Thiel Owners

When replacing a magnetic metal with a non-magnetic material, it's important to understand the function of the part. Often a chassis acts as a Faraday Cage where the entire envelope is engineered as a whole. Sometimes there are electrical value compensations for metals in proximity to circuitry.

I'm reminded of beetlemania's 2.4SE XOs, which turned out to be (late) made in China. The coils were different values to compensate for the electrical traces on the back side of the board. When we remanufactured his XOs on masonite, we returned to original coil inductance values to keep performance on spec.

Also, non-magnetic metals support electrical fields, which can be germane.

Just saying: everything is not always obvious.

I have mu metal panels I have received  to overcome the magnetic field of each speaker inductor from each other. Since this purchase I have seen reference to a woven shield that appears to be more effective and is easily pliable to  form around more complex shapes. Makes me wonder if wooden tops or an entire chassis would present a better sound from any given audio component. The magnetic field could escape instead of being re aimed back at critical components. Tom

Tom - that reflection is real. Shielded cable has a ’sound’ due to inward reflection of propagation field effects. Unshielded sounds better when it can be used in benign circumstances.

I’m reminded of Thiel’s early electronics. The 01 and 03 generations all had equalizers built in electromagnetically ’open’ enclosures. The sides were wood, the front was acrylic and the back was aluminum. The EQ required careful placement, away from transformers, etc.

I’m a big fan of distance rather than shielding. Outboarding the XO provides enough distance from the driver fields, and the opportunity to spread out the xo components. Thiel’s home theater products incorporated bucking magnets on the drivers (at least the woofers). In addition to containing stray fields regarding video interference, they focus the field in the gap and clean up the electromagnetic soup inside the speaker. Win-win.

I moved my Thiel's to  a larger room  (from my smaller office)and I finally heard them stretch their wings. However, my Benchmark gear, which I want to use in this room, is better suited to 2 other speakers that I am  now more interested in, the KEF Blade 2 META and the Yamaha NS5000. I have now learned that the Thiel's work great in this larger room and so will the other 2 speakers. I was not sure about that due to the required close front wall placement.

I am going to be selling my Thiel CS3.7's but the original shipping boxes were not well taken care of by the previous owner. The boxes are good for packing and loading into a SUV but not for FedEx, UPS, et al. Any suggestions as to the best way to ship them? If I figure out a way to ship then I will put up a FOR SALE ad.

Ideally, I could find a Southern CA buyer. I bought almost 2 years ago from a guy 100 miles away and picked them up. The speakers were internally in ridiculously bad shape. I wrote up about the problems on this thread back in Oct 2020. Speakers are of course now sonically in perfect shape. I had them measured after all the work I did by accuratesound.ca. 

https://accuratesound.ca/contact.html

Mitch Barnett of Accurate Sound, remotely helped me find bad wiring on the drivers. This was done by the original owner. I have now installed brand new drivers, fixed threading problems on some screws (likely a dealer butcher job). Fixed soldering on some wiring with Rob's super solder. 

I have updated my Livingroom system with some photos, mainly of the room when working with dealers for my next speaker.

Anyone looking for replacement tweeter voice coils for the CS3.6 or CS2.2, I've got a new set of ScanSpeak 290059 D3004s I'm going to unload. PM me and I'll make you a good deal and thanks...