Thiel Owners

tomthiel

Oh yes, now I remember the HP review of the O3a. After I heard Thiels for the first time, at Havens and Hardesty, I stumbled upon that recent issue of TAS and read HP's review of them. What I remember most was that his choice of words described with amazing accuracy what I had heard. I have never read, before or after HP, another reviewer's words that so vividly described sound. It reinforced my excitement about the "image specificity" and "disappearance of the speakers' location" that he described. So, there were no speakers in the world that could satisfy me after that pair of experiences: hearing them and reading HP's description of them. Plus, the cabinet shape and wood finish was just gorgeous.

Luckily for me, a rich guy in Laguna Beach went througn speakers like I drink water, and he had the hots for "Kindel Phantom" speakers instead of his Thiel O3a, so they were almost brand new when I bought them from him. Of course now, we all know he was crazy, because Thiel speakers are still cherished by all of us here, whereas Kindel speakers are long forgotten by everyone.

I visited him a few more times after that. Soon after his Kindel speakers, he sold those for Spendor SP-1 speakers (another still HIGHLY remembered and GREAT speaker), but sold those also almost right away. He could simply never be satisfied. And to this day, I am greatly satisfied with the O3a that I bought from him, and still listening to them.

Sandy - I hope that name is OK, since that's your hi-fi identity to me.

I credit Harry Pearson with creating high end out of its hi fidelity foundation. Hi Fi had been generally academic, formal and engineering driven. Hi End was generally young, entrepreneurial and music driven. Thiel straddled the two worlds more than many high end companies. But Harry was the first to take live music with all its nuances and psychic / emotional / intangible hooks as the Absolute Sound, the real and final reference for our work. He and his team created much of the vocabulary which we still use. Many related industries lack such vocabulary or frame of reference and therefore struggle with having to prove their work, satisfy the textbooks, and so forth.

oblgny,

I had a similar situation last year. I’d saved for a couple of years to buy new speakers. Out of nowhere hit with huge financial blow. All that saved money disappeared in an instant, as did a lot more. Been digging out from under it ever since.

I have to say, selling old hi-fi gear isn’t exactly the fastest route to financial recovery ;-)

BTW, I was a fan of Meadowlark back in the day too. I liked the Shearwaters, I had the Heron-i speakers in my home for a while, and owned the little Meadowlark Swallow stand mounted speakers.One of my regrets was selling those little speakers - they have a combination of clarity, warm tone with simply astonishing "disappearing act" imaging. It’s one of those old "still-hurts" sales that makes me hoard my current speakers :)

As I’ve mentioned somewhere earlier in the thread, probably my biggest issue with the Meadowlark design was the weird interference that happened vertically between the drivers, due to the first-order design.A weird image/tonal shift hollowing out a little part of the frequency spectrum. Thiel seemed to have solved that first-order crossover issue in their later designs.

prof,

Do you still have your 2.7s?

George

Thiel seemed to have solved that first-order crossover issue in their later designs.

Probably due to the use of coax drivers.  The high freq./short wavelength xover between the mid and the tweeter is most problematic, but with coax, it's mostly not a problem.  People have commented that the pre-coax Thiel also had problem with mid/tweeter integration with vertical listening axis.