Thiel Owners

@thoft
"Bone dog my thiel 3.5 have the scanspeak 10f in them I think they sound great"

Do your 10f mids have the waveguide (shallow horn?) flange on top of the 10f's.   I thought I had read that Rob of Coherent Source had assembled mids complete with that flange for a premium price - but I have not been able to reach him.

The Madisound '13M Replacement" has a flat flange that brings the diameter to the original's I believe, but does not include the waveguide.

Does anyone know if/ how that waveguide - which appears to be epoxied or bonded to the original driver, can be removed?   It would be nice to bond it to the Madisound 13m replacement. 

Interesting, FWIW, as of today TMR now has two pairs of maple CS 2.4 speakers listed for sale (having just listed the first pair yesterday, see my previous post).  For this pair they are asking $1799 + $299 shipping, with condition listed as 7 out of 10.  serial#  3601, 3602

https://tmraudio.com/speakers/floorstanding-speakers/thiel-cs2-4-floorstanding-speakers-maple-black-...

I wasn’t able to free mine and gave up. They’re just in as flat. I didn’t know rob machined/made new wave guides.

My own take on using tubes with 3.5s (I’ve used a VPI 299D integrated with mine for about three or four years now), is that component quality is as important as lots of power.

There were only 100 299Ds ever made (it was a vanity project around the time of Harry Weisfeld’s retirement) so it’s a fair bet that I’m the only guy out there who has ever used one on 3.5s.

However, Steve Leung, who hand built the 299D and designed it in collaboration with Harry, used a lot of the same internals as Primaluna deploys, including the same transformers, resistors, capacitors, point to point wiring, triode/ultra linear switching etc, so a Primaluna amp would be the easier comparative audition.

The 3.5s are great at exposing any weakness in the system, of course, but even with four EL34s in the 299D, there’s more than enough power to control these speakers really effectively.

In fact I nowadays much prefer the 34s to the optional KT150s that I occasionally install for kicks and giggles. The 150s are, of course, about as powerful as audio tubes get, but the 34s are way more musical and I find there’s no shortage of clout when using them.

I have Adcom and B&K solid state amps waiting in the wings for the most part and neither of them bests the tubes. In fact it’s really not even close.

The point of writing this is to reinforce recent comments made about how well 3.5s work with tubes. I do believe, however, that a reasonably modern design with robust wide bandwidth output/toroidal transformers is probably critical.

tomthiel

Excellent gear! The Philips CD-80 is still coveted by Audiophiles.
Some older, vintage pieces hold up well in 2020 moving forward.
PS Audio has a beta-tester program. Perhaps you could contact Paul for the new PerfectWave SACD player? Did Jim and Paul have any business relationship?  I am looking forward in reading about your next high resolution spinner! Have fun!

Happy Listening!