Friday 29 April 2011

Satellite Speaker Stands


The reason I have given 5 stars is due to the price, the height, and excellent functional design. As you know, speaker stands are ridiculously overpriced. These are reasonable.



Speaker wire can be completely hidden. The wire feeds through the stand and comes out the top for connection to your speakers. There is a cool little "U" shape on the front foot where the speaker wire comes out on the bottom. It keeps the speaker wire directed where you want it to be directed on the base. It's a very well thought out design feature that I've not seen on other stands. With tile floors, it makes a big difference for me. It keeps the speaker wire directed under the sofa where I want it so it can't be seen.



Now on to stability-



If you have hard flooring, you will be able to extend the stands all the way up if you screw the speakers to the bottom plate. The base is surprisingly stable and it has rubbery stuff on the bottom to keep it from sliding. If the stands will be on carpet, you may not be able to fully extend them unless you have small speakers. My son's system has small speakers. They are back mounted to the stand with a screw and nut that fit inside a metal bracket that can be removed for screw mount. His speakers are on berber carpet. With his small lightweight speakers he is able to fully extend these with no wobble. Atlantic Satellite 77305018 2 Speaker Stands (Black)

First of all, a decent pair of speaker stands usually cost far more than these. Shopping around I couldn't find anything comparable to these for less than $50 a pair, and most ran closer to $75 a pair. Now the downside, I ordered two pairs of these stands for my front and rear satellite speakers. On one of the stands the indentation on the base for the logo sticker was stamped crooked and two of the clips that hold the bracket down had paint flaking off. The stamping error isn't a big deal and you can't notice unless you look at it close, and the flaking paint on the clips was quickly remedied with some Rustoleum paint. These are small problems, nothing that I mind too much, and certainly not worth detering you from buying these stands. Also, my speakers (Polk Audio RM6750) aren't perfectly flat on all sides and don't mount properly to the stands. The bracket had to be pulled back, and even then the speakers don't sit perfectly flat on the base. But they feel secure enough and I'm not worried about them falling off or anything. Speakers that are more rectangular in shape would probably mount perfectly on these stands though. So just don't expect the world with these stands, if you want something cheap that will hold your small speakers, these can't be beat.

First, the box comes with two stands. So ordering "1" means you get a pair.



Second, mounting speakers: They have a small platform on top of the vertical riser, that has four holes in it that you can run screws into the bottoms of your speakers, if you want. The platform is about 2"X3". Then, there's a bracket of sorts that sticks out the back and runs up the back of your speaker, through which you can slot a bolt(included with washers) and that bolt would mount into the threaded thing on the back of your speakers, if you have one. They give you two thread sizes. The bracket runs about 5" up the back, and is slotted the whole length, so no matter where your hole is, it should work. If they don't include YOUR size bolt, just run to the hardware.



Now my logitech 5500's did not have the bolt hole on the back, so I just used the double stick foam they included, and then zip tied the speaker base to the stand's platform and voila. Very nice.



If they could have pulled out a better mounting scheme for MY particular speakers, I'd have given them a 5!!!



Enjoy.

Speakers Used: Klipsch Promedia Ultra 5.1



Easy to setup...sorta. attaching my speakers on the stands was a bit tricky, but I just tightened the screws a bit more and I feel overall, the stands are very sturdy, provided I don't fully extend them (which I won't, as they are nice and tall fully extended). When you extend them fully, there is a bit of wobble.



The stands Klipsh recommends for these speakers are about $80-90 per pair - heaven forbid you get 2 pair! For the price, these stands are simply wonderful...I had to remind myself they were so inexpensive.



Notice I don't say "cheap" as I don't want to have the word mean the stands are cheap in build as well as price. The build is really great for the price. If you look at the stand bottom, you may find some signs of a poor mold - or whatever they use to make the bottoms - but that's on the underside of the stand - I felt the bottoms themselves were very well designed and I did a "nudge test" to see if the stands would topple. I felt that they withstood the test well. If you cross-check them, yes they will fall, but if they are in a low-traffic area, you're good to go.



If you need stands, get these and save some dough. Please don't drill holes in your speakers as the instructions suggest...speaker abuse, in my opinion.'


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