Thiel Owners

Hi Dave, well I guess that's pretty reassuring. It would indeed be tragic if Jim's designs were allowed to succumb to the ravages of time. I dread the day when I have to look for another speaker. 

I feel the need to make some comments on the CS-3.5 equalizer.  Mine broke a few years ago.  When I sent it to Thiel they said the repair part was no longer available so they sent me a used unit and charged me about $70.  That was big of them to do for speakers approaching 30 years old. 

This year I decided I would like some more clarity, less haze, so I decided to get rid of the equalizer.  I remembered the old Stereophile review where the writer suggested the equalizer had some compromises.  So I bought a Velodyne DD12 sub woofer last summer.  This has some excellent measurement and balancing tools.  I found that my original Thiels wth the equalzer had a bump in the bass response at about 40 hz in my room at my listening position.  I am not willing to rearrange my room for the sake of my audio proclivities.  The Thiels without the equalizer still had a bump at 40 hz.  I set up the sub to flatten out the response curve in the bass.  Subjectively this gave me less bass but it gave me more clarity across the board including the bass.

Today I went back and put the equalizer back in the system and removed the sub  to see if I still felt the same.  I found on a jazz album that had some heavy kick drum and string bass that with the equalizer set at 40 hz. the bass was overwhelming and it rang longer (boomy?)..  I found that on choral music the sopranos were slightly smeared with the equalizer.  On orchestral music the bass seemed a little heavy and the strings were not as clear with the equalizer.  So far I haven't found any downside to replacing the equalizer with the sub woofer that I selected.  Bare in mind that I have a difficult problem with my room setup.

Using the sub I got rid of the equalizer from the signal path, flattened out the bass response, and took some load off of my tube amp (ARC VT100).  I did put a high pass filter in the signal to the Thiels but this appears to be done with a passive filter instead of an active filter since I get the same signal out of the sub with or without power to the sub.  A passive filter maybe does less harm to the signal than an active filter that has transistors or opamps.  I now have an equalizer in the signal path to the sub, but I surmise that an equalizer at these low frequencies is probably less audible than one at high frequencies.

So for a thousand dollars I feel that I made an improvement in my system that I would have had to pay much more for if I had upgraded to different full range speakers.  I can't recommend this as a good upgrade for all CS-3.5 systems since I was starting with a troublesome room and a relatively low-powered tube amp that may be wanting in the low end department.  I do feel  however that getting rid of the equalizer should be strongly considered.  Try playing music with no bottom end without the equalizer and see if strings and sopranos aren't a little cleaner.

Naturally everyone’s mileage will vary on this, according to one’s room and equipment, but I just love how the system sounds with the equalizer in the system.

Even with the equalizer on, you could never describe the 3.5s as bass heavy. What I think it brings to the party is a sort of very refined approach that only lets the Thiels dip low when the musical signal dictates. Some might prefer a more generous bass, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but I love the overall voicing with the equalizer.

As I mentioned earlier, I had a bad experience with the KEF Kube in my 107/2s, so perhaps part of my enthusiasm is that Thiel didn’t make the same compromises with their external unit.

Anyway, I’m pleased that you found a solution that’s right for you, which is all that matters.