Thiel Owners

Silvanik - don’t take it personally, I likewise am getting dead air. But, I have a report that Rob is alive and well and will soon be back in the saddle.

You might like the back story. Lexington is a medium sized city on a limestone savanah. Going east the Bluegrass Savanah gets rough and hilly toward the Cumberland Plateau, the western foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Several years ago Rob bought an old hill farm in the knobs with a hunting cabin where he spends his private. It's now deer hunding season in Kentucky, and Jeremy reports that Rob is off hunting quite a bit lately. Jeremy is the son of Walter Kling, who co-founded Thiel Audio, was part of the communal undertakings in the beginning as well as my replacement in the later years. Jeremy grew up in the company and worked there on and off including juggling alligators at the bitter end. Jeremy says that Rob is alive and well and he’ll let him know that we’re looking for him.

Take care.

Tom,

thank you so much for your reassuring words about Rob and his business.I was a  bit surprised for his silence, actually I always found Rob to be very kind and responsive during our emails exchange before my last spare drivers purchase and giving a lot of suggestions about how to check the drivers and xover  conditions, thus now i was wondering whether something news was in the air. No problem, I can wait, but guess that the  drivers availability for the 3.6s start to be critics, especially for the tweeters and my idea is to purchase two more of them to stay relaxed for some years to come.

Talking about 3.6's tweeter, recently I had  a look to the ferro fluid status because it seems to my to hear a bit reduced   high frequencies level (xover checked, all ok) and found not  dried up and  with a  normal consistency, very fluid. What in your opinion can be the cause?  Perhaps the stiffening of the dome rubber suspension after many years? They were made in 1998, dont know how long they can last delivering nominal performance.
The idea now is to proceed to take some measurements by means REW software with the UMIK1 microphone aligneted to the tweeter centre and 1meter far, a sweep in the range  1-20 Khz should be ok for the scope, do you agree?
Any suggestion on this matter  is very appreciated

silvanik - surrounds are very critical on tweeters. I don't remember whether those are rubber or a synthetic elastomer, but stiffening could be an issue. Your REW measurements shouuld tell you quite a bit, especially via FFTransforms to give you time domain information. If you can get higher than 20K, do it, since that tweeter goes to 28K and then some and that ultrasonic range might yield hints.

That UltraTweeter was used in the 2.2, 3.6 and 5. Madisound has the companion fiber moving kit, which is said to drop in without XO changes. Birger Jorgensen of Vifa, who codesigned that with Jim, took great care for the fiber and metal domes to behave as similarly as possible. One of these days there will be a replacement, but that motor will house the fiber dome if you need one sooner.

Tom

tomthiel

Thank You for the update on Mr. Rob Gillum. I would like to read more about Walter Kling. Is he alive and involved in Audio? Retired?

I hope that you are well and ready for Thanksgiving next week.

Happy Listening!