Thiel Owners
hi Spacebird, I have owned five generations of Thiel speakers since 1985. 2.0 (1985), 2.2 (1989), 2.4 (2007), 2.7 (2014), and now the 3.7’s (2019) I would second Tom’s suggestion, but if you can swing it, go for the 2.4’s. A truly wonderful speaker and a big jump in sound quality of the two that proceeded it in my system. |
spacebird - the number before the decimal point is the model. Higher is bigger. The number behind the decimal point is the iteration. Higher is more recent. More recent products incorporate all the learned advancements (that can be afforded). Next up the ladder for you, if you have a larger room or want bigger bass or louder playback might be a CS2.2, 2.3,2.4. The 2.4 is a stellar sweet-spot. I'm working on a product summery / timeline to help make the product journey clearer. Welcome. |
Hi all, This has likely been addressed already, but the 276 pages of this thread are a bit daunting. My question is, what is the upgrade path for Thiel speakers? After getting my hands on the CS 1.2’s, I’m hooked and would like to know which pair I should have my eyes on next. Absolutely loving the 1.2’s, but the beast must be fed. |
hi VR68, that is so interesting. I am going to study that more intently. and TomThiel, thank you so much. I am not that adept at doing that kind of project but will tell my friend Bob about it. Maybe the truth is that he and I both just like a bit of "tone control" here and a slightly muted treble? I just find the sound a bit easier to listen to, especially at higher volumes. |
hi Tom, thank you so much for your response to my post about the mods i did to the coax of the 3.7's. To clarify it was Rob G who suggested this tweak if we found the top end to be a bit bright and he sent me four 3 ohm resistors to try along with some silver solder. My friend Bob is much more proficient and comfortable working with a soldering gun and tried different iterations on his 3.7's. After using the ones Rob had sent he also tried some from Parts Express (see above) in the same value. Thought the padding was too much and then tried using them in parallel (becoming 1.5 ohm) which he really liked. Same here. We both have extremely good gear with me using a Coda 16 amp, a BAT VK-80 preamp, and a digital front end by PS Audio., What i heard is along the lines of what you described. If I could put it in layman's language (i am not very technical), if i had tone controls in my system, it would be as if i turned the treble down one click and the bass up one click. It really made the system more enjoyable than it already was and it was great. The VP of BAT (Steve) visited my home last fall (before the mod) and was incredibly impressed with the sound i was getting out of a speaker from 2008. So impressed that he actually may get a pair of the 3.7's someday. Others may not like the way the resistors changed the sound but for myself and my friend Bob, it was a move in the right direction. Thanks for all you do Tom. It is greatly appreciated.
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ronkent - Regarding your mod. Be aware that the 3.7 mod that Rob suggested applies to only some speakers, not all. There was a QC problem with FST that required Thiel to test and characterize all incoming 3.7 coaxes and apply padding resistors as needed to bring the amplitude to standard. There were also harmonic distortion problems, which were failed and rebuilt in-house. When reworking drivers, CSS would add the resistors directly to the input terminals, or as in this case specify where to put them in the crossover. Later, the coaxes were built to proper spec and noted with black trim rings. The 3.7 has an octave-to-octave balance within ± 0.5dB. So, you don’t want to pad it down unless it is out of spec, which is possible. Note also that the mod as described here (padding both mid and tweeter) would effectively raise the woofer level a couple of dB. Moving the speaker closer to a boundary wall should accomplish the same thing. Also, any perceived brightness could be caused by harmonic distortion rather than simple excess amplitude. In that case padding down would reduce the gross amount of distorted output, but not cure the cause. Roxy54 - for the record, with the 1987 CS3.5 we converted from 60/40 solder to silver solder for all our speakers. Our choice was the aerospace standard Alpha SAC-305 which is 96.5% tin, 3% silver, and 0.5% copper. It is not only permanent, but is technically superior. The improvements are audible. It requires higher melting temperature, but achievable with a 140 watt soldering gun. |
Greetings Thiel fans, I wanted to update you on a modification that i made (with the great help of my friend Bob M. who did most of the leg work on this). This was inspired by a suggestion that Rob Gillum had made to us in putting some three ohm resistors in front of the mid and tweeter in the 3.7’s. Rather than add one three ohm resistor we put two parallel going to both mid and tweeter. This would reduce the nominal impedance by 1.5 since they were in parallel. The result was a easier to listen to top end with a bit more naturalness to it. Rob gave us the idea and Bob did some digging and came up with the idea of running them in parallel rather than Use a 1.5 resistor. of course YMMV. this is what we added and it took 8 total. Dayton Audio DPR10-3.0 3 Ohm 10 Watt Precision 1% Audio Grade Resistor. Parts Express. I would not do this unless i was pretty proficient with a soldering gun. i would use solid silver and it takes two to make it doable, one to hold the driver and one to solder. when using the resistors in parallel, be sure to twist them together.
