[mgalusha]

I'm sure many of my fellow audio nuts have experienced the pain of trying to position speakers that have spiked feet on them. Slide them around, get them where you think they are best and then try to get the feet back on without moving them... and worse, you decide they could really use another degree or two of toe in/out.. a PITA at best and easy to snag the carpet if you try and walk them.

I built dedicated stands for my diy speakers this weekend and in this case the feet are not removable, they hold the legs together and just the stands weigh 54lbs each. I saw a photo on Harry Pearson's new site last week that held the answer and somehow I've never thought of this in all these many years.

Skids.

Yep, just cut some ~4" wide pieces of wood and place them under the speaker spikes and presto, they slide around nicely and when you find the right spot, tilt the speaker just a hair and kick the board out. I used melamine since it was handy and slides well on carpet.

As you can image from the photo, trying to move those around with the speakers on top would be truly awful without the skids.

[richidoo]

Good idea Mike. I use furniture sliders to move big speakers around. The rounded edges make it easy to push over thicker pile carpet. My sliders come with soft footie slip ons for sliding on wood floor.

[Saturn94]

...... I use furniture sliders to move big speakers around. The rounded edges make it easy to push over thicker pile carpet. My sliders come with soft footie slip ons for sliding on wood floor.

I've done the same.  Works pretty well.

[silver_strings]

Thats a good idea thanks

[*Scotty*]

My speakers have a form of roller ball isolation built into the bottom of the speakers.

http://www.mcmaster.com/#standard-ball-transfers-for-conveyors/=kfrx46
The ball transfers should chosen on the basis of how much your speakers weigh.

http://herbiesaudiolab.net/base.htm
 The stainless steel disc is removable from the absorptive base and can be directly placed on the floor or carpet.
The roller balls supporting the speaker allow the speaker to be fairly easily moved into precise position and then the discs with matching depressions can be placed under the balls and your roller ball isolation is enabled.
 Isolation and ease of placement in one package.
Scotty

[Bear]

Great Idea Mike!  How are you liking that Beyma Tweeter...would love to hear your impressions regarding the sound and how they compare to your Abbeys.  I actually had visions of a similar design...controlled directivity with an AMT tweeter.  How does it blend with the JBL?  Anyways, Very Cool.

[mgalusha]

Turns out I was (of course) only thinking about the carpet in my room. My carpet is very low pile, so the skids work really well; a friend with a deep pile carpet tried this and it didn't work very well. I was cheaping out, scrap vs driving 10 miles into town for some furniture gliders. I am fond of the skids tho, really easy to move the speakers around, at least with these. The spikes on the footers are hideously sharp, my hand is finally healed...

Great Idea Mike!  How are you liking that Beyma Tweeter...would love to hear your impressions regarding the sound and how they compare to your Abbeys.  I actually had visions of a similar design...controlled directivity with an AMT tweeter.  How does it blend with the JBL?  Anyways, Very Cool.

I like them a lot, they do seem fussy about positioning, more so than the Abbeys. I splurged on a laser measuring tool and now that they are more accurately positioned I'm pretty happy with the results. They have a more open top end than the Abbey and the Beyma's seem to blend well with JBL's.

A couple photos, one with the skids and one showing the final resting place, which turned out to be very close to where the Abbeys and the Meadolarks were best, as expected the room dominates.

[JoshK]

They look awesome too!   What is the big box in the middle in the last photo?

[mgalusha]

They look awesome too!   What is the big box in the middle in the last photo?

A old Aronov LS-960 amp, your basic 60W 6550 based push-pull amp. I've had it for a while and it didn't sound great, not terrible but nothing too special. I has some big iron and I got a wild hair on Thanksgiving and had a look inside. I decided it could use some better coupling caps and swapped the Mylar Nichicon's for some polypropylene Obbligato's I had gathering dust. I measured the power/distortion/noise with the stock Chinese tubes and it was pretty bad. I had a set of 6550 winged C's on hand and swapped those in. About double the power with lower THD and noise at all levels. I also tried some Mullard's in the input/phase splitter position, a nice improvement in resolution. I kinda wanted to hear the JBL/Beyma's with tubes and it surely doesn't suck. Nothing like the clarity and low level information of the big NCores but very enjoyable. Wednesday a neighbor is bringing over a Darling with parallel 1626 outputs, a whopping 1.5W vs the standard .75 for a regular Darling. I have a feeling it will be a cool pairing.

[Bear]

That tweeter has a really flat response, as you know, and though I have not heard the Beyma I have heard other AMT's and they can offer a "window" into good recordings...very revealing.  My concern was that it might have a limited sweet spot, I have not seen any off axis measurements, on axis looks amazing though.  They are reported to be quite dynamic and the specs would support that claim.  How do the dynamics compare with your Abbeys?  Those look great by the way...nicely done.

[*Scotty*]

Mike, I was wondering if you had to attenuate the output of the Beymas to match up with the JBLs, or if you were able to run the tweeters wide open? Was the 150/H chosen for its off axis dispersion pattern.
Scotty

[JoshK]

BTW, your experience with the Beyma's helped pique my interest in examining them as well.   As you know, I've been a long while follower of the Geddes' philosophy and participator on the SEOS project.  However, I am an empiricist and have long wanted to try out the Beyma for comparison.

I think I am going to take my AE TD12M based abbey-clone flip it on its side and mock up the beyma above to do a quasi side-by-side comparison with the TD15Xs covering the base (3way if  you will).  Should be easy to try out.

Josh

[Letitroll98]

However, I am an empiricist....

Hey, no swearing on the forum!   

[Bear]

Hey, no swearing on the forum!   

 

Josh, as an empiricist, please share your experiences if you would.  Sounds interesting.