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. 

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.