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I thought this might be of some interest to followers of this thread, though this paper is nearly 10 years old, it just recently came to my attention: for those that want to take a deeper dive into the subject: https://www.keele-omholt-technologies.com/papers.php more discussion:
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foamcutter Welcome! Good to see you here. Yes, I have seen those very speakers per your query. Those white woofers are quite rare. If you like the presentation and sound of CS 1.5, the CS 1.6 is a measure better. The CS 1.7 is significantly better.
What gear and cabling is in your System? Happy Listening! |
unsound - thanks for this input. It makes sense, including the context of return to a foundational idea before the company's launch - but with a life time of experience. Jim built every design on all the accumulated knowledge gained along the way. That product might have been truly awesome. I routinely hear that the CS5 was Thiel's only cost-no-object offering. It was a niche-stretch at the time, but not cost-no-object. In fact Jim and Kathy chopped thousands of dollars at retail off the sell price due primarily to insufficient confidence of a price jump from under $2500 for the top of our line CS3.5 to what wanted to be a $15K CS5. They kept it under $10K by the loss of some product content plus damagingly thin margins, especially for a factory stretching its technical capacity. Jim emphatically stated that he would never design a speaker better than the CS5. Anyhow, I'm pleased that he broke through that ceiling. And wish the world had it. Thanks again. Tom
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@tomthiel , I do this with some apprehension, but as you say "Since this is all water long under the bridge,..." When Thiel Audio was still in business, but suspicions of Jim’s health concerns were begining to be rumoured, a reliable source (who out of respect will remain anonymous) at Thiel swore me to secrecy to share that Jim was indeed considering an all-out Thiel with a price point much beyond Thiel’s previous offerings that would feature an omni-directional design. |
Tom, I think I’ve mentioned it before, especially since you were originally doing the cabinets for Thiel speakers: the CS6 Speakers that I had in my home for a little while back around 2001 or 2002, Where in I think the Amberwood finish. They remain one of the most beautiful and refined looking speaker finishes I’ve seen. The craftsmanship and fit and finish really put a shame Most other loud speakers of the time. IMO.
