That a non-floorstanding speaker could be placed anywhere in a room high or low posed a challenge to THIEL’s firmly held notion that time and phase coherence were essential to audio fidelity. The solution, a single coaxial/coincident driver array had its own challenges that THIEL progressively sought to remediate through each iteration.

SCS4, the last of the series, used the most advanced version of our coaxial/coincident driver with an all neodymium powered motor, the same tweeter as CS3.7, and a high power handling voice coil. It also featured a very heavy die-cast aluminum baffle that was more resistant to resonances than any of the previous all-MDF versions.

The desire to keep the price low drove many production decisions for this model, but much to THIEL’s credit, SCS4 still outperformed the SCS3. SCS4 was only available in 3 finishes, Natural Cherry, Dark Cherry, and Black Ash. THIEL briefly produced SCS4s entirely at a contract manufacturer in China, but their inability to meet quality standards eventually led to re-shoring production at the Lexington facility.

Each iteration of SCS was equally well suited to stereo pairing and use as a home theater center channel. SCS4 was more frequently used in home theater than any previous model. Perhaps this was due as much to the company’s circumstances as the product or anything else. THIEL’s dealer base in the USA had more custom integrators than ever before, and we had opened our first national catalogs – Audio Advisor and Crutchfield. For the first time ever, we were more likely to ship speakers in quantities of three or five than two.

In fact, a set of 5 or 7 SCS4s plus a SmartSub became quite well known as a home theater of choice. Steven Guttenberg wrote for Home Theater magazine that “the continuousness of the surround field was better than I’ve ever before heard at home”.

Indisputably, THIEL was a more important brand among music focused audiophiles than home theater enthusiasts. But Jim’s interest was in reproducing sound as accurately as possible, not just music. That SCS4 could live so comfortably with music or movies, on a shelf or on a stand makes this model one of THIEL’s most remarkable.