About Helmut Thiele

Helmut Thiele, Industrial Designer

Helmut Thiele is a designer with a strong technical background. He completed his studies in industrial design in 1978 with a diploma thesis on a record player with a unipivot tonearm. During his professional career, he worked as a designer and developer for many industries. Products in the field of consumer goods, capital goods, furniture, tools, electronic measuring instruments and many others were created.
He worked as a designer and also as a constructor with profound knowledge of materials and manufacturing processes. For many years, he has intensively used 3D CAD technology for his design drafts and constructions.
However, hi-fi products have always been a particular focus, with experience from all other industries flowing in over decades.

Career & projects

For more than 10 years Helmut Thiele has been the main designer and developer for the Thorens brand, in this cooperation he developed the Thorens TD 309, followed by TD203, TD206, TD209.
Further complete developments were the TD900 series, TD1600 and the latest product TD1500.
He also developed the TP124 and TP150 tonearms in addition to the TP92 and TP88 tonearms.
In cooperation with the development department of Audio Technica, the pickup-cartridges
TAS 1600 and TAS 1500 were developed.

For the TAD brand, he developed the Excalibur pickup-cartridge series with a Japanese manufacturer.

For the Genuin Audio brand, he developed the DRIVE turntable and the POINT tonearm.
These turntables and tonearms are also produced by Helmut Thiele.
Other works for Genuin are the NEO and AVA active loudspeakers.

The latest products are Hifi racks for THIXAR.

the first own products

In 2009, he began designing a tangential tonearm that he wanted to produce as his own product. After the first prototypes in 2009, this concept was gradually developed and optimised and after the last prototypes in 2020, the production of the first series of Thiele TA01 tonearms began. The development of the Thiele TT01 turntable as the basis for the tonearm began in 2019 and the first series was created together with the tonearms in 2021.

He worked for brands such as:

Acapella, Michaelson&Austin, Tannoy, Mordaunt Short, Pioneer, Marantz, Acoustic Research, Jensen, Parasound, ALR, Phonosophie, Vincent, Phase Linear, Mac Audio, Oehlbach as a designer, for many projects also as a constructor.

For more than 25 years he has been the main designer and developer for all products of the Magnat and HECO brands, during which time loudspeakers, headphones, amplifiers, CD players and turntables were created.

Designed products