Thiel cs2.4 upgrade to cs 2.4 se

The original CS2.4, as best as I can tell, had 13uF + 1uF and 27uF + 1uF in the tweeter feed

I have not seen the xover in person myself (though hopefully soon), but does anyone know which one is in series and which is in shunt?  

The caps in series make a lot more difference in sound quality.  It may not be worth it to upgrade the one in shunt since the improvement is minimal.

Thanks for the pictures and upgrade info.  I am seriously planning to do the upgrade, but if I screw up removing the passive radiator, it's a one way street.

I would advise if you would go to the trouble doing the upgrade, I would recommend using at least Mundorf Supreme or Jantzen high end caps.

It's very interesting to me that most high end speakers, even those that cost 20K or more, the xover components are not very high end.  Good caps and resistors really make a difference.

More pictures,
https://holco.picturepush.com/album/1171389/p-Thiel-CS-2.4.html

The picture of the xover seems to show the binding posts are at the bottom of the cabinet.  As far as I know, all Thiel CS2.4s have the binding posts at the back of the cabinet.

After much research and consideration, Tom Thiel has settled on Clarity CSAs for the upgrade.

I think the decision probably comes down to cost/performance ratio.  If you were to do the upgrading yourself, I would highly recommend something like Mundorf Supreme or some of Jantzen high end caps.

He even has a custom low voltage version to replace the electrolytics.

My guess is the electrolytics caps are in the shunt signal path so it may not be critical.  Also, they tend to be of very high value (like 50uf or 100uf higher).  So it may be expensive to replace them with poly cap.  For example, a 100uf Clarity CSA cap is about $100 dollars.

Thank you beetlemania. Your insights are very helpful. I was looking to get to work on it next week, but since my handy skills are that of a caveman, I am not sure I can have it finished any time soon.

But I will post my upgrade results once everything is finished. I will probably go with Mundorf MCap Supreme since I’ve had very good results with some of my works. It’s sort of my go to caps. They may be somewhat expensive but definitely worth the price.

Also if anyone has any more picture of the xover, it would be very helpful.

http://www.humblehomemadehifi.com/Cap.html

I always wonder how he had time to go over all of those caps.  Reading his reviews is a humbling experience.  

I gave heavy consideration to the Mcap supreme. It’s said to be quite good. One reason I’m going with Clarity is that Jim Thiel et al. did many comparisons when picking caps for the SE version. I don’t know if they tried Mundorfs but probably. They chose the Clarity SA as the best and that cap has been upgraded by two generations now.

I used the older Clarity SA caps in the past, but apparently there is a newer type (CSA) that they claim to have the "CopperConnect" technology.  This supposedly improves the sound over the previous version.

For those who would like to try Mundorf supreme cap but has been deterred by the high cost, you can do 50% mundorf and 50% clarity which would be more cost effective but still have very good sound.

The degradation of the low-end is not something I experienced, I would even say that for the modification the low/mid was leading at the mid/high and there is now a better balance.

It's possible that the mod may have lifted mid a bit so relatively the perceived bass is a bit diminished.  

A measured of 30.1ohm on the coax xover makes sense.  Based on the coax xover schematic, there is a 30ohm resistor in series with the resistance of the 0.15mh.  The typical resistance of a 0.15mh inductor is probably in the range of 0.1 - 0.3 Ohm.  So if you add both together, it's about in the range of 30.1 - 30.3 Ohm.

In my experience, Clarity cap tends to sound slightly mid range forward.  The CS2.4 driver being very transparent so this may explain the perceived lower bass response balance.

Hi beetlemania,

As for the cables, I was wondering if you also changed the cables that go from the xover boards to the coax and bass drivers?

Thanks.

Thank you beetlemania.

what a piece of wire can do ;)

That's what I've been saying all along.  One probably has to be pretty "cable callous" not to believe. :-)

IME, put the crossover outboard improve clarity.

I think there may be an aesthetic issue.  One of the thing I like the most about the CS2.4 is its well-proportioned.  They look just right.  With an outboard xover box, that could be an issue ... at least for me.

Beetle regardding outboard xo's didn't Tom say something about the length of the wire to the drivers form the xo being significant to the design? Maybe not. If there is no adjustments for design criteria going to an outboard xo I would rather get outboard if it has the most sound advantages.

That is true that given the same configuration, having an outboard xo will require a slightly longer wire run from the outboard outputs to the driver inputs.

But if you're going outboard, you will have to modify the binding posts to bi-wire anyway.  And if you're brave enough, you could place the bind posts on the back panel right behind the drivers (by drilling a few holes) which will shorten the wire run to the point which it will not be an issue.

I don't follow this. Why would you not be able to choose either single *or* dual binding posts? Why would outboard eliminate a solution with a single BP?

If you have an outboard xo, then you would need two separate wire runs from the outboard - one for the coax and one for the bass driver.  Therefore you would need one pair of binding posts for the coax and one for the bass driver to connect the wires from the outboard.  Otherwise how else could you connect the wires going to the drivers?