Alright Guys-
I reached out and touched Mr. Rob Gillum recently. He is alive and well, more importantly, remaining focused on Thiel customer service in KY.
He is celebrating 30 years w/ Thiel Audio. He is not planning to retire (God willing) any time soon. In fact, he is working on becoming the owner/operator, solely, of Thiel Customer Service where our legacy products will continue to receive the care. Open for business!
For those interested, send him an email or pay a phone call congratulating
Mr. Gillum on his service with Thiel Audio.
Happy Listening!
|
In fact, he is working on becoming the owner/operator, solely, of Thiel
Customer Service where our legacy products will continue to receive the
care.
I figured that was the more realistic scenario, thanks for sharing jafant! Great news, indeed, Seems like a sketchy proposition for Mr. Gillium, though. Will he honor warranty service for products still under warranty? If yes, he can't possibly pay the bills, much less make a profit. Maybe there is enough post-warranty repair service to generate revenue? Also, what is the remaining stock of drivers? Can he fabricate more? That would be cool if he is in possession of the machinery needed for that! From there, he is only a cabinet maker away from . . . |
Right On! beetlemania
those queries would be better served and answered by Mr. Gillum directly.
Like you, I am curious to learn more about his stock and overall speaker repair, rebuilding, refurbishing capabilities. I am relieved that he is attempting to run a separate entity from Thiel Nashville.
Happy Listening!
|
Alternate timeline fantasy . . . What if Kathy Gornik had hired a tweaking engineer ca. 2010. Keep the drivers and cabinets pretty much the same but tweak the crossovers, wiring, and binding posts to the nth degree. Here's @lrsky
in another thread Back
in the day, I used to ask Jim Thiel why he didn't
use better caps and air core inductors, resisters, etc, in his crossovers. He
would coyly say, 'Because they measure as they do with the components I'm
using.'
That was all well and good--but then the next day, I'd be talking to Bill
Conrad of cj, and he'd be waxing poetically about the caps they were having
made to their specs and how they spent hours deciding which cap goes where and
so on. I was confused and frustrated with Jim, one of my icons.
Many years later, I realized that the 'pragmatic' business side of Jim was
simply winning the battle for saving the world from bad audio, and keeping THIEL Audio in business. Every, we'll call it 'additional' penny(s) a manufacturer spends on internal
parts, is a penny that doesn't come back as profits. So, if a $.58 piece of
stuff works, why spend $4.35?
It wasn't until the twilight of Jim's life that he publically changed that
position by making the CS2.4SE. As you may know,
it offered upgraded parts in the crossovers. When interviewed, Jim said, 'Well, there are some things that can't be
measured, but exist in audio.' I'm paraphrasing, but that's the intent of the
comments.
I'll venture to guess that a tricked-out CS2.4 would retail for $10-15K but compete sonically with other designs up to $40K. A tricked-out CS3.7 might retail in low $20Ks but be considered as among the best speakers available. But back to reality . . . best wishes to Rob Gillium!
|
I'm very glad that Jim Thiel took the path he did in terms of value for money. I always appreciated the fact that Thiel never went into that ridiculous-price territory we see in many other manufacturers. A top of the line Thiel competes very well with much more expensive speakers from other companies.
(As for Jim's "change of heart" about measurements, I'm not so quick to interpret it that way. The signature strikes me as perhaps a concession by Thiel that audiophiles really go for boutique parts upgrades, capacitors and the like, so this is a concession to that. Similar to how some manufacturers continued to include bi-amping posts on their speakers because they knew audiophiles wanted them, even if the manufacturer doesn't share the same belief).
|
