Thiel Owners

Pete - it seems that Jim Thiel and Richard Vandersteen shared very similar approaches to their art. Jim's subwoofers also used the power amp output, and Jim's room correction was also done in the analog domain, for the reasons you stated.

I love what Richard did with his main amp bass rolloff to be re-boosted in the subwoofer - brilliant.

My wonderment includes that those two designers existed in such separate spaces: their products were never, that I know, compared; and their fans and users rarely overlapped. Interesting how markets and brand niches develop.

The cable thing is, in my opinion, a bigger deal with coherent speakers. I've spoken to the point previously, but to summarize I believe the ear-brain scrutinizes the music more critically when its coherence suggests real rather than reproduced music. When you get it all right, it's really right.

Got my father a pair of thiel bookshelf speakers the scs 2 I think

The SCS was the coax version of the 6.5" two-way that began with the 02 in 1976, the SCS in 1984 and on through the 2, 3 and 4.

One of the driving forces for the original SCS was our interplay with Toyota who built their Camry / Avalon plant up the road in Georgetown KY, beginning in the mid 1980s. Toyota's manufacturing model includes sourcing everything within a 50 mile radius of the assembly plant, which they modified to 100 miles for the larger distances in the USA. We waded into developing a luxury speaker system for the Lexus, and a coax was critical to that system since listeners are at various and changing distances and angles.

The project was intriguing, and Thiel eventually dropped out. The biggest contention was that they wanted Mark Levinson amplification, and Jim was unable to get ML to incorporate shaping circuitry into the amp designs. Japanese development engineering is extremely bureaucratic, authoritarian and invasive to internal company information, all of which didn't mesh with Jim's personal style. 
But, that first SCS coax came from that interaction which was further developed over the years for all the power-driver products.

I hope your dad enjoys them. 

tomthiel

Thank You for the history of SCS coax moving forward. Very cool story involving Toyota/Lexus.

Happy Listening!

ctsooner

Good to see you as always. Thank You for addressing Vandy subwoofer(s) and their application in audio systems.  I enjoyed reading about M.I.T. and Transparent cabling as well. I hope you are ready for Spring.

Happy Listening!