Thiel Owners

(Thanks again to the well-wishers for your kind comments!)


Tom,

Where does the 7.2 sit in your estimation?   Is it still the pinnacle of performance in Jim's designs?

prof - Please note that I have not heard the 7.2. I am relaying insider remarks from those who lived with the products, the process of evolution, the politics of markets and the necessary contraction of the company after Jim's death. I have also extrapolated factors regarding components and their sonic contributions. And then there is the undeniable fact that each new product stands on the shoulders of all of its predecessors, giving the x.7s a distinct advantage in many particulars.

All that said, I would choose the 7.2 as the epitome of Jim's work. He was working on a 7.3 which incorporated the 3.7 coax (or derivative) and the wavy driver geometry. Such a product could justify the cost of the quality components which beetle and I are lavishing on our upgrades. The low-level cabinet resonances could be quieted. Thermal management could be applied to the drivers and resistors, and so forth and so on, to create a next-league contender. I have little doubt that the 7.3 would be his very best work. But, I don't have a real answer to your query from personal experience. In hindsight, I wish I had stayed another day in Lexington in 2012 to absorb the upper models in the listening room. Time moves on.

I hope to learn enough and find the time to soup up the 7.2s. Notice that they don't show up on the used market. Rob says that the large majority of CS7 owners upgraded to 7.2s and are happy as clams with few reported problems. Plus, I find them beautiful in a way that reflects my design sense.

tomthiel,  see my post on 8/15/18 on page 74 of this thread. It would appear that the Bryston’s might have been better equipped to deal with the earlier Thiel’s better than the more recent ones.

FWIW, I preferred the sealed box CS 5’s to the 7’s.

unsound - point taken. Sealed box bass is more phase correct. I like it too. The brutally low impedance of the CS5 deep bass might be ameliorated by a separate amp for the bottom end. Also there is the matter of those huge analog bucket brigade time delay lines for the lower and upper midrange drivers - even with very high quality caps, there is a hypothetical veil.  I wanted a geometric solution of concave driver plane mounting. But small companies can only pull so much out of their collective sleeve under real-time development budgets and schedules. Fact is: Jim was enamored with the bucket brigade delay which he had independently "invented" before learning it was already 'out there'. And he didn't accept any down-side beyond cost. CS5.2? 

Do you have an amp to drive the CS5 well?