Thiel Owners

Jafant, the previous owner did not mention any modding. It looks like one resistors leads is touching the larger coil in the high mid crossover in speaker 294, I feel like I should be able to notice it, music sounds very even between both speakers, I am wondering if I should do some frequency sweeps with them and record how the are performing. I would like to hear another set of 2.4s so I could compare them. Part of me feels like selling them; I don’t how much would someone pay for them knowing they are modded. They do sound very nice compared to my cs1.6, and have already won me over with the full sound and extra bass. I am wondering if some of the sweetness and extension I noticed in the 1.6 was due these 2.4 being modded or the perhaps it just how the different drivers sound. I was already planning to do something like the SE upgrades so part of me wants to just build new crossovers, I am a novice at soldering so these will be a challenge, not sure if the coils can be pulled off since they look glued or if many of the other parts are in good enough shape to reuse, it seems like it could get pricey

halifax - I understand your unease about the visually sloppy work. However, the boards look totally right to me. Those are classic Thiel brands and layout. Later 2.4s went to China on PC boards, and some had poorly made coils. I like the sound of the Thiel boards better than FSC/Chinese.

Acousta-coil was Thiel’s long-term supplier. In fact I introduced aerospace (6-9s) wire to them for the 03 in 1978 and Acousta-Coil and StraightWire built their businesses around us and that wire. The purity is as good as it gets, although over the years the top wire declined to 4-9s); the winding aspect ratio is correct as is the oven-baked binding varnish.

Those yellow Elpac caps were developed in 1988 for the CS5 and remained in all Thiel products until that original German film was gone.We bought and used over 100,000 of those tin foil and styrene film 1uF caps. Aeon is Solen’s Asian manufactured line. Thiel kept French Solens’ in its upper end and used the Aeon clones in the lower models. Those resistors are non-inductives that Jim developed around 1983 for the CS3. They are the performance weak link (IMO), and can be replaced if you wish with equal value Mills MRA-12s. We can talk about doubling some of them.

I would speculate that one of the boards was built by a less experienced technician, but both should perform equally well. Those early hard-wired boards with classic components are higher performing than later PCBs with various asian components.

halifax

In light of Tom's professional opinion, I would keep these loudspeakers. It is rare to find such low S/N.  Very cool to learn that this is an original design by Jim.

Happy Listening!

My response crossed yours in space. These speakers were not modded. A resistor lead touching a coil does not make electrical contact since the coil wire is insulated with varnish. I suggest you do some manual housekeeping so that nothing touches anything else and get to know your new speakers. We have considerable experience in upgrading 2.4s which we can apply either with these boards or with new boards. See if you can find beetlemania's report(s) earlier in this thread. He or jafant might guide you to the pages - this is a very long thread . . .

tomthiel

Thank You for providing your expert opinion and corresponding History lesson. 

Good to learn that halifax owns the original design per Jim. Regarding your CS 2.4 speakers- what are the Serial Numbers (s/N)?

Happy Listening!