Thiel Owners

I drove an equivalent distance to pick up my first pair of 3.5’s.

I recall reading on audioasylum that Charles Hansen thought the 3.5s were Thiel's best sounding speaker with the 3.7s a close second. But maybe I'm hallucinating as I can't find that post now.

To check for the leak, you can gently push in on the woofer and Passive diaphragms at the same time.

I'm very reluctant to try this. Supposedly, dimpled drivers have no measurable or audible effects but . . .

Maybe you can use something with a bigger surface area than fingers yet still softish?

ronkent

To check for the leak, you can gently push in on the woofer and Passive diaphragms at the same time.

beetlemani

I'm very reluctant to try this. Supposedly, dimpled drivers have no measurable or audible effects but . ..

To check for the leak, you press on the diaphragm, not the dustcap.

If I got this correct I think what I appreciated most from Tom Thiel was the speakers Jim made needed to make music sound real and not at the expense of accuracy. Accuracy certainly is in the mix because these speakers sound about as real as a speaker can reasonably get. Because of that I think they walk a fine line and when people get an unfavorable impression of them i think they have not be set up well.  I have never found them to be bright, lean, fat, tubby, warm, cold. They are about as spot on in the middle for me as a speaker can get. Makes them easy for me to season to taste. Better than most speakers I have had or heard. I think about it their tall order of mimicking a point source, phase and time coherence, a real live music presentation, well balanced tonally they kind of combine the best aspects of different types of speakers to a point it is not hard to get excited listening to music on them. Actually it is harder to control your excitement about these speakers. 
Thanks Tom for the suggestion for upgrading the tweeter/mid range caps. I am going to do that.

Accuracy certainly is in the mix because these speakers sound about as real as a speaker can reasonably get. Because of that I think they walk a fine line and when people get an unfavorable impression of them i think they have not be set up well. I have never found them to be bright, lean, fat, tubby, warm, cold. They are about as spot on in the middle for me as a speaker can get.

I completely agree. None of the Thiels I've heard (CS7.2, 3.7, 2.4, 1.6) sounded overly bright or cool to my ears (altho' the CS1.6 could be strident at high SPLs with certain female vocalists, I think this is related to the distortion at 1 KHz seen in soundstage's measurements).

Shane Buettner's review of the CS2.4 opined that the midrange had a "slightly-on-the-cool-side-of-neutral sound" compared his reference Vandersteens. But I've also heard the Vandersteen 7 (which is a SOTA-level speaker, IMO), 3A Sig, Treo, Quattro, and I lived with the 2Ce Sig II for 10 years. I have no idea what he meant. To my ears, the Thiel CS2.4SE sounds very neutral, resolved, open, and transparent through the midband. In fact, it sounds superbly balanced at all frequencies. When I listen to performers that I've seen live, I have no trouble whatsoever imagining that they are in front of me.

My conclusion is that people complaining about poor SQ from Thiels have only heard them poorly set-up or with poor-performing amps and/or sources.