Thiel Owners

Ron and all. I placed a query to Rob via phone message this morning. I will post what I learn. This information is indeed germane to all on this board.

I blew the midrange on my 3.7s the first few months I had them.  I was listening to Beethoven The Revolutionary loud.  I took the driver out myself and it didn't look scorched or anything to me.  That was back in 2012 and they've been fine since then.  They were an early pair I believe.  The serial numbers on the boxes are 41 and 42 I think.  I bought them used from Audio Consultants so it's possible they weren't the original boxes that came with the speakers.

Folks, for those who blew drivers, like the 2.7/3.7  coax, what were the sonic symptoms?  Did the sound just die?  Or did a crackle develop in the sound....something like that?

(The only driver I've ever seen damaged in my home is, apparently, one of my Hales T1 monitors which plays the R channel in my home theater.I think it was hit with some too-heavy bass at one point and these days, although it sounds fine with most material, a super low/heavy bass signal will make it pop and crackle).

When my 3.7 mid blew it made a very noticeable scraping sound.  

pops, I love both the ATCs and the Thiels.  Both are great products intended to be as accurate as possible but with somewhat different ways of going about it.  ATCs are usually active and the company is mainly known for pro audio.  ATC has been building its own drivers for a long time and their philosophy is that if you build drivers well enough you don't need a complex crossover.  I think Thiel is not that far from that.  Thiel produced passive speakers for home audio so they have different strengths.  Thiel had complex crossovers for a long time to fix drivers that weren't as good as they could have been.  When Thiel came out with their own drivers the complexity of the crossover dropped significantly per Tom Thiel in this thread.  

The founders/designers of both companies were piano players.  They're both hard science guys.  I get the impression that Billy Woodman isn't quite the obsessive perfectionist that Jim Thiel apparently was. Both companies use small diameter midranges which I've found that I prefer. Not sure why, lighter weight leads to faster response or maybe better dispersion.