What's wrong with Thiel?

All good points above. Matching amplifiers is important not just for Thiels if you want to approach perfection. A speaker that works well with a lot of amplifiers is less likely to be great with any one amplifier. Just like Pavarotti is great at opera, he is not very good with other music styles. Where as the girl that won the America idol competition can sing many styles well, but she is unlikely to be great at any one style.

So think in terms of a whole system, not individual components.

At a local dealer while the 2.3 was hooked up, somebody did make a comment that it was bright and nasty. When I looked at the amp and speaker wire hooked up to it, I realized that the sound was purely the sound of the amp and wire. Big emphasis an purely. I thought they were awesome. I bet finding hearing what a speaker cable sounds like would be easy with them.
With those, the big question is, what does the amp sound like.

Thiels, love 'em or leave 'em right? I'm one of them that has been stuborn, and stuck with the Thiels. I've own the 1.5s,2 2s, and 3.6s. I am curently driving the 3.6s with Pass Lab Aleph 1 monoblocks 150w, Audiotruth Dragon silver speaker cables, Monarchy 22C DAC,and transport pluged directly to the amp with WireWorld gold Eclpise 2 ICs. Even though all my gear is warm, it did not come together until I incorporated four 11" ASC tube traps in my small 19'X 12' listening room. Room treatment was my best upgrade!

Sweet is not a word you hear often to describe Thiels. Believe it or not my Thiels are often Sweet. Nothing wrong with that..........!

Have you hugged your Tube Traps lately?????

I have a pair of Thiel CS 2.2 rosewood speakers with original double packaging boxes and all correct inserts. I am very motivated to sell these speakers at a realistic price. The fabric on the grills is loose in a couple of places and the passive radiators need to be glued back into place. I really do not have any space for such a project and have not used the speakers (in favour of my Audio Note speakers and little tube amp) in quite some time so I just want to sell them.

If you are handy with glue you can get these speakers for a Very Reasonable Price.

Let me know. By the way, all those comments about Thiels are true. I used to use a Levinson M 27.5 to drive these speakers and felt no need for a subwoofer and they sounded great and played both soft and very loud. I returned to the tube world and that is why they are available.

Regards,
Carl

Sugarbrie - I would definitely agree with you that matching amplifiers and speakers is important in the case of every speaker, not just Thiel's. However I would like to rephrase your next statement. I do not believe it is fair to say that a speaker which will run on a wide variety of amps cannot sound as good as a speaker which is more limited insofar as which amps will drive it properly. There are many wonderful speakers which have a relatively benign load and sound as good as Thiel's (different - but just as good) But I think perhaps what you were getting at is that a speaker which is unable to reveal the differences between two amplifiers is clearly inferior to one which is able to do so.

Incidentally as somebody pointed out - the newest Thiel speakers are starting to sound a little warmer and will not sound as bright even on brighter amplifiers. Also the impedance characteristics of these new speakers is considerably more benign than any previous Thiel. I think Jim Thiel may be making an effort to develop a speaker which is a little less picky about the amps which drive it - we may see a tube friendly Thiel yet.