Thiel Owners

JAFant - what I meant to say is that the stock CS2.4 has its crossovers positioned quite optimally - more so than most Thiel models. Here's some background.

Although we were aware of sonic degradation when the free-form / bird's nest development crossover was compacted onto a board and mounted in the cabinet, Jim's approach was to cause the least damage while incurring the least expense.  In many models there is very little room between all those shelf braces, and the XOs got even more compact(ed).

By the time of the CS2.4 development in 2002, the cabinets had much less bracing. Not being there, I could only speculate about rationales, which I won't. But there is plenty of room in there to mount two separate XOs away from each other and from the drivers. I believe that geometry aids the 2.4's clarity and openness.

To your previous question about Renaissance offerings. What has developed is going way back to the 1976 model 02 - bookshelf / stand-mount monitor, mainly for pragmatics. They're cheap, simple and easy to ship. Mine have morphed from second order to first order / coherent source topology, being used as workhorses to compare passive parts, xo layouts, drivers and new technologies. Of special note is Doug Pauley's twin patented technologies that tame wave-launch turbulence. Progress is being made.

At some time there will be a stand-alone short run of perhaps 50 pair of this re-imagined monitor. No promises or projections as to when.

JCHussey- I would like to address your CS3s. This model is the de-facto watershed that put Thiel on a solid road to success. The CS3.5 gets more respect, but it is essentially the same speaker with a better midrange driver.

Taken together, the CS3/3.5 were designed before we adopted CNC machining, so more of the cabinet stiffness is in the walls with far fewer braces. The woofer and tweeter are the same and the cabinets have the same volume. Only the baffle angle is a little different due to different midrange acoustic centers and bringing the upper drivers closer together.

The CS3 & 3.5 are fraternal twins; any upgrades developed for those products will apply to both.

The sculpted baffle is a sharp point of Thiel history, and arguably responsible for Thiel’s survival. In the model 03a we had developed thick wool felt around the midrange and tweeter to attenuate diffraction. It worked well, was affordable; but looked less than elegant with the grilles removed. The curved baffle of the CS3 solved the problem elegantly but cost more. In 1982 we were a garage-shop operation. Our sell prices were cost-plus over an unrealistically low dirt-floor low overhead production cost. We needed to break out of me-too boxes to attract more sophisticated customers. My solution was to sculpt these 3-D baffles with ordinary shop tools, some ingenuity and lots of grunt. (We took an 8mm home movie of the process, which may emerge someday.) It goes like this.

Laminate MDF, route the driver mounts with templates, saw 3 x 45° facets with a progressive fixture on a tablesaw. Finish the conical roll-overs with a hand plane, rasp and sandpaper, then apply a wood-flour x drying oil slurry to fill the pores. I sculpted every baffle with one assistant.

One reason the CS3 put us on the map was timing. There was a deep recession in 1981-2 which killed many companies, and most of the survivors came to 1983 CES with re-warmed makeover products. We showed up with the CS3 that looked pretty high-tech / high-investment. It really got noticed.

From behind the curtain of time: Jim wasn’t convinced that "the market" would pay the price for that sculpted baffle. He co-developed an 03b using the same CS3 drivers, but with the 03a felt block diffraction-control baffle. Its introductory price would be $1150/pair @ 15% above the $990 03a. CES pre-show setup day response to the CS3 was so enthusiastic that the 03b never saw daylight. Jim, Kathy and I struggled till the wee hours to settle on the target price of $1850/pair, which J&K rolled back to $1750 at market production. We had broken out.

I consider the CS3/3.5 as the most lucid embodiment of Jim’s vision. This is the model I most want to recreate applying the technologies he continued to invent and refine through the rest of his career.

Tom T & Tom D

Thank you for your guidance , now I don't have to agonize or worry about making a bad decision with inductor guage .

I had looked into the foil inductors after beetlemania's positive experience, but they are to large in diameter and they don't come in the smaller guages that are used on the Thiel crossovers .  

As for resistors , I already have about $100 worth of Mills mainly because of having to parallel resistors to achieve value and wattage .

Moving the crossovers out of the speaker cabinet has interested me ever since I saw an Italian speaker for sale at Echo HiFi in Portland , this is was and is the only speaker that I've seen with external crossovers .  I'm still wondering why this isn't more common on higher end speakers , but me doing it is just beyond my ambition and capability .

The simple and rewarding act of changing mounting screws has remotived me to start replacing componets on the crossover boards .  Rob

tomthiel,

At some time there will be a stand-alone short run of perhaps 50 pair of this re-imagined monitor. No promises or projections as to when.

I'll be waiting, with interest!

Happy Friday! All