Thiel Owners

@improvedsound Assuming all values match OEM and the connections are consistent with the schematic, that board should be singing. From your images, I see nothing out of place although I can’t see everything. Total resistance of the coax board should be, IIRC, 32 ohms. If all values and connections are good, that suggests the foil coil is the culprit. I also put foil (Erse) in that position, would have to dig into my notes for the gauge.

Could also be you just hear things differently than I do. But there are now at least 3-4 of us who modded at least the coax board on CS2.4 and reported good results. I suggest verifying all values, connections/layout, and total resistance. If those are good, put the OEM coil into that suspect position. 

@improvedsound

My L5 inductor (ie, the one on the coax board, paralleled with 28 uF cap and 2 ohm resistor) is Erse FoilQ, 16 gauge, 0.15 mH.

I have all Mills MRA12s, the 30 ohm position I used paralleled 60.2 ohms for improved cooling.

The biggest difference I see in your pics compared to my build is that I have full capacitance in single caps. I *greatly* benefitted from tagging along with @tomthiel as he explored his “renaissance” project. Not to mention his considerable coaching.

All main caps are Clarity CSA. Coax feeds (14 and 28 uF) are 630 V, subfeed (43 uF) is 250 V, and shunts (100 uF) are 100 V. Each of the feeds and subfeed are bypassed with Multicap RTX at just under 1% (eg, 0.1 uF on the 14 uF cap). The shunts are bypassed with the 1 uF yellow caps common in classic Thiels (Elpac?).

That said, Your use of paralleled CSAs (eg, 18+10) should be fine, certainly not worse than the original CS2.4 which used 27+1. Best wishes resolving the issue.

[edit: post number 11111. Look at what you did, @jafant !!]

@improvedsound

When I completed building the xover boards, I let it run for 24 hours with a dummy load for the components to settle then hook it up to the speaker drivers. At first, it sounded like a AM pocket radio, after a few hours play time, sound quality keep improving until about 100 hours then the SQ become stable and the sound open up with a holographic sound stage... YMMV!

beetlemania

Laughing...I give full Credit to you guys- The Panel. Excellent discussion on all things XO and the many virtues of modding. Keep DIY'ing.

Happy Listening!

Excellent point, @imhififan 

During my build, I stopped at several points to compare changes. I always allowed 100-200 hours before critical listening.