Home Theater Hacks

Hack #75. Build Your Own Speaker Stands

One of the most common do-it-yourself projects is the speaker stand. Almost everyone needs them, you can make them cheaply, and they'll be a great starter project.

Many home theater systems use bookshelf speakers for left and right main channels. Bookshelf speakers require stands to get them to the right height. Short of having a woodworker custom-build the stands for you, you'll probably find that one stand sits your speakers down too low, another stand raises them up too high, and the only stand that does work sports a ghastly price tag that makes you do a double take. This is a perfect place to add some do-it-yourself know-how, and get a perfect fit.

Basic Bookshelf Speaker Stands

First, measure the footprint of your speakers, which is just the width and depth of the bottom of the speaker. You usually want to match that pretty closely with your stand; too much excess and the stand looks like it was made for larger speakers (and we don't want that!). The stand tops shown in Figure 9-1 are 8 inches wide and 8 inches deep.

These stands are about as simple as you can get and still look quite good. Once you have the base of your speaker measured, obtain some 3/4-inch-thick, medium-density fiberboard (MDF). Cut two rectangles to your speaker measurements, and then cut two more squares slightly bigger (for example, two squares might be cut at 8 x 8 inches, and two more at 10 x 10 inches). The smaller squares are for the speaker base and the larger ...