Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater QS4 mounting and wire question

Still working on building my room, so haven't ordered my speakers yet, but have a question regarding QS4 mounting. For WAF, I need to use some sort of wall plate, cover, etc where the wires exit the wall behind the surrounds. Looking at pictures of the mount included with the QS4's, I can't tell if there is room on either side of the center portion of the mount for a full size wall plate to cover the opening. What I was thinking was to use something like this to run the wires out of, but I would need enough room to the one side of the mount.

Thoughts/comments?

Thanks!
Craig

Why not place the QS's over the the hole where the wire exists?

A plate might get in the way of the Q's as they mount pretty flush to the wall. You won't see where the wire comes out as it will be covered by the speaker.

John - that was my plan, until the wife said she didn't want wires just poking out of the wall, even though they were covered by the speaker!

I'm thinking maybe just some sort of hole grommet then (think desk grommet only smaller). Then I just need to figure out how to get the drywall guys to pull the wire through the drywall in the right spot.

You might want to try a cable penetration grommets, normally used to enter coaxial cable through extierior siding. They fit in a 3/8" hole whith a 1" head you should be able to get them at a home center for a couple of bucks.

Great idea DG, Thanks! Just found them at a couple places online as "feed through bushings". Much smaller and will look better than my desk grommet idea!

i used some Coax Cable Wall Bushings i picked up at Home Depot. my qs8's cover them and still fit nice & snug to the wall. the rubber feet of the qs8's provide plenty of clearence.

i used them on the front wall to as i just passed the wire thru the wall for a direct connect. i painted them to match the wall color.

if you look at the rear wall you can see the bushings. they look like, uh, little nipples :)i am leaving these exposed until i can afford some MORE 8's to cover them.



later.

racefan, your welcome. aham, good pic of what was trying to describe.

Finally getting close to drywall, and have a follow up question for this. I'm hiring out the drywall work, and since I'm not using boxes, just the cable pass throughs, any suggestions on how to locate the speaker wires so the drywallers put a hole/pull the wire through in the right places? I envision either a nightmare of trying to find the wire after they don't put any hole in, or having them in the wrong place. With the mounting bracket blocking much of the access to the jack posts on QS4's and the tightness to the wall, they seem like they'll be pretty sensitive to wire location. Am I just over-analyzing this? I had gone back to considering a low voltage box for the wire, but then the vertical portion of the mount is in the way of the box. Any thoughts on whether mounting with just the horizontal part of the mount would be ok?

Thanks again!
Craig

I found that if you use the rubber feet on the bottom of the speaker to tilt it slightly away from the wall there's enough room under the speaker for the wire to come out of the wall almost anywhere behind the speaker and easily bend around to connect to the posts. (I use 14 gauge wire)

The trick I had to deal with was that I am using wall boxes (the retro boxes that just snap into the drywall). The T-brackets cannot be mounted over the wall plate in any way or it is not flat enough to successfully mount the speaker, so I ended up putting the corner of the T-bracket (one of the corners under the 'top' of the T) right next to the top of the wall box insert. i.e. the top of the T extended over the top of the box and the middle of the T runs down parallel to it. (This does successfully hide the plate and the wire by the way)

I'm not sure about just mounting the horizontal part. If you were in a horizontal stud and all screws went into a stud then it'd probably be fine, if not I'd prefer to have something screwed in going down the wall too, but even then it's probably not an absolute must. With some good drywall screws you could probably get away with it either way. Not much of a definitive answer I know... without having tried it I'm not sure either.

If I am interpreting your question correctly, I suggest you mount an electrical box every where a wire is going to come out. Run the wire into the box with enough spare for your speakers outside. This will force them to cut a hole in the correct location, as they would for any other box, be it lights, power, etc. They are only a couple of bucks each.

If you are flush mounting the speakers, you won't need the actual wall plates because the speaker will sit more flush without them. If you ever remove the speaker, you can add a wall plate to cover the hole.

Also, they make some neat plate covers with speaker jacks built in but as I said, if you are flush mounting the QS4s then you would not bother with a plate, just wire directly to the speaker and it will cover the hole.

I hope this is what you were looking for.

Actually, my issue really is that I was going to frame so that the horizontal and vertical portions of the T mounting bracket would be on studs. If I do that, and mount a box to the vertical framing that the T mounts to, I'm not sure the speaker will cover the opening, although Myrison said his did cover the box. Someone needs to come up with a smaller low voltage box for this sort of thing!

You are a true audiophile hero to actually design your stud pattern around speaker placement. heh heh.

I think a wall plate is 2" and a jigger by 4", so the box is smaller yet than that.

Checking Axiom's specs, the QS4s are 9.5" wide by 6" tall.

Therefore, even if your 2x4 stud was truly 2" wide (which they never are) the QS4 will still cover the box hole nicely with room to spare.

I don't think you're going to need more than a few screws into a stud for the bracket, as long as you use anchors for the rest of it.

Now I think I understand why public figures get upset when quoted out of context.

Ha, Good one!