Thiel Owners

Utrak - I can offer a broad-brush intention: more than a dream, less than a plan. Rob of Coherent Source Service and I are working on upgrades for various classic Thiel models. The CS3.5 is now on the list, and the CS3 is likely to come along as a hybrid solution. Those designs are similar to each other and all drivers of both models are obsolete. We are looking for replacement drivers to work in both models with appropriate XO tweaks.

To your situation, cap failure is not likely. Thiel used long-life caps and we know of no age-related cap failures - not yet, probably soon. But, drift is likely. Heat-related (over-driving) cap failures are known - you can see the burned caps and replace them.

I suggest you contact Rob at CSS to work out a strategy, since our Classic Upgrades are not yet real, and there are bridges to cross before they come to market.

Nice to see there is a review of exactly the same Pre/Power amp and DAC combo that are providing my CS-2.4 of musical juice :)

https://www.hifi-advice.com/blog/review/digital-reviews/spdif-dac-reviews/audio-gd-part1/

tomthiel
Thank You for the follow on suggestion to utrak's query.  Happy Listening!

holco
Good to see you this Spring day. Hope that you are well and enjoying the music. Thank You for the link to your gear- beautiful musical juice!
Happy Listening!

Thanks for the feedback everybody. I really do appreciate it. I think that I’ll attempt to further isolate the problem by swapping the tweeters first and then the midrange drivers if the problem doesn’t move with the tweeters. I’ll share my results with everybody. Tomthiel’s response is encouraging. I actually think that I stumbled onto something rather unique with respect to the CS3s and my small acoustically treated room. I was actually able to tame the bass by not using the bass equalizer and adding another set of 4’ x 2’ absorption panels (1 on each side of the room) between the corner trap and the first sidewall absorption panel. After doing that, I was blown away. It’s sad but at least I got to re-realize how special Thiel speakers really are. To make matters worse, newer Thiel models don’t have a bass equalizer that I can remove and the impedance curve drops to 3 ohms on some of them, which might present additional problems for my tube amps. I believe that the CS3s are 88dB efficient and the impedance only drops to 4 ohms. Good luck tomthiel. I know that Thiel owners of the world are rooting for you.