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24.20.100.228
Or maybe you will, I'm sure these were not near as good as your newer ones!.Just preferred a Sunburst finish to match my Strat.
Where's those marshmallows....
Edits: 06/11/22 06/11/22Follow Ups:
Definitely a Sunburst finish.
I've been partial to the time/phase coherent designs of Thiel, Vandersteen, and Dunlavy, having owned examples of all of them.
However my Thiels (O3A) and all subsequent versions I heard at audio shows seemed unnaturally bright to me. Comments here possibly explain that.
"The only cats worth anything are the cats who take chances. Sometimes I play things I never heard myself." Thelonious Monk
dahlquist dq10s were the king of that description for me. properly driven by a Hafler 500, they were incredible. add a real sub like a Rythmik and you got it!
...regards...tr
...a Thiel 03A from the 1970's? Those were my first "high end" speakers. Looks a lot like it from memory.
nt
...to tame the hot high end. I found a Peerless tweeter that worked well electrically and didn't cause my ears to bleed. Never had any issues with the other two drivers.
Back in the day I was told, on excellent authority, that Jim Thiel voiced all his loudspeakers in his home listening room.
My recollection of what I was told was that the listening room was 34 feet long and perhaps 19 feet wide, and that the loudspeaker and listening positions were basically the two focal points of an ellipse that could fit into that floor plan... which unavoidably meant that all the reflections at the listening positions were later than 11msec, and so there was no early-boundary treble reinforcement other than the floor.
And so, in order to get a 'natural' balance at the listening position, the treble had to be goosed up quite a bit.
Which is why Bob Ludwig's Egglestonworks Ivys had to be voiced for his room, which had about the same footprint, but a VERY tall ceiling as well.
'O, wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!'
--Burns.
jm
My first Thiels were 2 2s and I found them to be slightly warm. I was reading over on the audiogon Thiel thread and someone mentioned this and Tom Thiel said it was true and that it was due to them being the first Thiels with the passive radiator and there was some sort of error in calculation or manufacturing that caused it. (I'm not 100% sure I'm remembering the cause correctly) It was popular with consumers but Jim always considered it a failure. I've had several Thiel models and didn't find any of them bright. The last speakers I owned that I considered bright were B&W nautilus line. I noticed that JA found the 2 2s bright but didn't think the same of the B&W Nautilus line and I lost all respect for his ability to evaluate speakers. Biased, deaf, paid, no idea but his opinions on audio lost all meaning. A lot of people like rolled off high frequency and that's fine. It's just a function of distance since highs diminish faster. Maybe Thiels can be bright with inadequate amplification or something but if you're looking for transparency at a price they're spectacular. They're not for extreme dynamics. Get something else for that. But for moderate scale unamplified music they're top of the class.
The one time I heard Tiel speakers in the late 90's with Spectral Electronics in a dealer showroom, they sounded very "bright." I did not care for the sound of the tilted high frequencies.
Before burn-in, my Thiel CS3.7 speakers sounded bright, too. After a month or so the highs calmed down and they sounded very well balanced from top to bottom with the exception of deep bass. That's why I bought a pair of Rythmik Servo Subs. The subs seemed to blend perfectly with the Thiel's and my Thiel/Rythmik combination became the best sounding speaker system I've ever owned.
Adaptation seems more likely.
I've always suspected the change was in us and not the speaker.
-Wendell
I think you're right!
I know the speakers improved because my built-in HDTV speakers sounded better than the Thiel's when they were brand new. Even my wife thought the HDTV speakers sounded better. Now there's no comparison.
The Thiel's sound spectacular compared to my HDTV speakers. It took about a month, though. Then, the Thiel's just kept improving during the whole first year. I wouldn't be surprised if part of that improvement was due to adaptation. However, the Thiel manual states that they require 400 playing hours to fully burn-in.
Best regards,
John Elison
Always good to see a Thiel Audio discussion here!
...that makes sense based on the reputation of a lifted treble response in Thiel speakers. When I bought those 03A's, I had no idea about that treble anomaly. I just bought the salesguy's rap about the audiophile qualities of the brand and I liked what I heard in the showroom. But over the ensuing months and years after purchase, listener fatigue was an issue to the point where actually found a suitable tweeter replacement for the tweeters and got a better result in my room. That experiment launched me on my own speaker building quest which resulted in a speaker that I demo'd at the Chicago CES in 1986 (The Shannonbrooke Model I). A story for another day.
Back to to the Theil 03A's, their use of an active equalizer between preamp and amp was, I think, a bit novel at that time. After all these years, I am now using a speaker that sort of mirrors that one (i.e. time and phase coherent with, in this case, a passive equalizer) - Vandersteen Quattro Wood CT's. In my fully treated listening room, the Vandy's are nearly perfect as driven by a Cary SLP-05 pre and Manley Snapper monoblocks. I am blessed!
Yeah, I don't care for speakers with flat sides and sharp corners. A speaker not only has to sound good, but it needs to look good, too. These are two of the speaker models I own today.
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