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DIY help on Speakers Stands

I am working on building some speakers stands for my B&W floor standing speakers.

Here is what I am planning:
4 brass cones per stand.
Some kind of wood base
4 vibrapods on top of the base.
Speaker on top of the Vibrapods.

I have 2 reason for making the stands
1) The tweeters are about 2-3" lower than ear level when sitting. These stands should bring them close to ear-level.

2) I wan to use vibrapods under the speakers and since I have pile carpet under the speakers I need some kind of platform to put the pods and the speaker on. Hence the stand.

My questions are these:

I am looking at a few kinds of wood for the platforms.

1) I can get hardwood wood planks and glue them up to make platform. It would be about 1" thick. To that I would attach the cones.

2) Use 3/4" MDF and paint it. To that I would again attach the cones.

Do you think that there would be any difference in the sound between MDF and hardwood? Reason for asking is that the hardwood costs about 10x as much as MDF.

How much larger do I have to make the stand than the footprint of the speaker? I.e. do I want to have the stand a 1/2" larger in all directions? Or do I want the stand dimensions the same as the speaker?

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Jeff
hiroshima
3 responses Add your response
slipknot1
1,423 posts
 
Are you committed to using wood? If so, I would suggest rock maple. You may be able to get 1 inch to 1 1/2 inch thick slabs like the BoosBlock.

If you are not committed to using wood, look into getting some 1 inch thick granite slabs from a local dealer that does kitchen counter work. They may have some scrap laying around that you can have cut to size fairly inexpensively.

It will be easier to get threaded cones mounted to maple than it will for granite, but, there are several folks who post here who do use the slabs of stone as bases for their speakers.
pcs
109 posts
 
HI Jeff,

I made my own stands for my B&W 802 series 3 speakers as follows.

I bought a 12"x15"x1" piece of maple butcher block at Menards (local Home Depot type). I bought 1/4" thick rolls of cork at Ben Franklin craft store. I glued the cork to the butcher blocks. I added brass cones from ACI that I replaced the insert with a wood screw type dowel. The cones are about 1.5 " high, plus the wood/cork. I put the factory 802 spikes in the threaded spot on the speakers and set them on top directly into the cork.

The result is the speakers are raised about 3" and are rock solid. The look is not good. I intend to go back to the lumber yard and put some molding around the base to finish it off.

For my two cents, I thought this worked well. Much was plagerized from the Mapleshade website.

Regards,
Paul
speakerdude2000
44 posts
 
Greetings Jeff, I agree with the two prior posts about using Maple if you must use wood. My question is: why not just get 2"-3" cones and be done with it? The cones alone will sound much better than using the cone/block/vibrapod combination. A-gon member esoler makes great sounding stainless steel cones at a resonable price. If you insist on making a stand, skip the vibrapods use cones. I hope this helps. Happy Listening! John
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