Thiel Owners

MAGICO A3.  Just a quick note for those who have been following my speaker selection odyssey:  I listened to the Magico A3 today and while its a fine speaker the overall tonal balance is decidely on the dark side of neutral.  NO ONE is going to feel like this speaker is bright, trust me.  Its good textured tuneful bass and the speaker goes REALLY surprising low too but on an absolute basis it is just too much bass and obscures things the speaker might be doing right farther up the frequency spectrum.  The top end also sounds rolled off to me.  This was driven by a Constellation integrated - a pretty refined piece of gear, and setup properly.  As a matter of fact it sounded SO dark to me I began to wonder how it would measure in absolute terms which also makes me wonder why its not been subject to a review which might include measurements.  While bass heads will probably love this speaker it was suggested that for the demographic the speaker is pitched to presumably younger obviously fairly well off urbanites I suppose, its been said that perhaps it was voiced this way for modern spaces that have a lot of hard surfaces and large expanses of glass.  For me it is definitely off the menu.  I was also told that the Mark II versions of the S3 and the S5 are "somewhat" similarly dark and that Magico dialed back the tweeter levels in the Mark II versions of those two speakers.  Of course I haven't heard those...only the A3s.  The A3 is definitely not a speaker for me.  It feel good to be so certain of something!

I don’t get the Magico hype. If I win the lottery, they will not be on my short list.

Luckily, Jim Thiel gave a good landing spot for those of us with more modest means. And Tom Thiel is now adding a path to climb to the next tier without breaking the bank.

I've enjoyed reading this thread.  I jumped into the Thiel world several months ago when a pair of CS 1.2's popped up locally.  Up until then I had been trying a variety of vintage speakers including Ohm Walsh 1, Original Large Advents, B&O RL 140, Avid 330, Cerwin Vegas, etc.  When I listened to the Thiel's, I was hooked.  My plan was to eventually work my way up the Thiel food chain.  About 3 weeks ago a pair of 1.5's popped up, so after conferring with Rob Gillum, I figured I would have an incremental improvement over the 1.2's.  And there was.  So I retired my vintage Dynaco ST 150 amp and bought a new Yamaha A-S701.  All was good, was loving the combo, when a pair of 3.5's popped up somewhat locally for a good price.  They came with the original boxes and the eq, so I bought them.  But my Yamaha doesn't have a pre-out or loop for the eq, so fortunately I was within my 15 day return period and back it went.  I ordered a Peachtree Nova 150.  It should be here in 2-3 weeks.  In the interim, the honking 3.5's are being powered by a vintage Kenwood KA-5700 integrated I had in the basement.  Can't wait to feed them some real power and see how they sing.