Have you ever had the itch to create a nice speaker platform, but weren’t sure how you might bolt speaker spikes or acoustic interfaces to them without risking damage?
A while back, I found some inexpensive 16 1/2″ x 16 1/2″ x 1 1/4″ quartz file cabinet tops listed for sale on Facebook Marketplace that I decided to employ as speaker platforms for my ATC SCM40 loudspeakers. Originally, I tacked on some inexpensive tiny rubber feet from Ace Hardware on their undersides (You can see them in the photo above). The thought was to provide a more solid base than my commercial vinyl plank flooring (which sits on a concrete slab) for my floor standing speakers to anchor to either with spikes or acoustic feet, as well as raise their tweeters to ear level for optimal listening (they sat slightly below ear level sans the platform). However, following several discussions about the merits of using spikes versus the rubber feet, I purchased some metal spikes from Parts Express with the intention of drilling holes for the spikes’ female inserts, gluing them in, and screwing the spikes in. I watched several videos on how to drill into quartz and made my plans. There was a risk that if it wasn’t done properly (i.e., slow enough, without proper water cooling, or with the wrong drill bit), I was told, that the quartz could crack. That troubled me, so I decided on a safer means: I would create small wooden blocks to secure the spike female inserts, cement them to the bottom of the quartz base, and attach the spikes that way.
I located a two-foot length strip of wood, 1″ x 2″ (actually .75″ x 1 1/2″), some Liquid Nails, 5/16″ split washers, and a 5/16″ drill bit (in accordance with the speaker spike instructions to fit the spike inserts). At home, I marked the bottom of the bases at 2″ in from their corners, measured 2″ squares on the wooden strip, drew diagonal lines from their corners to mark the location for the drilling, and clamped the strip to my workbench. I drilled the insert holes, screwed the inserts snuggly into their respective holes with an Allen wrench, and cut the strip into squares using a hack saw. I then screwed their spikes in, and then applied liquid nails to the backs of the wooden squares. With the speaker bases on their backs, I pasted the wooden squares in place, pressing them down, and set the bases aside to dry several hours.
Due to a slight uneven-ness to the concrete slab under my flooring in a few spots, I had to compensate by inserting a split washer between one of the spikes and the insert, however, the gap in the split washer was too large (I was disappointed that the length of the spike’s threading didn’t allow for very much extension room), so using two pairs of pliars, I bent the split sections closer together, slipped the washer onto the threading, and screwed the spike into place. I gingerly lowered the speaker bases, one at a time, onto the floor, maneuvered the floor spike protector cups into place, and then tested for levelness. Thankfully, the washer’s thickness was large enough to accommodate the small dip in the flooring at the trouble area.
I then carefully placed my spiked loudspeakers atop the bases (this really should be a two-man job, but with my weightlifting background, I managed), positioned them carefully, plugged in the speaker cables, and listened. I made a few minor toe-in adjustments. Later, when my wife arrived home from work, we listened for a short while before heading out for Christmas Eve.
“The speakers sound very nice,” she said. Indeed, they did, as the extra height afforded by the insertion of the new spikes gave them a more solid, foundation, as well as raising their tweeters slightly above ear level — and raising their midrange drivers (which ATC speakers are famous for) closer to ear height. It was a big win.
Now, had these inexpensive spikes not worked out, I was going to chisel-off their square wooden square linkages and replace them with two sets of adjustable speaker spikes that come with double sided adhesive found HERE. and if I didn’t like their adhesive, I reasoned, I could use Liquid Nails or another industrial-strength adhesive. However, for now, I’m feeling pretty good with my speaker base spikes.
Summed up, the beauty of these spiked speaker bases is that it provides a pretty solid grounding to the floor to drain unwanted vibrations into the floor, as well as allow for better comparisons between speaker spikes or isolation footers attached to the speakers themselves.
Now, there’s the matter of the hardness of the wooden squares that the speaker base spikes are screwed into. Wouldn’t those adjustable spikes applied directly to the quartz bases, sans the wooden interface, be more efficient in draining speaker driver vibrations from the loudspeakers? Of course, I could have paid a quartz countertop fabricator to drill and mount a set of spikes directly into my bases, but that would have made the project cost prohibitive for me (I’m cheap at heart). Or what about simply using longer spikes in place of the speaker platforms? (I thought about that, but felt using unusually longer spikes might make them more tippy and less stable.) However, that’s a matter for another discussion — or future consideration.