really, it was a big 1" thick chopping board I found at TJMaxx, well worth the $38, as this made a modest but significant improvement, even more detail and I think better bass? I am afraid this means I might become a tweaker.
Prof - for the record, the first New Thiel team included audio industry insiders Bob Brown and long-time Thiel associate Steve Defuria. They lobbied for continuing Jim's designs and the CS1.7 and MCS1.7 were developed on their watch. A few of the original high-quality dealers came on board including Chicago area Audio Consultants. But the wagon never got rolling again. I suspect those 200s 2.7s may be the last of them. 1.7s probably have far fewer. BTW: I am investigating the 1.7 for upgrade parts for the entire CS1 series. Good reason to believe the drivers are highly optimized. Has anybody heard the CS1.7?
Regarding cap failure. Value drift is slow and steady and most audible via direct comparison with new. Since series feed caps block low-frequencies, as they drift the low end of the upper driver gets excess low frequency signal. Caps in tuned circuits (like notch filters) can drift to cause mis-match between the cause and the cure for erratic frequency response anomalies. And so forth and so on and on.
Failure, however, can come as severe driver distortion, but more commonly exhibits as 'breathing' noises and thunks and stutters.
Bottom line: replace your O2 electrolytic caps, even if with same as new. I don't have a schematic and my pair is not yet here. The O2 preceded our phase-induced esoteric education, so all caps may be electrolytic. And the wire and resistors are 'ordinary'. Whatever is in there is highly up-gradable. This year I'll be fetching my prototype pair and I'm pretty sure I won't be able to resist going down the upgrade path.
Todd - I would not think of tubes as a mis-match. Tubes do some things extraordinarily well. And even their weaknesses sound very nice. My first 'blown away' experience was Tim de Paravicini's big Esoteric Audio Research amp when we introduced the O3 at CES 1978. Awesome, before the word became diluted.
Thank You for the continued research and development on Caps, Drivers and XO upgrades.
Just received caps, coils, pre-drilled boards, and other parts from Tom Thiel. Something of a pre-cursor for what the kits might look like. I am impressed by the quality of parts and the attention detail Tom lavished on the boards/layout. Probably some bumps in the road await but this is a good starting place.
Last few parts from other suppliers are on the way but I am going to start assembling the new boards this week. If all goes well, one channel will be live next weekend. I plan to share a journal of my process. I wish this forum had a way to include pics. Anyone know if audiogon’s TOS prohibit cross-posting? I might double-post over at audioasylum which allows image uploads.
jab - Audio Consultants is a very high quality dealer.
History time. Amberwood and Morado are related species which grow in Bolivia. They are routinely pirated by the Germans, taken overland via Brazil's Mato Grosso do Sul to the Atlantic port of Santos and resold to Scandanavian furniture makers as Santos Rosewood. (It is neither a Rosewood, nor does it grow within thousands of miles of Santos.) Such are the ways of woods of the world. I traveled South America in the late 80s, establishing primary, ethical sources for our woods. Machaerium (sp) was established as our standard-exotic with the CS2.2 introduction in 1990. The locals distinguish the two Machaerium species which I roughly translated as Amberwood and Morado. The lighter-colored Amberwood grows upland on the dry eastern Andes steppes and is a little harder and more contrasty than the darker, more homogeneous Morado which grows lower in the Amazon headwaters jungles.
I co-developed a program with my supplier-partner Jim Martin whereby we sponsored (with the financial help of The Forestry Fund) a planting program with the Chiquitano People to co-plant Morado with Black Locust as a nitrogen-fixing nurse species. Shade coffee was interplanted within 3 years of launch and the project was net black ink within 5 years. It went on to become the backbone of the tribe's monitary stability, at at 75 years' climax will have produced over $3M/hectare of income. One benefit was that we (Thiel) got first dibs on the raw veneer, sliced in Bolivia, which we transported by water to the Port of Louisville, a commercial port on the Ohio River within 80 miles of Lexington.
We laid up our own veneer faces in speaker-pair sets and pressed onto MDF, etc. substrate rather than most folks' solution of buying pre-laminated panels as 4'x 8' panels and chopping their parts. Ever notice how Lex Thiels have every panel mirror-matched? The 4 pair-sides are identical sequence-matches and the back-top-fronts are veneered as a pair unit and cross-cut into 3 mirror-or bookmatched parts. I mention these details because the reviewers who comment only say something like 'the fronts of the two speakers matched'.
Back to the Chiquitano People. The University of Santa Cruz interfaced with the Chief who personally escorted us across the boundary swamps to work with the native project managers. Those swamps are infested with Piranha, Allegators and various big snakes. So when the guards hit you with Curare darts, there is no pesky body to hide. We chose the Chiquitano because of their protected generational custody of their land, factually safe from the intrusion of MacDonalds slash and burn farming. Poverty with Gringo beef practices is the root cause of tropical deforestation. When you buy Thiel Morado or Amberwood, you are buying a significant and unusual piece of integrated ethical policy. Much more to tell, but work beckons.
Tom --The story behind Morado and Amberwood that you relate is amazing and rich! I'm looking at the Amberwood finish on my 2.2s right now. Absolutely beautiful and amazing.
