Thiel Owners
tomthiel
, Nice observation re spruce soundboards. Although I've pretty much retired from "the scene," I spent many years as a professional classical guitarist. My instrument has a Sitka top. If left unplayed for any longish interval, it sounds terrible at first, and takes days to open up. But open up it does. It is an enormous difference. That's why I choose spruce and not cedar. Cedar tops have a more colored sound, loose vitality as they age, etc. But this is just like my system with the 3.7s. Sounds small and uninviting if not played in a while, but after some hours back in play -- whoa! Todd |
@jafant I heard the Bryston 4B3 + BP17 Cubed with Vandersteen a few weeks ago at a very high end shop. Being a previous Bryston owner I am familiar with the sound. The top end was definitely less harsh and the sound and soundstage was similar to the Benchmark AHB2 (which I just sold). The only thing that struck me as a negative was that the sound was not projected out from the speakers as much as with the Mark Levinson 585 integrated that I heard 20 minutes earlier at another shop. I noticed the same thing with the AHB2 when I compered it to the ML 585 and Magico A3 (same room same gear). I spoke to Gary Dayton of Bryston and he said that the BP 17 is the best sounding preamp in the lineup now and that the BP-26 will get cubed soon. |
Jay - I left Thiel Audio in 1995, so I don't have current brand information. But, my comments may provide some perspective. Jim's method was to work on the speaker, rather than finding a magic synergy of the whole system. In shopping cables, he devised some pulse testing with an oscilloscope to see reactance behavior. He also measured inductance, impedance and so forth. He wanted cables that acted "properly". The speaker measuring position in the lab was about 30' from the source bench. He ran long balanced interconnects to the power amp right under the speaker tower - probably about 5' cables. Early brand was StraightWire, since we knew they used 6-9s copper and made cables properly. Thiel continued using their twisted pair hookup wire until the end. Jim tested and rejected the various terminated cable systems, wanting to keep that user complication out of the equation. In the development of the 3.7 (and possibly before) he used Goertz flat wire. I don't know whether he used their capacitive termination. I might add that we listened to lots of cables and rejected most as some form of euphonic brew. I also know we rejected some good cables as seeming over-priced referenced to our view of high-value. I can also say that we knew quite a bit about dielectric behavior and alloy / process, so we applied that knowledge to rule out contenders. We also chose cables that did not misbehave (often mechanically) when delivering high current, since our speakers drew such loads. I'm sorry I can't be more helpful. My time was a long time ago. I do have a relevant story. In the late 70s, we did the wire gauge, low resistance approach. By 1983 we were using my home-brew 0-gauge copper welding cables, and thought they performed well compared to Monster Cable. Remember "wire" was not really much of entity then. At the 1983 CES we introduced the CS3. The "night before", we manufacturers would make the rounds and this year "the group" collected in Thiel's suite to compare notes. We always had high-end European recordists who used our speakers as reference monitors and enjoyed us playing their studio tapes. Long story shortened, Ray Kimber brought prototype speaker cables at $1000 / pair foot. We compared them to Monster and our home-brews. Everyone had an OMG moment. That changed our minds radically about what was possible. They had silicone treatment applied to each conductor as the braid was formed. They worked astoundingly well and incorporated Kimber into our lab at that time. All for now. |
