Thiel Owners

I was also surprised at the amount of content from China on the CS3.7. I thought they built the COAX in house but Rob mentioned something about getting shipment of drivers and why they have the black coated new ones. I did not ask more questions on that but that article makes it clear. As does the fact that it is laminate with a veneer.

I am also looking at an R2R DAC for the Thiel system and I have 2 Chinese made DACs at the top of the list. So I have no issue with audio gear from China. I want to get my bedroom headphone system rebuilt so I can use my Benchmark DAC3B or the second DAC for that.

The previous CS3.7 repairs were not done by a repair person. It was done by the previous (or first) owner. The dealer seems to have also opened up the COAX driver screws to have a look inside and had over torqued the screws to break the threads (just fixed by me).

At the moment I have the COAX drivers off and the woofers and other parts covered nicely for sanding, staining, or if I get brave, painting. As I mentioned before it is so much easier to carry the speaker with the COAX removed.

The cherry color I have is nice but I always wanted something a little more distinctive for the office. When I was considering the Paradigm Persona 3F I looked at the customer color configurator and came up with a few color combos that I liked. I use the grill at all times (my 4 year old has never seen the drivers).

https://design.paradigm.com/en/persona/customize
Carbon Black Gloss (saw this in person)
Burnt Orange (I loved the KEF Blade in orange)

My new neighbor has a beautiful matte brown colored Mercedes. I was think of painting the cherry to a matte black to perfectly match the top aluminum shell which has been recently spray painted by me. I think it may look good with the black grill on. Just thinking out loud at the moment.

@yyzsantabarbara,FWIW, I typically don’t care for black finished speakers, but for the very reasons you’ve suggested, I think the black finish could help disguise the harlequin effect the often 3.7’s present to my eyes.

@yyzsantabarbara  I'm also going to get a R2R DAC and the one on my shortlist for my Thiel rig is the Aqua Formula xHD v2.Check out Totaldac they make very analogue sounding R2R Dacs too.

@thieliste I know about those 2 DACs. I am looking at a bit lower cost, so the Halo Spring Level 3 and the Denafrips Terminator +.  If I were to spend over $10K (I won't for a DAC) I think it would be the non-R2R Mola Mola Tambaqui. I have spent $1580 on a new Benchmark DAC3B and I have no complaints other than needing a second DAC in the future.

I was also waiting on the new Luxman chip based DAC that is in their uber SACD player. The specs are amazing and the sound is supposed to be very analog. My main thing nowadays with electronics is that they have to be close to as quiet as my Benchmark HPA4 preamp. For me that makes all the difference in the world because I can hear the silence.

@unsound  That harlequin effect is beyond my brain power. I looked it up online but could not find anything about it. In University, I took a class on some subject that discussed  the following book,

https://www.amazon.com/Visual-Display-Quantitative-Information/dp/0961392142/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&...

There were some very interesting visualization issues described in that book. I still have that book and tried to look up the harlequin effect, no luck.

Regarding driver wiring: there is a simple trick if you have a multimeter. Get access to the driver terminals, feed a signal to the speaker. Measure the AC voltages at the terminals. The woofer should be the highest, midrange much less and tweeter less than that. If a tweeter shows higher voltage than the mid, it is mis-wired from the crossover. Get Rob’s help to straighten it out.

Regarding cabinet construction. Thiel speaker walls have always been multi-laminates. Solid woods are less than desirable due to variable, under-damped and unpredictable resonance modes. The outer layer is a face veneer, matched by an interior backing veneer, each about 0.020" thick (5 pieces of paper). The 3.7 and 2.7 share their substrate panel which is an engineered sandwich of birch and other veneers glued into the curved shape under heat and pressure. In a historical context, that sandwich was envisioned from the beginning; it just took time to develop into a real product.

In the 03 development in 1978, we landed on Baltic Birch plywood as the substrate. (In fact we used FinPly, a higher quality alternative.) That BB/FP is twice as stiff as Particle Board and 3x as stiff as MDF. But it is under-damped and unpredictable in its resonance modes. Over the years, I messed with making our own build-ups, including bending the panels, which solves most of the inherent panel movement. But, for a small company making moderately priced products, those technologies were beyond our reach. The CS2, 3 and 3.5 used 1-1/8" industrial particle board plus face and back veneers for an extremely rigid and well damped panel. When we developed CNC capacity in the late 80s, we converted to MDF because we could pack engineered shelf braces into the construction. Check out the cutaway in the Stereophile review of the CS2.2, which was our first product designed for CNC manufacture. Nonetheless those well-braced MDF cabinets exhibit some resonances, and quieter is better. For the 3.7, Thiel found a subcontractor in Atlanta to make the unfaced custom curved panels. Thiel added the face/back veneers in-house with a custom curved mold press. That same panel is trimmed for the 2.7. The precision machining, including landings for the internal braces, were done on Thiel’s custom CNC.

Regarding drivers - Thiel designed its own drivers beginning in the early 80s for the CS3 introduced in 1983, as co-developments with Vifa of Denmark. Our deal was that Jim would design what Vifa could manufacture and offer to the larger market to amortize their development and tooling costs. That was unique in the industry and many Thiel design innovations worked their way into generic Scandinavian offerings. When our requirements eclipsed those of the broader market, we had to create our own driver-making capability, not because we wanted to, but because that was the only way we could get what Jim wanted. The CS5 (1989) drivers were (modified) off the shelf, except for our exclusive UltraTweeter. The following CS2.2 and CS3.6 were completely Thiel-designed x Vifa-made for us exclusively. All further products’ drivers were built in-house. By the time the 3.7 was designed in the mid 00s, Jim’s illness had progressed, and ways were developed for outsourcing most critical parts. Thiel, along with Vifa, ScanSpeak and others, co-developed FST as a high-quality Chinese driver source. Things change, and FST became the only feasible way to make those custom flat diaphragms. Many of the high-end Scandinavian drivers are coming from FST and other Chinese suppliers. Most of Thiel’s products since the mid 90s have early drivers built in-house and later drivers sourced from FST. In most cases they are equivalent, but in some cases, like the PowerDriver in the PowerPoint, etc. the tweeter module can no longer be replaced separately. Thiel could pull off that stunt in-house, but FST insisted it couldn’t be done. And you can’t make a supplier do what can’t be done.