Thiel Owners

Tom,

It’s helpful to read what you wrote about my turntable base. It represents the ideas I vaguely grasped while putting together the base, so it’s nice to see it gain some confirmation from a pro.

I’ve always been curious how many of the post-Jim speakers (e.g. Mark Mason designs) Thiel ended up selling. (And if they had any stock left).
I think they were designed to order.

It's interesting no owner of those speakers have found their way to this thread. Though I'd have to guess they wouldn't be the typical Thiel fans to begin with.

prof - When Rob bought the Thiel service department earlier this year, he saw the New Thiel inventory and they said that 3 pair had been sold. Perhaps a few more since then.

New Thiel missed the mark, failed to identify the narrow Thiel niche, and that extant conventional speakers covered the other bases completely. Three was not a typo, it may be incorrect, but it is in the ballpark. Lots of stock remains. The 3rd Avenue towers got 5 stars from a Stereophile reviewer. New Thiel had design and engineering talent and resources to do the job well. Their crossovers are assymetric/variable pitch as required. They may stand up well against other non-coherent offerings on the market.

That stock will be liquidated by the court at probable pennies on the dollar.

Wow, only 3!

And to think how many more Thiel may have sold if it where an authentic Thiel design - say if they had sent Stereophile the 2.7 instead. (Not saying, at that point in time in the company’s fortunes that the 2.7 would have sold bucket-loads, but I’d think more than 3!).

In my opinion, there was room for Classic Thiel to improve and grow dramatically within the parameters of the original design thesis. Imagine coherent offerings designed around the last-generation coincident drivers with additional coincident lower midrange, active throughout or an amplified woofer section - higher impedances through improved drivers requiring less compensation - carbon diaphragms with integral voice coils, and so forth and so on. Expand the niche to include high-end recordists and ultra performance luxury goods for the elite and perhaps . . . who knows what. All could be done on the shoulders of Jim's work and in harmony with tens of thousands of extant customer base.