Thiel Owners

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.

Judging from the Stereophile review and measurements (never heard on for myself), the New Thiel TT1 seems like a competent design. But why buy one? If I want a competent (but still sourced from the Far East) speaker using "conventional" engineering I would just go with something like a Revel (better yet, the Canadian made Bryston). It is not surprising to me that the New Thiels were duds at the dealers.

On an alternate timeline, New Thiel continues to make CS1.7, 2.7 and 3.7, perhaps increasing the parts quality in the XOs much like Tom Thiel is proposing for the legacy Thiels. But even this would eventually need an engineer to keep advancing the product line . . . while staying true to Jim Thiel’s basic design principles.

That said, we Thiel owners are fortunate to have Rob Gillum available with service and parts, as well as a potential upgrade path via Tom Thiel’s mods.