Jafant,
Thank you for the welcome and more importantly for you having started/creaated this thread 5+/- years ago. It is a joy!
Tom Thiel’s countless contributions to this thread are so wonderful. Tom sharing so many details of the formation, guiding precepts, theories and mission of Thiel are absolutely fascinating. In particular, Tom saying this somewhere in the first 100 pages of this thread was the TRIGGER for my account below of my own early audio journey.
Tom Thiel - “It bears noting that Jon Dahlquist of DQ-10 fame came from aerospace and that he used 18ga twisted pair solid copper in teflon when the rest of the industry used ordinary stranded wire. Hmmm.
My summer of 1977 revolved around identifying and sourcing wire and other components that ended up being 99.9999% pure, long crystal, low oxygen, etc. in teflon or varnish from ITT, developed for NASA. As far as I know, we introduced "wire" to the audio industry, or at least we didn't hear about "wire" from anyone else beyond noting Dahlquist's unusual choice.” – Tom Thiel
In 1972, I was a starving recent college grad from the Cornell hotel school. I sort of helped, but mostly watched, a friend build homemade speakers from stock Radio Shack parts. I thought they sounded pretty horrible, but found the project fun. Somehow, I came across the first issue of The Absolute Sound and subscribed. In issue 4, the Dahlquist DQ-10 was reviewed, so I bought a pair. By 1975, I had purchased and myself installed a fairly elaborate after-market upgrade kit, which included replacement ribbon tweeters, different mid-range drivers and something called “polypropylene capacitors”, the latter somewhat esoteric for the 1970’s. I removed and re-installed all the speaker drivers so they mirror imaged each other. Crossovers of DQ-10’s are positioned on a shelf behind exposed midrange drivers. Then I damped the crossover and drivers with modeling clay and removed the woofers in order to access the woofer cavity where I damped the entire interior with modeling clay. Those speakers are still in my attic. As you might imagine they weigh a lot. Initially I drove them with pre-owned Audio Research SS preamp and gear. Later with a conrad-johnson PV-2A and dual Hafler DH-500 amplifiers, each of which I assembled myself from kits from zillions of parts and a soldering iron. I still have the Sota Sapphire turntable with Black Widow tone arm and moving magnet cartridge that was the system’s front end. All in original boxes in my attic.
That DQ-10, c-j, Hafler, Sota Sapphire system somehow survived my multiple moves for several years as I general managed various resort hotels in Florida, Georgia, San Juan, St. Thomas and St. Croix USVI. By the mid 1980’s, marriage and raising children changed priorities and while I enjoyed that same system, my Audio-Video journey didn’t “re-activate” until 2003 with discovery of the Thiel PowerPoint.
I hope I am not straining the patience of anyone reading this. The relevance will eventually revel itself. A clue is that currently own 19 Thiel speakers!
More to come . . .
Chris