Arvin - about the missing CS4. By the late 80s, we had gotten well established in Japan, which is (or at least was) extremely difficult as well as being a world market-maker. They wanted a state of the art speaker from Thiel, and orientals don't have "NO" in their vocabulary. Seriously. Those days were filled with newly-minted companies like Hales, Wilson, etc. offering $20K+ speakers. The late 80s were the good old days. Jim, however, was an incremental knowledge-based designer and had an aversion to jumping leagues, even though it would have injected significant and much needed cash. So, he designed his next greatest speaker beyond the 3.5. Of course the model naturally begged for the CS4 title. Well, it turns out that the entire orient considers 4 to be the number of death. Of course, our sophisticated distributor and dealers were above such superstitions, but cautioned that we must be concerned about all those other guys who may not want the sign of death in their homes.
The work-around was that the 3-series was a 3-way. The new speaker was a 5-way and therefore could leap-frog the pesky 4 problem and become the CS5, which it did. Now, the next product under development was the Thiel developed and manufactured coax product. I thought it should be a 4-way: coax to 6.5" to 10 or 12" plus passive, etc. However the 4 slot had been leapfrogged and the orient hadn't abandoned their 4 problem, so the 3-way coax x 12" became the CS6. Hmmm . . . lesser than the CS5. You guys will notice that CS6 driver complement is similar to where the 3.7 landed. Luckily for me, I had left the company during the development of what became the CS6, so I didn't have to lose sleep over these pesky matters.
In my opinion, had Thiel's new 20112 owners chosen to stay on the Real Thiel Way, a CS4 could have been a stellar performer and bridge the way to a CS5.2 as described earlier with SS bass. The CS6's primary limit is the 12" handing off to the 4" coax. Put a 6.5" in between and some serious seamlessness wow could happen. Of course you guys know this configuration as the CS7 series . . . It all got kinda confused by that skipped 4. In my imaginary life, I would have persuaded the new Thiel owners to develop the CS4 as a 4-way plus perhaps an exotic bass system between the passive radiator of the 2.7 and 3.7 and the powered inboard subwoofers of the CS5.2 (remember that from a previous post?). That imaginary CS4 bass got some passing fantasy time, but never made it to development. Imagine a true folded horn nestled between the floor joists, fed by a fitted opening on the cabinet bottom through the floor, and exiting via a floor grille in front of the cabinet . . . Yes, it requires build-in. Real life gets in the way.
Next time we'll walk down memory lane where no one has ever snooped and find the mighty Thiel folded horn heard a mile away.
