Thiel Owners

While I'm posting for the first time in years, I can vouch for Rob Gillum's excellent solo work.  I had a CS2.4 coax go silent on me a couple years ago, long after Thiel-proper was gone.  To assure consistency, Rob had me send him both my coax drivers, which he rebuilt from the ground up using the latest adhesives and various tweaks developed since their 2004 inception, and their later (relatively) mass-produced manufacture. 

The sound of my 'old' coaxes was so firmly embedded in my ears that once the rebuilt ones broke in, there was no question I was hearing a purer, faster, more delicate sound, with better left-right matching too.  Again, not night and day, but another notable step up to this long-term 2.4 listener.  And the hope that these drivers will last 'forever.'

Now the icing on the cake if for another high end audio company to buy the remaining assets and patents and continue developing the Coherent Source line of speakers.
Fingers crossed!

@sdecker Wow, that is *super* helpful information. Thanks! Would it be easier to remove the entire boards and replace the caps with the crossovers out of the cabinets? Your post got me thinking that a "real" modder would probably mount the crossovers in an external box (ala Avalon Ascent) to completely isolate it from cabinet vibrations. LOL - that's not me :)

(a 27uF direct replacement and a 10uF || 3uF = 13uF)

From Tom Thiel, Dave Garretson and the image I linked elsewhere in this thread, the CS2.4SE coax values are 28 and 14 uF. Are the 27 and 13 numbers for the original CS2.4 or did you decide to alter the values?

I’d post pictures if I could...

I'm hoping Rob Gillum will offer upgrade kits for DIYers as well as in-house upgrades. Ideally, this would include how-to pics or, even, video links on his website.

sdecker et al, it is important to keep the cap values consistent with the original design. Judging by your description, the 1uF bypass caps were left in place and the main caps replaced with SAs, thus keeping the total paralleled capacitance correct. Regarding outboard crossovers, tread lightly. The crossover network works in an environment of the woofer magnetic field and the close proximity between various crossover inductors as well as vibration. When finalizing a model, some values were sometimes slightly tweeked to adjust for that in-cabinet environment compared to the open-air development environment. Sharing our experiences will help in learning this subtle landscape without the resources of a full development lab.

I am hot-rodding my PowerPoint 1.2s for studio monitors and must outboard the crossovers due to insufficient interior cabinet volume for the larger upgrade parts. I expect performance improvements from the combination of outboard mounting, greater proximity isolation (increased footprint), lack of woofer EM field and vibrations, point to point wiring, six nines hookup and choke wire . . . in addition to the higher-performance caps. Note, my PowerPoints are late-date manufacture from China. Although care was taken to spec first-rate parts, I can't know if the Chinese manufacturer used parts as sophisticated as Thiel in-house manufacture did.  I am upgrading with all original-Thiel parts and techniques. I will journal my results by comparing an unmodified pair with the modified pair in the same system.