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Prof - I know very little about this topic, only what was 'leaked' by an insider and not denied by another. But, as I said, the approach harkens back to the very beginning, before we settled on dynamic drivers in an enclosure; and it attends to our shared first-principles of point-source, freely radiating energy without close range diffractive interference. And as I recall (from about 1974) our reasons for rejection were based less on technical appeal than on costs to market such a radical approach . . . Sidebar: At our first 1977 CES, we twenty-somethings showed our model 01 and 02 and a static 03 prototype, and offered an unheard-of 10 year warranty - all to much interest. I remember being teased by an industry somebody that being from Kentucky, weren't we supposed to be barefoot and pregnant and sipping moonshine . . . ? Cognitive dissonance. Imagine if we had showed up with seriously radical products beyond our active equalizer. Since this is all water long under the bridge, I invite anyone to comment that might know more than I about this mythical omnidirectional project. |
Thiel Non-Model History – products that never were - Prof – thank you for this question. Indeed we’ve covered a lot of Thiel history here over the years, but little about developments and decisions behind the curtain. This story would fill a memoir, which sadly, has not written itself. So, I’ll shine some light, while limiting the scope and depth for manageability. There’s always more. Context - Perhaps somewhat oddly, I’ll start at the end. I was informed by an insider that at the end Jim was working on an omnidirectional full-range driver. Such an omnidirectional driver would fit nicely into our global orientation of the speaker as mirror-image of the microphone and belief which we shared, that the omnidirectional mic captures sound most similarly to the ear, and far more faithfully than any directional counterpart. Although directionality in mics and speakers is a sad necessity in stage and professional arenas, the requirements can be more well managed in dedicated playback situations with less sonic degradation and higher retention of sonic information via room treatment and tuning while retaining inherently superior omnidirectionality. I can’t speak directly to that late idea-in-development. But I can recount early non-products based on first-hand knowledge of my brother and my twenty year lived history with Thiel Audio. What follows is a summary sketch of some of the experimental non-products during the early years of Thiel Audio. Let’s venture back to 1974 at my Georgewown Road homestead. As a rung on our ladder to self-sufficiency, my Conceptions Design Studio had taken on Walter Kling as co-designer-craftsman, and secured early success in the high artisan-crafts marketplace. Our informal community sought a venture that would utilize and engage all the willing members beyond Walter and myself, in an enterprise with enough breadth, depth and horizons to support us for our forseeable future. This was the 1970s when autonomy and self-employment were hallmarks of the emergent counter-culture. We decided to fund Jim for a year to investigate whether his electronics knowledge could be responsibly applied to this task of right livelihood for a group of friends seeking meaningful co-employment. Sidebar: At this time there were no computers outside large institutions, no internet, and only nascent knowledge of how loudspeakers really worked. The Thiele/Small Parameters were barely a decade old and not widely in use. Jim was inclined toward electronics with a first-interest in circuit innovation. More sophisticated amplification is where we first explored. Loudspeakers were seen as necessary tools to prove and improve amplifier advancements. Our survey of available loudspeakers revealed competing limitations and trade-offs, and no particular solution for accurate, revealing laboratory monitors. Non-Product History - In that first exploratory year we discussed, explored and studied what was needed for a really accurate and transparent research transducer. What floated to the top was a spherical globe around 1.5 feet diameter, fully covered with small (1/2” diameter) full-range dynamic drivers. More extended bass response could be achieved via greater sphere size and driver count, and/or by crossing over to a powered sub-woofer or folded horn. We built both a powered subwoofer as well as a 6’x 6’ folded horn to Jim’s specifications. The long story can be summarized to our realization that we were in over our heads with far more questions and considerations than our resources and scope would accommodate. Lets count the most significant trials to date: Non-product 1: Spherical multi-driver hung from a wire Non-product 2: Powered subwoofer Non-product 3: Folded horn subwoofer All were built, tested, evaluated and set aside as exhibits for the Future Non-Museum. Next stage was a distillation of contending technologies. It was clear that powering individual drivers with individual amps held extreme promise. Each amp could be tailored to the particular demands of each driver, and low-level, active crossover circuitry before the amp could produce better results at lower overall costs. The prototype that emerged was a tri-amplified three way, small format speaker with active crossovers including bass boost. Sidebar: Note that Meridian had not yet come to market and to our knowledge there were no such products in the world. We determined that despite our collective enthusiasm for the concept, we as a self-funded fledgling enterprise could not support market penetration of such a product. To reduce further temptation, we burned the prototype on the pasture pyre. Non-product 4: Self-powered speaker Further distillation led us to what became the model 01, a 10”x 1.5” actively equalized, high sensitivity, full range speaker covering 25Hz to 18kHz. That product was fully developed along with its manufacturing engineering and feasibility studies. We began selling that product to local markets in 1975 with encouraging results. By this time, our founding team included Jim, myself, my wife Kathy, Walter Kling and Fred Collopy with talents in business design-development, and emerging personal computing. I considered that team of 5 as essential for critical skills to take the plunge of full-time commitment to this business undertaking. By request from users, Jim next developed the conventional 6.5”x 1” ported bookshelf model 02 to higher popularity than the model 01. Our third market product was to be the model 03 a floor-standing 10” 3-way. Through its development we discovered that time-phase coherence was an important missing ingredient normally traded-off as not important enough for its trouble. We sidelined the conventional model 03. Non-product 5: Conventional tower 3-way floorstanding model 03 We struggled for the next year and a half before deciding to accept the impossible challenge of producing a coherent speaker. The actualized model 03 with its sloped baffle time-aligning all the drivers, and first-order slopes maintaining phase alignment and impulse integrity was introduced in late 1978. It utilized the active bass equalization of the model 01 which persisted through the 03 conventional, 03 coherent, 03a, CS3 and CS3.5 (the fifth generation model 3, including the seminal non-coherent original version.) The founding team survived only a few years, and the loss of Walter and Fred were nearly catastrophic to the business. I consider that upheaval as a fundamental loss. Non-product 6: The fully functioning involvement of all 5 founders As we gathered experience we learned to evaluate and accept/reject potential products in the hypothetical phase with minimal commitment and expense. That’s the highlights; let’s stop here for today.
