Thiel Owners

Thanks everyone.  Tom - that's very helpful.  I can tell that they are original 7s.  Someone had just asked me to add a picture of the model and serial number to some photos I was going to use to find them a new home.  I'll have to see if I can borrow some muscle to help tilt them, I guess (or find the receipt).  My 83 year old friend is not going to want to be my muscle.

Tip - 2/3 of the weight is in the bottom half, so laying it down onto its back (onto pads so you can re-lift it) becomes a more

manageable 50# more or less. Just a thought.

@dmac67 

CS3.6 speakers are a good choice and a bargain at that price but I would be asking Tom his opinion about the fact that the tweeters and midrange speakers were replaced before you buy .  

My dad’s friend found the original receipt for me - Thiel CS-7 #795 and 796. I think that should satisfy. 

dmac67 - regarding those 3.6s

As you probably know, Thiel products were engineered down to the gnat hair scale. The drivers were massaged by their crossover circuitry for physical roll-in and roll-out of 6dB/octave with the midrange controlled over 7 octaves. The drivers by the time we passed 1980 were custom designed with many innovations to reduce distortion and generally perform better than we could buy on the open market. The 3.6 midrange incorporated our patented double cone with a deep straight back cone and a shallow flared front cone for internal damping, higher stiffness to mass ratio, a top end approaching 20kHz, etc. etc. Any off the shelf driver will be at best a thin approximation. Any differences from the Thiele/Small parameters of the stock driver will miss the XO targets to some unknown degree.

Regarding his ’redesigned crossover’, we don’t know the level of change and/or skill involved matching the new driver to the woofer and tweeter.

Regarding the tweeter as ’better than aluminum’ Some folks prefer each; Jim chose the aluminum due to its greater consistency and higher frequency breakup mode which he could choose not to notch-filter (the high-Q filter can be heard.) Jim and Birger Jorgensen at Vifa together co-engineered that fiber dome in parallel with the aluminum one. It is a drop-in replacement (its low end rolls out same as the aluminum one.) The ’sound’ is somewhat mellower - some prefer it; but its ’sound’ is not as crisp and articulate as Jim’s products.

If I were looking at that Morado pair, I would gather some power-handling information on the new midrange. Our Vifa P11-MH01-04 midrange handled around 50 watts RMS (from memory), which is a high bar. First order x 7 octaves is a tall order.

Let us know how you navigate the waters.