Anyone made their own speaker mounts for walls?

May 12, 2004 11:00 AM

anyone made their own speaker mounts for walls? i can't find any to buy here and am considering what i can make myself (i don't own a welder, but could buy one and have done welding in the past - i also have assorted woodworking/handyman tools). i'm assuming that a fairly rigid mount is important for sound quality, would like it to look good, probably be adjustable for toe-in, and the speakers are fairly large/heavy (b&w 602s2). advice, please.

[pushes door open, looks around. runs finger along dusty tabletop. straightens a chair. flicks off the light switch. leaves]

posted by andrew cooke to home & garden (7 comments total)

I've done this with a few pair of especially hefty steel L brackets and some 3/4" bolts, but this was with a speaker (the NHT SuperOne) which is especially easy to mount.

One bracket is bolted into the wall, the other bolted into the speaker, and the two are joined together in a U shape by yet another bolt. Toe can be adjusted by loosening the bolt, making the adjustment and re-tightening. Pitch angle adjustments, however, involve pretty much Bending The Crap Out Of The Bracket.

The speakers wind up being some distance from the wall -- in my case about five inches -- but for $2 per speaker, it worked well and particularly for speakers which sound good in isolation and don't need backing.
posted by majick at 4:16 PM on May 12, 2004

i'd need Ls top and bottom, i think, for the weight, which would make pitch even harder to adjust. did you drill a hole in the speakers for the mounting? hmmm. i'll take a trip to the local diy store and see what angle brackets they have. thanks.
posted by andrew cooke at 5:36 PM on May 12, 2004

I have mounted heavy speakers on hinges fixed to the wall with toggle bolts before, which works quite well and allows you to adjust the angle that the speakers face. You can mount the hinges on the back of the speaker box, meaning that you don't do any visible damage to the boxes if you want to use them elsewhere later.
posted by dg at 11:31 PM on May 12, 2004

ok, i think i'm going for hinges on the inside, with the speaker resting on an L on the other side to take the weight. thanks for the suggestions.
posted by andrew cooke at 11:41 AM on May 13, 2004

well, here's what i finally did, on the off chance that anyone ever reads this...

the speakers are b&w 602s, so they're rather big. not floor standing, but bigger than speakers that aren't floor standing normally are, if you see what i mean.

i used, for each speaker, two of those metal strips that support shelves, with four of the shelf supports. the two metal strips (a bit less than a metre long) are screwed vertically on the wall, 5cm apart, with 4 screws each into plastic plugs in relatively hard plaster.

two shelf supports are hooked into these two strips fairly low down. on those, sits a cross-shaped "shelf" made from a 30cm piece of 4x1 and a 25 cm piece of 4x1, crossing at the end near the wall. where they cross the two pieces of wood are cut away (with a chisel) so that they lie on the same plane.

so far, then, we have a very odd looking shelf that sticks out further than it is wide, except for a wider part at the back. on the three longest arms of this shelf are inverted feet for desks. the speaker sits on these three feet. the shelf itself is bolted to the shelf supports with four thin bolts.

above the speaker, the same thing is repeated, only without the cross piece, and inverted. so above the speaker is another thin, sticking out shelf, but hanging upside down from the shelf supports (which are also upside down and would normally fall out of the metal strips they clip into except that...

...between the top shelf and the speaker is another foot from a desk. this one is adjustable, and is "extended" so that is pressed firmly down onto the top of the speaker. this, in turn, presses the top upside-down shelf "up", and stops the supports from falling off.

maybe i need a photograph.

the point is, if you followed that, that the speaker is clamped in place by the top "foot", but has not been damaged in any way (no screw holes etc). it also possible to adjust the speakers by unclamping them and shifting them on the feet - they are currently angled in a little.
posted by andrew cooke at 6:28 PM on May 30, 2004

pictures! (self link, obviously)
posted by andrew cooke at 10:30 AM on June 1, 2004

Nice work, andrew cooke. Much more elaborate than I would have done, but it certainly achieves the goal of not damaging the speakers in any way. Thanks for the update.
posted by dg at 4:42 PM on June 1, 2004