Prof - there were many forces at work that limited sales of later Thiel speakers. The story is not easy to stitch together due to loyalties and other factors. My first direct contact in more than 15 years was in September 2012 when the CS2.7 was being finalized. I heard it compared with the CS3.7 in the Thiel listening room. That demonstration and work session was stunning with all elements of the playback chain optimized over a period of 25+ years. Both products were completely Lexington-made, reference prototype quality examples.
But sales of the 3.7 and other products were very low. The factory was like a ghost town with perhaps 5 people total, mostly working on machines. No speakers were being made. By contrast, when I left in 1995 we had 50 people running a very vertically integrated R&D, production, marketing, sales, service and dealer education program with sales over $6M, 8 new products in the pipeline and sustained 30% annual growth. But things had become very sad by 2012. Many factors play, but not insignificant was that Kathy had taken sales to Crutchfield and then Amazon and alienated the traditional dealer base. Higher priced models were discontinued to simplify the business in hopes of survival for a new buyer. The new buyer emerged at the end of 2012 and the first attempt was to salvage and continue Jim's designs. Steve DeFuria, an early dealer and long-term industry insider was hired as sales manager and managed to re-recruit several strong traditional dealers, accounting for the fairly strong sales of the 2.7 and 1.7 relative to their predecessors. But the new design team changed horses, leaving behind Jim's approach; the reviewers and dealers didn't buy in, and the brand lost its re-emergent industry support. New Thiel poured $10M into their effort to re-brand Thiel as avant-garde lifestyle stuff for affluent young women. It failed.
An example of New Thiel's approach was to position the CS1.7 as a Coherent Source. It was actually a 4th order crossover like myriad other contemporary products. Old Thiel had a first order 1.7 nearly ready for market for early 2013, right after the 2.7 (which is first order) made entirely in Lexington with old-school Thiel components and methods. Part of the reason the 2.7 punches above its class is that the 2.7 has Lex boards and the 3.7 (after about #1100 in 2007) has FST boards. So there are lots of hidden elements in the mix at the end of Jim's life in 2008 and continuing until the demise of Old Thiel in 2013.
