I suggest adding the second pair of posts when modding the
XO. Beetle may chime in - he looked in to that with his 2.4 upgrade.
My experience with bi-wireable Vandersteens led me to
explore this option with my CS2.4s and Tom Thiel encouraged me to try it. Also,
the OEM binding posts have brass whereas the Cardas CPBP are rhodium over
silver. The OEM hook up wire in my “SE” version was sourced from FST and, based
on the parts quality on the FST-sourced boards, I suspected was sub-optimal
(those of you with Lexington boards have higher quality parts). I replaced the
posts and wire with Cardas and added separate binding posts for the low and
high pass boards.
I sonically compared single runs of speaker cable from the
amp using Cardas copper jumper plates to double runs of identical cables. The biwire configuration consistently sounded more relaxed and
liquid. Some songs also sounded a bit more dimensional and clear via biwire. The latter characters are especially subtle but I heard
the effect on more than one song.
This is not an easy or inexpensive upgrade but certainly
worth it for me. The low-hanging fruit, however, is to upgrade the caps and
resistors, maybe the coils if you have boards made by FST (it appears that Thiel
Audio started using FST shortly after Jim Thiel’s passing). So, start with the
XO parts, especially if you’re on a budget. But if you’re insane (like me) and
want to squeeze every iota of performance out of your Thiels then dual binding
posts should be on the agenda!
