THE HISTORY OF THIEL & PARTNER GMBH

In 1984, Bernhard Thiel, a production engineer at Backes & Müller, invented a process for producing very thin sheets of extremely hard corundum (Al2O3), also known as sapphire. This patented process made it possible to produce very stiff, lightweight and highly damped loudspeaker cones. This new and very hard material allows for loudspeaker drivers with a wider bandwidth, lower distortion and a purer sound than ever before.

Initially, these ceramic drivers were produced exclusively for new Backes & Müller products, but a few years later Bernhard Thiel left B&M and founded his own company, the original Thiel GmbH in Homburg, Germany. His loudspeaker units - at that time only tweeters and midrange drivers - were quickly distributed in the audiophile world and gained a very high reputation for their sonic virtues. Soon these drivers were being used in many of today's high-end loudspeakers.

Backes & Müller, still Bernhard Thiel's main customer, went out of business in 1992. This, of course, created some major problems for the young Thiel GmbH. So Bernhard Thiel started looking for a partner to take care of the commercial side of the business. This partner was found in Adrian Bankewitz, at that time the European distributor of Accuton products and a long-time friend of Bernhard Thiel. He bought the assets of the old Thiel GmbH, put together the production and distribution channels and the new Thiel & Partner GmbH of today was born.
Since those early days, Accuton has experienced continuous growth and expansion.

An article in "Scientific American" in 1999 about the successful production of artificial diamond disks using a newly invented CVD (Chemical Vapor Deposition) process caught the attention of Adrian Bankewitz. Soon after, he established a joint project with the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Physics in Freiburg, Germany. The result was the first tweeter with a pure diamond diaphragm with an absolutely exceptional sound quality, which caught the attention of numerous high end loudspeaker manufacturers. Today, diamond loudspeaker drivers are sold worldwide and are the main source of revenue for Accuton. Diaphragms are available from 20mm to 90mm in diameter.

Not much later, we developed one of the first midrange drivers with a very large, underhung NdFeB magnet system and a titanium voice coil former, which also gained a distinct reputation for an unprecedented impulse response and phenomenal sound quality.

In 2012, we offered a share of the company to Dirk Vaehsen, an exceptionally skilled loudspeaker designer and engineer, who has since redesigned and improved the entire line of drivers we have produced to date. Of particular note is his line of "Cell" drivers, which for the first time ever, create a single acoustic center in the same plane for all of the drivers in a flat front plate.
In 2021, he was promoted to second CEO of Thiel and Partner - leading the company as successor of Adrian Bankewitz into the future.