By the time the CS.5 was introduced in 1994, its larger sibling, the CS1.5 was a year old and THIEL was well established in the audiophile pantheon. Besides obvious notoriety for producing time and phase coherent loudspeakers, THIEL sound quality was improving rapidly due to innovations in cabinet build quality, crossover component quality, short coil / long gap drivers, sculpted limited diffraction baffles, and more.

Each of these features was driving up the prices and justifiably so! Reviews and customer satisfaction were extremely high. Even still, THIEL wished to answer the call for a less expensive more accessible model.

This was no small challenge because reducing cost certainly meant sacrificing quality somewhere. So began a study of how to cut quantity, not quality. Ultimately, CS.5 would result in a slightly smaller cabinet than the CS1.5 using a ported bass reflex system instead of a passive radiator, a damped paper cone woofer instead of aluminum and no polystyrene bypass capacitors. Yet the model featured the same neutral tonality, exquisite time and phase coherennce, and enjoyment as our other models. Original retail was $1495 per pair.

When I purchased these in the early summer of this year, the black ash painted cabinets were in rough condition, but they sounded good. Nevertheless, I executed a full restoration plus added some sound quality and convenience improvements.

Original CS.5s had push-in stabilizer spikes. I added threaded inserts and the same spikes used on our former flagship CS5 so it is easier to level the speaker.

The original plastic-nut binding posts were broken off, so I replaced these with solid brass gold plated posts—the same ones found on CS6 and CS7.2 models.

I also relocated the crossover to the lower back wall of the cabinet instead of directly behind the woofer, so the crossover no longer interacts with the magnetic field of the driver. I also added 0.2uF REL-CAP polystyrene bypass capacitors to the tweeter circuit.

All of the woofers and tweeters are brand new and tested. The crossovers and drivers all measure and sound great.

The original grilles were broken, so I built new grilles and covered them with new black grille fabric.

Lastly, rather than paint the ash veneer black once again, I stained and lacquered them to produce beautiful dark brown that almost looks burned. They’re stunning.

Contact us to purchase.