Unsound - good horses keep living and living. Your judicious explication reminds me of a general theme which our Goners might enjoy. Thiel presented a peculiar problem for many retailers, including Innovative Audio. Retailers make packages. Those packages follow guidelines or rules. In the day it went something like one third budget for source, a third for amplification and a third for speakers. Give or take a lot. Thiel comes along and the formula crumbles because Thiel rarely sounds very good with an equally priced amp, and someone with twice the amp budget is inclined to believe that a speaker at twice the price of Thiel is better for him/her. (Most often him - often her perspective permitted the Thiel, damn the formula.)
Jim had no patience for what he considered such illogical behavior. His formula was that lower prices make easier sales. He also fought to lower prices, especially at product introduction, with unrealistic and ill-founded ideas of how costs would fall as production rose. In fact the opposite was true, but that’s a different story. But the fallout was that just as the retailers settled into their Thiel pricing / presentation strategy, the prices would rise significantly to the consternation of many dealers. The joys of sales rival those of manufacturing. LOL.
Audio Consultants in Chicago broke the mold splendidly. They set up Thiels in multiple rooms spread over multiple stores so that customers could hear $2500 speakers driven by $10,000 amps and understand that the whole budget was well spent. AC was our top dealer year after year.
