Thiel Owners

Indeed carbon rocks. And I salute Richard Vandersteen all around, and his implementation of carbon on a balsa core in particular. Jim used aluminum on a styrene core - a poor man's implementation of the same concept. And going back to the 2.2 woofer in 1990, Jim mated a shallow curved front cone with a deeper straight rear cone, trapping a sealed air-space between them to approach the same idea. The air is the damping agent and the two cones' resonant behavior is different from each other. The result is quite remarkable.

I would like to hear Richard's latest model 2 iteration. I bet it's not too different from a Thiel 2.2. I could be wrong, but it seems that as time went by, the two brands converged somewhat. It seems that Vandersteen sold as many model 2s as Thiel sold all models combined. He is one for the history books.

Tom - building his own composite airplane led Richard to Balsa and it’s the lightweight stuff with sattelite grade carbon fiber - the tough stuff is end grain bonding in a lightweight resin fiber layup. For background I don’t know the secret and I ran arguably the most advanced composite shop on the planet B-2, F-22 wing, 787 fuselage, development wing... low tech stuff... ha We all have our hard won secrets.,,
creating drivers w breakup far outside the pass Band is one of the holy grail pursuit imo, especially for those who care about time and phase. jim, Richard, Dunlavey- they all got it ! So glad you carry the torch Tom

Just a reminder I do have and greatly appreciate my 2.3 + in Cherry - articulate and musical

I haven't spent much time listening to carbon drivers per se, but I have to say that overall I've always ended up preferring composite cones, anything from the Focal W construction to the ScanSpeak sliced paper to simple fiberglass/resin construction from Peerless.

Certainly I can say that I like composites a great deal more than I do the top ceramics.

Still, there's a lot more to a speaker than a driver material and it's' focusing on these single items which leads to out of proportion spending and myths about specific speakers.  The system is what matters, but the drivers are always fun to talk about.

Best,

E

Vandersteen’s carbon drivers are, IMO, the best audio drivers ever. If I win the powerball, I won’t look any further than his model Seven.

The 2.7/3.7 coax and ribbed diaphragms were a significant step towards the same goal Vandersteen has with respect to pistonic behavior. I’ve long considered Jim Thiel designed drivers to be among the best. Who knows what he would have produced by now. But Tom shared with me the concept of the CS7.3 and it would have a new pinnacle in the Thiel line . . . 10 years ago.

We audiophiles are fortunate to have had JT and RV bring their talents to our listening rooms with gear that we can actually afford. That their designs compete with or outperform others at multiple times the price is a testament to their abilities and real-world sensibilities.