I have a question. The 3.7s are the models currently "in my system," and you mentioned in a previous post that the electronics had gone through several upgrades during the lifetime of the run. I have serial numbers 1041 and 1042. Are you able to speak to where these belong on that continuity? Or would Rob know about this?Todd
We chose the Chiquitano because of their protected generational custody
of their land, factually safe from the intrusion of MacDonalds slash and
burn farming. Poverty with Gringo beef practices is the root cause of
tropical deforestation. When you buy Thiel Morado or Amberwood, you are
buying a significant and unusual piece of integrated ethical policy.
That is fantastic! Yet another reason to own Thiel speakers!
About those 2.3s and other products not on my hot-rod list. Please understand that I am not diminishing those products nor suggesting any deficiencies. A product developer (myself) must look at many aspects including item count, projected life, and so forth to try for greatest and fastest success. The 2.4 was chosen because of its darling status, higher item count and more vocal fan base. The 2.2 has more to do with my personal situation than its worthiness - but it did out-live and out-sell the 2.3 by a wide margin.
So, if this project is so fortunate as to continue, it is possible that we will apply what we learn and develop a 2.3 package, at a later date as we readdress possibilities. To that end, any schematic or layout information for the 2.3 would be helpful; none exists that I can find. A carefully taken photo of the XO with nameplate data listed separately is about all I need for starting point documentation.
Ha , You got those Shubert . Been waiting for him to lower the price to under a grand . Seen too many sold listings on hifishark under 1k . I offered him $800 . LOL
Good to see you again. $800 would have been a fair offer. I usually see this Thiel model in the $1000-1500 neighborhood. Were the Serial Numbers listed?
Viewed another way, you got an unbelievable bargain. In the realm of passive speakers, which is still the norm in home systems, their design-engineering equates to products selling in 5 figures. I know factually that multiple other manufacturers would claim $15,000 as cabinet value alone.
I understand the desire to buy stuff as cheap as possible. But, I also encourage you to consider the intrinsic value of the goods. Pick a dozen brands / products at $20K and compare your new 3.6s toe to toe. I bet you'll be thrilled.
Tom is right about the value here. It's one of the reasons I have such a dim view of audiophiles in general. They'll spend ridiculous amounts of money for stuff that simply doesn't perform that well. Thiels are a bargain at MSRP and they historically haven't held value that well so you can get an obscene bargain for the performance if you buy used. When I bought used 2 2s it really opened my eyes to this. They replaced a pair of 3k msrp speakers from a larger company in a second system. They were so obviously, laughably superior that I don't think there's a single person on earth that wouldn't have recognized it. It took a while for me to accept it but I eventually concluded that the relationship between price and performance is extremely weak. I don't know what "audiophiles" want but it's clearly not the truth.
Pick a dozen brands / products at $20K and compare your new
3.6s toe to toe. I bet you'll be thrilled.
Yes! There are 2, maybe 3, speakers south of $20K that I would *consider* trading my CS2.4SEs for. And that's before I finish my XO upgrade . . .
the relationship between price and performance is extremely
weak
Indeed, I can think think of a few models as high as $40K that I would not trade my 2.4s for. But I can also think of a handful north of $40K that I would pick over any Thiel (maybe I would change my mind after a Tom Thiel XO upgrade?). But they damn well should sound better given the chasm in pricing. The bottom line is an audiophile can be *really* happy with a pair of used Thiels and not have to worry about how to get some incremental SQ improvement . . . until after winning the lottery. :)
jon - I know it's thin ice for a manufacturer to speak up. But I'm out of the game, so here goes. Over the years, our products were competitively evaluated by some big name as well as audiophile manufacturers. Their 'business formula' would assign a sell price of up to 10x our sell price, and then back out some 'extraneous costs', which is what they call giving the customer more than he knows. Point is that for the customer whose values are aligned with ours, Thiel prices are extremely slim.
Schubert, have a great time with your 3.6s. If they need help, Rob will help you. If you want to take them to the next performance level, we'll have an upgrade path for you. Welcome to the Thiel corner of the world.
If they need help, Rob will help you. If you want to take
them to the next performance level, we'll have an upgrade path for you.
IMNSHO, buying a nice pair of used Thiels might become the
most-cost-effective way to get near SOTA sound. For starters, the stock versions
are already excellent (as Tom noted), sonically competing with new models many
times their price. Buying a used Thiel is not worrisome given the available
service and parts from Coherent Source Service.
Tom Theil’s crossover upgrades should push sonic performance
to the next tier. We’ll soon know. If that’s true, you can buy a nice used pair
and upgrade the passive parts to get something that approaches SOTA sound. As a bonus,
you have speakers that look really good in your listening room.
Thank You for citing your amp upgrade and matching Cardas power cord (PC). There is much information in these Audio forums on B.A.T. gear and tube rolling to achieve a personal "sound". I do know that Cardas Clear and Beyond PC mate well with tubed gear. Keep me posted as you massage the VK-55 into your room, system.
Just sold my pair of CS 3.7’s to a gentleman in Southern Cal who has a a pair of 90 grand tube amps and similar pre. He’s loving it . Shipping from San Fran with special care was 1500.00. So glad he’s -happy. $8800.00 plus shipping.
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