Thiel Owners

"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.

V.O.T.E.

Hi Tom,

I managed to track down the previous owner of my 3.5’s, which I bought from a vintage audio dealer/repair shop. He was the second owner, having moved on from them to 3.7’s. He is also the original owner of CS5’s that make up his big-room system. He’s also has a pair of 2.3’s in his basement. He’s a frequent lurker of this thread. 

Anyway, you’ve professed quite a few times of your love for the 3.5’s. The reason I bring this up because this gentleman also told me that he misses very much the 3.5’s sound...that, to him, they have a different character from other Thiel designs/models. He likened it to the 3.5’s having a wide tolerance for genres...it was a speaker that played everything very well. 

If I may ask, what about the 3.5’s make you love them so? Because, while I LOVE my 3.5’s and have built my system around them, I often wonder what I would get by moving to a bigger Thiel? 

Thanks for all your wonderful input on this thread...

Arvin

arvincastro
Thank You for the story behind your 3.5 loudspeakers. Ask your friend/dealer to join us here.  Hope you are well and enjoying Fall.
Happy Listening!

This answer may be a little lame - but here it goes anyhow. Note that I have been away for decades and my personal experience listening to music through a robust system ended with the 3.5 and the following 2.2. Now I have PowerPoints and 2.2s and have heard a few systems when visiting folks. So my experience is rather dated. But it was full-emersion / intense.
So my reason for loving the 3.5 is personal. I was intimately involved in its development, parts sourcing, voicing, manufacture and tweaking. Those 3D baffles were all hand-carved by . . . moi and an assistant, in an amazing hand of man effective method . . . and then tooled on a vintage inverted router (souped up with an 8" diameter forming tool that I designed. You get the picture, full frontal engagement. The fiber (silk, paper) upper drivers do not have the resolution of metal, but they are more forgiving. The woofer was our first polypropylene and we custom designed the cone profile for significant breakup improvement. The caps in the 3.5 were Solen when Solen was using their own best-in-world French film. The micro bypasses were 1% styrene x tin foil. Lots of tweaking and voicing and audiophile sensibilities. Later products lost that last level of detail due to cost / value engineering. There just wasn't enough improvement for the considerable extra cost. Also the newer metal drivers changed the cost / performance equation again and caps suffered - inserting a little vague jangle, in my opinion. I have always locked on bass authenticity from my musician and recording days of youth. The 3.5 sealed bass has a rightness from the very bottom that just doesn't quite bloom with reflex bass. OK, the reflex bass hits all the adjectives better - tight, punchy, etc. and plays more than twice as loud. But the sealed bass of the 3.5 and 5, digging lower than the recording, somehow lights my fire more naturally.

To your question. New Thiel models and generations always mitigated the problems of the previous generation and improved everything they addressed, within the limits of balanced performance. I think a newer, bigger model would almost always please more people more often. Try to audition some.

The gist of my quest is to resurrect some of the old models which can be had at bargain prices and apply lessons and technologies to make them shine brighter than they ever did, and brighter than so many other contenders that don't deliver the full, broad, complete parameters that Thiel brought to light. I hope to conjure those last ineffable nuances of music. Love is a personal thing.