Thiel Owners

JA - thanks for the link. I'll cover some ground, perhaps repeating some stuff from previous posts. Wire was an essential element in Thiel's adoption of first order coherence. We sweated blood for a year and a half in 1977 - 1979 to decide to adopt first order slopes over the second order alternative. Second order was so much more forgiving, partially because the steeper driver rolloffs made their work more benign, but also because we came to learn that coherence required the ear-brain to assess the musical information as REAL and therefore deserving far higher scrutiny than reproduced music. With that backdrop, we were stuck. The coherent speaker showed far more unexplainable problems than the less coherent second order speaker. Beyond the statement that everything mattered, I'll point out two elements that mattered most:1: wire and 2: driver basket material.

First #2: all our baskets, like most everyone else, were stamped steel. No matter how much epoxy and damping we applied, there was an audible sonic problem. Jim wondered out loud whether there might be eddy currents in the basket. We found some aluminum baskets and the problem vanished, even when the aluminum basket was demonstratably more resonant than the reinforced steel. Short version.
Next #1: Wire was not in the vocabulary yet. We were using first-rate Electrolytic Tough Pitch, like everyone else, both for hookup and coils.I previously recounted a visit from our aerospace physicist cousin Ted Lyon who listened to our demonstration of the problem we couldn't solve in the coherent system and how it vanished in the non-coherent system. Ted recounted a rather elaborate program whereby GE found wire crystal margins to be causing subtle distortions which acted a lot like what we were describing and hearing. He got us a sample of ITT's 6-9s ultra wire, fixed the problem and the rest is history. Lots of interesting history, but too much to recount here.

So our modus operandi going ahead was that everything mattered and our job was to determin how to proceed rather than trying to prove anything to any logician. Manufacturers are not research institutes, we willingly collaborated with anyone who wanted to understand anything, but drew a line before getting involved with anyone who tried to prove the negative. Deep in our corporate culture was that the ear-brain was far better at detecting naturalness than any scientific instrument or theory. 

sdl4
Good to see you again. Thank You for confirming that the link worked and was read.   I take great pride in being the biggest proponent for Cabling among the Panel.  The largest misconception is that one needs to spend big dollars on aftermarket cables / power cords. Not True!
System synergy is far more important in comparison. Trust you ears above any review or white paper.
Happy Listening!

tomthiel,

I love Jim's quote that "there are sonic effects that I don't know how to measure." This statement seems so simple and so obvious that it is amazing that so many audio measurement "experts" appear to believe that science has already achieved that perfect state of being able to measure all parameters that influence what humans hear. Real scientists, however, will continue to study the many factors that affect auditory perception and how best to measure those factors and how they relate to how people listen to music. Until science gets a lot closer to "measurement perfection," we will have to depend on our ears and brains to close the gap.

tomthiel
I am very interested in reading more history recounted as your time allows.Once Jim settled on the ITT 6-9 ultra wire, was it used exclusively from 1970's until his passing?
Other members of the Panel feel free to chime in on this important matter.

Happy Listening!

JA - On to your question. Our first speaker wire, including the 1978 CES where we introduced the 03, was home-brew made from #0 stranded welding cable configured for lowest conventional problems.  It measured well and looked impressive. Jim was also a skeptic by nature as well as we all being over-booked for time to explore elements like wire, which was a brand new arena at the time. It was probably spring CES 1978 that Ray Kimber showed us his prototype $1K / pair foot braided 6-9s silicone sealed, jacketless cable. We made a double-blind comparison, including measurements, between our welding cable and Ray's new wire. The conventional measurements were inconclusive, but certainly our welding cable didn't exhibit big problems. The listening test was not subtle. Ray's wire blew everyone away.  Guests included the editor of Audio Magazine (professional journal). Details aside, we developed an ongoing relationship with Kimber.
We also developed a relationship with Bill Low who later founded AudioQuest, and his products were always in our evaluation mix. Noel Lee of Monster Cable was in our mix, and Monster branded and sold Jim's patented user-selectable load low-output moving coil headamp. The Monster Cable products never made the cut for us,somehow including distortion mechanisms that masked the music. An important ally became Dave Salz and Steven Hill of StraightWire (together at the time) who became the distributor for the ultra ITT wire that we used. StraightWire developed teflon jackets, polished drawing dies and other leading edge technologies. It is possible that we got best pricing from SW because those guys claim that hearing the Thiel 03a is what made them decide to pursue high-end audio as their career.

There were other wires, winners and losers in our context, but I don't clearly remember the brands. I do remember that when Bruce Brisson introduced his Music Interface Technology cables and tried to interest us, their multiple samples contained defects, either of design or execution. We didn't go there. I also remember in the mid 80s, my opinion diverged from Jim's about "best wire". I included the teenage girl contingent in my comparisons and Jim developed an attitude of himself being the arbiter of choice. (Jim had begun smoking before he was a teenager and I believe he didn't hear high frequency anomalies as problems. Just sayin'.)
I left in the mid 90s and don't know much about external wire thereafter. I do know that StraightWire's best 18 gauge 3/inch twisted pair in teflon remained the internal hookup wire. The coil wire was by then sourced by Rudy at Acoustacoil who was winding all our coils by then. Ultra-best wire became unavailable after the space projects closed. But Thiel continued to use best-of-available. I remember reading some reviews where Thiel used Goertz Flat Wire to develop the 3.7 (or perhaps an earlier speaker). I never remember reading of Cardas or Transparent wire although Jim had relationships with Karen @  Transparent via Kathy in industry politics as well as with George Cardas. I heard that Jim experimented with silver wire, plated and solid, but its sonic signature was so different as to necessitate a choice based on likely user selection. Thiel's price-class was always modest and silver wire is in a different league, he went with copper.

That's about all I remember. We routinely evaluated new wire configurations and brands and most of them were judged as overpriced and compromised. We were dumbfounded by the margins we saw in the wire sector of the industry. Dick Olsher and Jim had a mutually respectful association. We thought our stable of commentators and reviewers to be first-rate in their approach and understandings.