"There's a thousand ways to lose a horse-race". New Thiel knew lots of them. Yesterday I spoke with Bob Brown, an industry veteran who was brought in as COO at the beginning to help navigate the new waters. He remains frustrated and somewhat angry today. His tenure was 2013.
Regarding class D amps: In the mid 80s Jim began working with a very talented design engineer at Vifa who made all our custom-designed-from-the-ground-up drivers at the time. They co-developed the 1000 watt amp for Thiel's first subwoofer. It was class D before B&Os and other patents. At that time switching distortion was significant enough to relegate its use only to deep bass. But, I confidently speculate that Jim would have continued to improve that form of amplification for powered speakers, if Thiel had successfully cultivated internal design talent. Remember that Thiel's first Model A speaker in 1975 was an active 3-way with 3 amps and active xos. We never marketed it due to our internal limitations, and bucking the established passive topology paradigm. Rob says Jim's sub amps sound better than the subsequent BASH-Canada amps which are dubbed x.2, as far as I know. Anyhow I have collected an SS1 and three SS2s. A pair, broken and working, is being evaluated by my new tech partner for possible reverse-engineering to become a repair station for those amps. I'll report more when I learn more.
Similarly, this forum led me to a reverse-engineered schematic for the CS3.5 equalizer. Thank you unsound. The repair shop will also evaluate a borrowed EQ for potential improvements. For starters, I see plenty of caps and resistors plus the phono jacks and switch points which could be upgraded for cleaner signal, short of the fully balanced option. That project is in incubation. I suggest that merely separating the woofer from the upper drivers (as in the CS3) would keep the boosted bass amp out of the detail range. Cleaning up the EQ components would bring life to the woofer. Remember that at 6dB/octave the upper end of the woofer makes contributions through the entire midrange. I suspect that Rob can help with the dual binding posts. Cardas and others supply good jacks. The cut switch may be good or may be upgradable - DIY project for someone here. Also, someone here might report on resistor and/or cap brand or type. Investigation required. I will explore these areas with my tech shop, but input is welcome.
While we're at it, can anyone supply a schematic and/or photos or other information re the 3.5 XO schematic? But, but I'm not working on that model. But, I do love it. Oh the conflicts of the head and heart.
