Thiel SCS4
My cable broke.
The last time I bought stereo equipment it was 1999 and the MP3 revolution was still a year away. I was in the bathroom when an acrid smell wafted through the house. My Sansui burned up. My trusted integrated amp was no more. And unwilling to live without sound in my house for a single moment I went up to the hi-fi store and replaced it. Not that they wanted to sell me a stereo amp. Was I sure that I didn’t want home theatre?
No.
TV is something you see, music is something you hear. It was mixed for two speakers and that was all I needed.
And this transaction begat a conversation about cables. And they convinced me to lay down for some ultra-thick jobbies that they cut on the spot and I went home and experienced top notch sound. For a year or so. And then everything emanated from the desktop, Napster eclipsed CDs and MP3s ruled.
Now unlike Guerinot I saved my CDs, and all my vinyl. But I’ve been thinking about selling the CDs recently, they sound so lousy to begin with.
But today I’m glad I kept them. Because through these Thiel SCS4s, they sound MARVELOUS!
I got an e-mail from somebody I don’t know wondering if I wanted to audition them. The speakers, the Thiel SCS4s. He was an intermediary, someone who knew the family, who’d recommended them to a couple of rock stars, you’d recognize the names, I was sworn to secrecy.
I said sure.
And schlepping them from my girlfriend’s house where I had them delivered to mine just about gave me a hernia. The pain in my gut woke me up the following morning. So I wasn’t eager to finish the job. But I set aside today for the task.
But as I was plugging in one of those expensive cables I noticed something…the connection had come undone. And not being a crimping expert, not having the appropriate tools to rebuild the connection, I started rummaging through a cardboard box so old the sides had collapsed, looking for my old speaker wire, from the seventies.
It was unfindable. So I went with even a narrower gauge. No, not that clear stuff, but just a bit heavier lamp wire.
And I’d like to say the hookup was easy. But there’s so little room and so much dust I was getting more frustrated by the minute.
But stunningly, when I hit the on switch, I got sound.
Now these speakers are not that big. Not as large as the JBLs I set them upon, with woofers that can shake the house. They’re heavy, but they don’t dominate, only a true nitpicker would have a problem with them being displayed.
But there’s a clarity and enough punch. And what emanates from these speakers is MUSIC! You remember music, don’t you? Not that white noise that comes from earbuds, not that bass-heavy thump that comes from Beats headphones, but that sweet sound that goes straight to your core, makes you feel all gooey inside, makes you feel positively alive.
It’s like we listen with steel wool in our ears. There’s so much garbage between the sound and our ears that we lose touch with the essence. It’s like going around with dirty glasses. Would you watch the flat panel with these?
And remember that first HD experience? Most of today’s listeners have never had that with music. That jaw-dropping wow. That eureka moment. That startling sensation that you’re living on the cutting edge.
Now this guy sent me these Thiels because he thought they were affordable.
They’re $1190 apiece. And that might sound like a lot, but back in the seventies we spent $333 apiece for our JBL L100s, and with the pace of inflation, these cost less.
Then again, you do need an amplifier, a CD player.
I’m running an NAD 317, with 80 watts per channel into 8 ohms. And if you know NAD, that’s a very conservative statistic, if you want to compare it to the crap, double that number, maybe add even more:
And I’ve got a Sony CDP-XA20ES CD player. It only stores one disc at a time, and it utilizes a weight and the CD moves, not the lens, and you can read a review here:
And you’ll notice that the Sony is over a decade old and cost $700 back when.
And the NAD was just a bit more expensive.
But this is cheap in the realm of stereo aficionados.
But you don’t even need an amp and CD player this good.
For $3500, you could build quite a system.
WHAT?
Then you have no idea what plasma televisions cost when they were introduced. Not everybody owned one, but enough people were blown away at their early adopter friend’s house that they purchased too and the price came down.
So, if we all went out and bought stereo, I imagine price points would drop.
But you still might not be able to afford these Thiels.
But if you can…
I’m hearing stuff I never knew existed on albums I know by heart. It reminds me of way back when when we listened deep, when music didn’t bounce off of us, when we put on our thinking caps and dove in, marinating in the experience.
