Heavy speakers: How to be able to reposition?


I suppose this is an odd question but, here goes...

Perhaps unlike other audiophiles, I play with speaker positioning occasionally. I have a pair of Acoustat 1+1s which are very sensitive to room placement. The upside to that sensitivity is I can easily play with the sound stage they present. And as they are easily moved, I do so every few months to enjoy a wider or narrower, more intimate stage. It's rather fun actually.

In a very few years however, my wife and I will be moving into our retirement home. There I will have exclusive use of an appropriate sized room for my audio salon where I can install my pop's B&W Matrix 800's. Weighing in at almost 250lbs each moving them around seems rather daunting to me.

What do people with heavy transducers do to facilitate moving them around?

I know, you're wondering why I'm thinking about this now. It's simple really. Being retired I can start thinking about details like this now so I don't have to then! I'm already working on my rack design, electrical, etc. so when the time comes, I can hit the ground running. 😉 Thanks!

Happy listening.

128x128musicfan2349

All good solutions!

But… I realized there were more considerations than just moving around the room after I ordered a pair of Aeris speakers for my lake house!  After I thought about it a bit - I realized there were going to be a lot of other issues to cope with:  getting them into the house, unpacking them, uncoupling them from the floor over the crawl space, and when I sold them packing them securely, getting them out of the house to a safe shipper, etc, etc… 

The Aeris is one of the best sounding speakers <$100 000 - and I realized that no matter how great they sounded, or what a great deal I had made for them - unless I was prepared to spend a lot more money coping with their size and weight (which I wasn’t) - I was better off with smaller speakers with a big sound.  So, I got the Calibres instead - still very much the same sound - without all those issues.

There are a lot of smaller speakers which sound as good as most of the greats that are much easier to manage (eg. LRS+ modded, LX521.4 which is in manageable pieces, Harbeths, etc, etc).

When we are young and bench press 300 lbs we might be able to cope with all of that.  But… “that ain’t me.”

Sometimes it makes sense to compromise our specs to achieve about the same sound in a more practical manner.

@bassdude Those are all good points. The 800s come in five specially built Danish wood cabinets. And I haven’t even started in on the rest of the gear! The thing is here, this gear all belonged to my pop. Would I have chosen it? No, likely not. It took me four months to find a house with 8’ ceilings for my Acoustats. 

But it’s all in my care for now so I’m going to enjoy it as soon as I can. 

Happy listening. 

A pneumatic tire sturdy hand truck. Period. Nothing works as well or as quickly and easily once you learn how to use it. Keep a clean utility blanket around to not scratch anything and you’re done. I’ve moved very heavy stuff to set up concert systems for decades, and have had a hand truck at home seemingly forever. Dollys require lifting things onto and off of them...not recommended.

I installed 2" swivel rubber wheels on my large heavy speakers and I can easily move the speakers into position, or out of the way to use different speakers. I cannot detect a difference in music using those wheels vs spikes on the speakers, which surprised me.