Thiel Owners

Dspr - CS5s are a tough nut to crack. Their impedance drops to 2.5 ohms at 150Hz and keeps dropping to 1.5Hz by 20Hz, and lower at 10Hz. It devastates most amps. I don't remember for sure whether the 'improved' woofers raised that impedance a little. The CS5(i) did not prosper in the market because so few amps could drive it well. As you know, Jim used Krell, ending up with the FPB-600 which could drive a tank.

thielrules.  Thanks for sharing your experience removing the waveguides. 

And he used the Goertz flat wire, which has the lowest characteristic impedance, which is a requirement for very low impedance speaker loads.

I would imagine that the CS5i’s woofers without the added pads on the original CS5’s would help in that regard. I thought the “i” version was a nice improvement.

unsound - the rubber pads were to add mass to lower the resonance frequency. Turned out that the center plugs did a better job of that. There were also some motor improvements. That's when Jim was getting his legs with FEA for motor geometry and all that.