Thiel Owners

tomthiel.

I remember that Kimber fire hose very well. It was called Black Pearl. At the time it was the most hideously expensive (but very pretty) cable I had ever seen. 

Did some of you change the original binding posts for aftermarket ones like Mundorf gold plated pure copper ?

And would that make any difference ?

roxy - regarding speaker cables.

I've been out of the flow and the shows and the budgets to audition or live with 'serious' cables for some decades. But the first generation predecessors of those 'Black Pearls' from an 80s CES rings clear in my memory 40 years on. Also, I heard real Black Pearls in 2012 at the Thiel Listening Room when comparing CS3.7s to the newly finalized CS2.7s. The sound was the best that I've ever heard. I didn't peruse the gear, but I have found out that the Black Pearls were the speaker cables in use.

thieliste

I installed Cardas silver/rhodium with gold nuts , or CCGR posts .

This was one of the first things I did during the upgrade ,

I didn't notice a difference , maybe if it was the last thing done then possibly a difference could be heard . 

thieliste - while you’re waiting for hands-on experience to chime in, I can provide some history.

Early-on (1978 model 03) we discovered the deleterious effects of eddy currents, first in steel driver baskets and later in aluminum voice coil formers. Part of that exploration over the years included binding posts. Either in direct power transmission or the secondary effects of changing magnetic fields, back-currents are generated from reflections and discontinuities along and near the signal path. Best practice is to keep cross-sectional geometry and resistances as even and smooth as possible to avoid distortion. Thiel kept its plastic-capped binding posts a very long time, and reviewers consistently took pot-shots for their ’RadioShack cheapness’. Fact is they weren’t cheap, and they outperformed most bigger, bulkier, brass rigs.

Somewhere around the CS1.6, Thiel converted to big, brass, gold-plated posts to praise from reviewers. I haven’t directly compared their sound quality to the ’old style’, but I will. I did hear that Kathy deemed the change as more politically expedient than trying to educate reviewers, dealers and customers.

Note that some of the high end posts have plastic caps. Danny Richie of GR-Research invented and sells a tube connector for the reasons outlined above. Some amp companies tried and rejected big metal posts.

My recommendation is something with approximately similar cross-section and conductivity to your cables and/or internal speaker wiring to avoid electrical reflections and resulting eddy currents. Copper would be a plus. A disadvantage to gold is the typical nickel under-plating which many consider to sound bad. Simple, small and high conductivity are pluses of course.