Wooden Speaker Stands

Posted by: NJB on 27 July 2018

i have obtained a pair of hard wood pillars from a local wood yard and plan to use them for speaker stands.  My intention is to use isolating feet so that I do not couple too much into the floor (trying to be a fair neighbour) and blutack the speaker to the top.  I like the idea of wood as it avoids any ringing issues with metal and just appears more inert to resonance.  Is my plan ok? Or should I couple to the floor as well?

Posted on: 28 July 2018 by Mike1951

I take it you're using hardwood for stiffness? I have a pair of MDF Quadraspires.

My first impression, having set them up, is that they are the very opposite of that. They wobble about alarmingly from side to side,  but only slightly from front to back.

I guess that this is matched to the 'set-back' placing of the speakers - the stand's one-piece column angles back towards the wall and of course any energy from movement is dispersed along this plane, front to back. 

Apparently they are tuned to soak up any reaction to cone movement rather than keep it at the box...

The higher-priced equivalents (same configuration) are made of bamboo!

Quite anti-intuitive.  Go figure.  ????

Posted on: 28 July 2018 by NJB

I have set them up and the initial impressions are good.  The bass is very clear and defined; much better than with the heavy metal stands that they have replaced.  I now need to work on giving them some kind of WAF, sanding and varnishing is the order of the day!

Posted on: 28 July 2018 by Mike1951

Photo!

Posted on: 29 July 2018 by NJB

I wish that I knew how to insert pictures, but I don’t.  To be fair, they are not very impressive to look at.  Which is why they need sanding etc.

Posted on: 29 July 2018 by yeti42

I put Herbies Gliders under the feet of the floor standers (Thiel cs1.6) I have a our flat in France to try and limit the sound reaching the flat below. No idea if they actually succeed in doing so but I’d rather not go to the expense of Townhend though I have their feet on a turntable (an Elite Rock modified to take them) with great success. On first using the Herbies the sound was really harsh but after a break of a couple of months between visits the sound had lost all the harshness, in fact it’s the best I’ve heard those speakers, which used to be in my main system until I bought NBLs.