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I’m sure you have already mentioned this somewhere in this ginormous thread. But could you give some insights As to “the Thiel products that never came to be?” I’m thinking about what Jim might have had in his plans before he passed away. Or perhaps some different ideas Jim thought about or investigated for speaker designs that never saw the light of day.
cheers
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@unsound Thanks for the input, glad to know the 1.2's aren't quite so demanding. @jafant My system is a frankenmonster cobbled together from shitty components that have been gifted to me. However, it plays music and I reallllllly like music. Been on a Japanese jazz fusion kick lately, listening to a lot of Casiopea and Masayoshi Takanaka (not really jazz). Jam bands, jazz, funk, and early 2000's rap are my typical listening habits. Mendelssohn or Bach when I'm feeling snooty and/or studying |
@spacebird42 , The CS 1.2’s with their moderate sensitivity and perhaps more importantly above 4 Ohm impedance they are amongst the easier Thiels to power. They can not go very low in bass , play very loud l, aren’t meant for large rooms. So used as intended they aren’t that power hungry. Due to their lack of low bass they can sound a bit tipped up. Avoid amplification that’s on the bright side, has mid-range suck out or is loose in bass. If you can find an old ss conrad-Johnson MF-80 that has been recently re-capped; I think you will be very happy. BTW, used alpha-core MI 2 speaker cables are a relatively inexpensive choice that will work beautifully in such a system.
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Hi all, I've just picked up a pair of Thiel CS 1.2's. Totally new to Thiel, but have stumbled across this forum after some digging. I've seen discussed here the power-hungry nature of the speakers. My question is, is there a budget friendly way to drive them adequately? I'm in grad school and discretionary spending is gonna be low for the next few years. Any advice would be appreciated |
@tomthiel - Very exciting news! Have a pair of CS3’s in need of tweeters and midranges. Look forward to applying your replacements and other improvements you have been working on! Like many others on this forum big fan of Thiel’s and own many pairs and want more :). Thank you for sharing all of your knowledge to us all here! |
Massimo - The early 3.5 tweeter feed used a 6.5uF feed cap. It was tweaked in 1987 to 8uF, which is what you want. Only buy now if you need it. I will have a much better replacement soon. The 3.5 mid and tweeter are front-burner projects. We are incorporating late-stage design elements into the 3.6 midrange platform - dual cone, advanced motor, to fit the CS3, 3.5 and 3.6. The 3.5 tweeter is obsolete and our replacement will also incorporate late-stage advancements to fit the CS2, 2.2, 3, 3.5, 3.6 and 5. Completion of midranges and tweeters is necessary to re-work the crossovers between them. For now, get your advice from Coherent Source Service. The ScanSpeak 10F8424 is not robust enough; it will burn out. SS’s recommendation for drop-in is 12W/8524G00. CSS may have that driver or another of their choice. Tom
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