Thiel Owners

@tomthiel 

Thank you for the detailed answer. Interesting observation re: Thiel v Vandersteen house sound.

Those 7 uF PURs are the first I’ve seen in that capacitance value. Will be interesting to see if the North American retailers stock those. In the meantime it looks like @pieper1973 has a lead on getting the 14 and 28 in single caps.

If I ever make any further mods it will probably be to try an ultra bypass (eg, Jupiter copper foil), Path graphite resistors in the coax feed path (really tough to get the correct values at all positions), or, if your reports are over the moon, PUR in the coax feeds. Regardless, I’m sitting on some tricked-out, sweet-sounding CS2.4s.

Good day to you all..

I'm having a problem getting my hands on Mills resistors 12 Ohm @12W.

The sender has given me a very long list of other brands..

Anybody here recommend a substitute for the mills at same price range and sonic performance?

Thank you

 Pieter

@pieper1973

Are you in the US? Sonic Craft is your friend. They stock MRA-12s in all the values used in the CS2.4 although you do have to mix and match the old Mills (brown body) with the newer Vishay-Mills (black body). Fast shipping, fair pricing, and excellent service. IIRC, I paid for the mid-grade level matching and they gave me the full set measured at better than the top-grade level matching.

If you are really stuck, the only thing comparable, from my extensive research, is the Ohmite. Wilson uses Caddock but I could never figure out anything that would be suitable in the CS2.4. If you have really deep pockets, you might try Path or Dueland graphite resistors. People say they are the best. They better be at those prices - 5-8 times the Mills! At that’s if you can get the correct resistance in a single resistor. You have to get really creative running in series/parallel to get the proper values. Other than Mills, those are your choices. Otherwise, just keep the OEM resistors.

Adding to Beetle’s excellent summary, here’s a cheapskate trick for the Thiel resistors that you might keep.

Turns out, a big part of those resistors’ ’sonic problem’ is the thermodynamics due to their mounting. They are non-inductive wire-wound with current flowing around their coil circumference, dissipating into the ceramic body. The bottom of that body is glued to the panel, creating a large differential in wire heat distribution. Solution is to mount that same resistor on an edge rather than a flat. Put the edge on Mortite / BluTac pads for even better results. Cheap fix, much of the improvement of Mills, suitable for woofer and midrange. Spend your savings on a Path, etc. for the 12Z tweeter feed.

pieper

try using parallel resistors 

http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-parallel.htm

a 20 and a 30 = 12