Build me a killer Rock/Metal Rig for 1K

Inscrutable, those are the manufacturers specs. While all such specs need to be taken with a grain of salt I believe Thiel to be one of the better manufacturers in regard to legitimate specs. Jim Thiel intentionaly designs his products in this manner. Of course this keeps amps that are up to the impedance load very stable. Some complain that the extra components used in his crossovers to accomplish this suck the energy out of the system. I don't have an opinon on that. These speakers were $2850 when new over 10 years ago. I think the specs are pretty impressive. IMHO the sound is impressive too. This is a high performance vehicle.To add a cheap crossover and amp to this design (with the extra cost cabling) would be like putting training wheels on a Ferrari. I appreciate your innovative, out of the box thinking but I don't think it's an appropriate course of action. BTW Thiel origianlly recommended 40-250 watts per channel then increased the recommedation to 50-250 watts per channel. When I asked Jim Thiel about these recommendations he said that they were in reference to standard solid state 8 Ohm ratings and a more accurate guide would be 100-500 watts into 4 Ohms. Unlike many other speakers The Thiels don't roll off the top end. As such any abberations in this region will be heard loud and clear. That's why many say the Thiels are bright and need warm and/or tube equipment preceeding them. There is some truth to this. I would argue that you really need clean, accurate equipment preceeding them, other wise you might be throwing away some of that resolution. What's needed is a powerfull, clean amp that can handle a steady 4 Ohm load. That kind of amp usually costs money. If one can't afford that, then the warm compensating approach would make more sense than going with a typical cheap bright, chalky front end.

Unsound, I don't disagree with anything you've said. This is going to be a temporary, stepping-stone solution to get some music playing. [David, I don't mean to refer to you in 3rd person as if you're not here, but I don't know if you are here ;-)] If David is eventually going to get to a balanced system, and buys cdp, pre, and amp for $1k, my guess is he's not very happy with any of them, and certainly none of them survive into the 'permanent' solution. Frankly, my first thought is to sell the Thiels and then buy a complete well-balanced system, but it sounded like David was reluctant to part with the last/cornerstone of his system, and I can understand that. Disregarding that, I thought about a cdp with variable output direct into an amp of reasonable quality. A 'powerful, clean amp that can handle a steady 4 ohm load' is not that rare nor pricey. I'm thinking something SS like a McCormack 0.5, Belles 150A, or Citation 5.1 - with some patience, all can be had around $600-700 used. That leaves $300-400 for the cdp. This won't be the last word, but a couple reasonably good choices with line level output control are the Newcastle 980 and the H-K 8550. The amps still have up-side potential, and bought at the right price all this will resell easily.

Inscrutable and Dave, I can't comment about most of your recommendations mentioned above, as I don't have any experience with most of them. I do agree with your McCormack recommendation whole heartedly as a viable option. Dave, how about an update?

Ok-Im tempted to sell the 3.5's.
I have 2 people that have been interested for some time.
My best and most solid offer is for $700 in my pocket.
I just paid $840 for them so it would be a loss for sure.
I like the idea of running a CDP straight into an amp until I can pick up another pre.But then,what about the bass eq.?? Hows that going to be used with no pre or tape input??
I feel stuck and a bit cursed by the Thiels.
I did run them once with my old gear (rogue 99,Planet,Le Amp Monos @100 wpc) and I got good volume,bass and transparency but the soundstage was like 5 feet wide and a foot deep.Coming off an Aleph-3 that really sucked!
I dont know,selling the Thiels seems like the way to go and starting over but I dont think Im going to find a better speaker for < a K.....confusing or what???

David, I would love to buy your speakers from you. That said, I belive the system I recommended from the available items for sale on Audiogon in the above post and some of the latter suggestions for items not currently available would make you happy. All of the items mentioned were bargains that competed fairly well against more expensive competitors when new. The amp appears to be new. If you look at the origianl list price of these items and compare them with the origianl list price of your speakers,you'll see that their not out of their league. BTW, the price of the Muse amp has just been reduced and if you could swing a bit more money (perhaps spending a little less on the CD player (Marantz?) you might be able to go for the Muse 150 mono's (300 Watts into 4 Ohms)that are also for sale. You might be able to put the Thiel's equalizer between the CD player and the amp. Unfortunatley I don't know how this would effect the signal with regards to input and output impedance and drain on the signal strenght level. I would strongly recommend talking to Thiel before embarking on this. To do this you'll need a CD player with a high quality volume control, high output, low output impedance going into short low capacitance interconnects into the Equalizer into short low capcitance interconnects (if the equalizer doesn't have a captive cable)into an amp that is very sensitive and has a high input impedance and between 100 and 500 Watts into 4 Ohms. BTW, at the risk of offending many here on Audiogon, I don't think it's necessary to have a tube preamp to have good sound with the Thiels. The best set up I ever heard with Thiel 3.5's was completely solid state (I'll admit it wasn't an inexpensive system). If you previously enjoyed a low powered Pass amp, perhaps your not the headbanger we all seem to think you are. I'm sure a lot of the advise given here has been done with that perception. Don't get too frustrated, there are always solutions. Keep us up to date on your decisisons. Good luck and good listening.