Thiel Owners

Andy - from my experience, I see no way that any individual, no matter how brilliant or talented, could execute the process that led to the final Thiel speakers. It's hard for people to imagine the immersion, the dedication, the drive and stamina required and expended over decades of full-time work with the inputs, support and sacrifice of a good team of 50 or so people collaborating with external vendors and thinkers and researchers, all working toward the same goal - to substantiate a particular vision. The 2.4, along with additional dozens of Thiel products, represents an incarnation of that actualized vision, physical evidence of an extremely focused creative process applied to the real world.

From an unattributed plaque in a Dallas art gallery:"Love instilled into solid materials by loving craftsmanship is the only creation of mankind to defeat time."
And all of this in the service of, for the love of music. Isn't life a magnificent journey?

It has been said many times that a Thiel speaker is an Apogee or Magnepan with Bass.

Having owned both Thiel and Magnepan, I could not disagree more!  I'm sure the later speakers were much better than the 3.5s, though.  I would love to hear some better models at some point, but because the company doesn't exist anymore and replacement parts are pretty much nonexistent, I'll never own them again.  What happened at Thiel is a crime.

I agree, Thiel end is a real crime against the meaning that Tom Thiel expressed and summarized so well two posts above mine. I became a Thiel owner (cs 3.6) only around one year ago and love so much what I can hear, the whole Thiel's history, the unbelievable professional approach to every single detail of the project that to me doesn't matter if Thiel company is no more, doesn't matter if the genuine spare drivers start to be hard to find. Hard but not impossible, recently I bought a complete new set from Rob Gillum and due to the fact that I live in Italy it costed me also a big amount for the shipping and customs, but my aim is to preserve the soul of this wonderful loudspeaker as Jim and all his staff intended to be. It's a piece of artwork, not easy to replicate, who nowadys is able to offer this kind of knowledge? Which company do invest so much to develop  custom drivers as Thiel did?(for this reason I bought a genuine full set as spare, because similar are not the same , specially with first order XO design). So, thank you America, americans, doing this. I also appreciate some our good italian loudspeakers maker, for sure ,excellence has no boundaries.

replacement parts are pretty much nonexistent

Not quite that bad. Some parts yes, some no. In the case of my CS2.4, Rob Gillum said replacement drivers are not available but he can rebuild broken ones. And he does have some drivers for a few models. He did supply some of the coils used in my new crossover build. Sounds like that 3.5 midrange, however, is a conundrum. 

Regarding differences between Thiels and Vandys, I only had brief demos of vandy 3’s, 5’s and my newly acquired CS5’s.
my impression was the vandys offered a wider sweet spot but the Thiels have greater clarity. Granted I only have theThiels a short time so I am still moving them around getting to know how they react in my room.
from a design perspective, I read Richard Hardesty’s journals and it seems both Thiel and Vandy pursue the most measurably flat responses. So in short showroom listening sessions some  people may opt for other manufacturers non flat responses because they may simply sound exciting ( read: as if the loudness button was pushed on an old 70’s receiver).
other differences I noticed between Thiel/Vandy is that on some models  Thiels went the coax route to get single point Source while Vandy went open air mid/tweeter to give some openness (if that’s a word).
i don’t see that Thiel ever applied a rear firing tweeter nor incorporated any of the adjustment mechanisms Vandy used ( settings for rear firing tweeter, multi step equalizer for bass on the Quatros, 5’s). Whoops, just noticed thiel 3.5 have Bass equalizers.
on the note of rear firing tweeter, I don’t get it. Here I am taping blankets to the wall behind the speakers trying to eliminate everything other than what is coming from the front of the speakers To tighten the imaging. So why throw the highest notes ( shortest wave that dies most easily) against the back wall ? 
I remember the 70’s Bose speakers that were meant to fire most of their output against a wall to give a wall of sound, hated the way those sounded, like listening to music coming from a neighbors apartment.