Solidsteel SS-6 Vintage Hifi Speaker stands.

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donuk
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Solidsteel SS-6 Vintage Hifi Speaker stands.

Post by donuk »

Greetings folk,

I recently borrowed a pair of a brand of speaker stands, unknown to me. They are the personal property of Hamish, of The Sound Organisation, York. They were placed in my front garden before he safely drove away!
https://www.soundorg.co.uk
I understand they now stock the range.

It did not take me long to realise that I would be holding these hostage until the epidemic is over and more can be ordered. At present I have my Totem Signature Model Ones on old Linn Kann stands - which I have always served me well.
The obvious striking difference and advantage is that these stands have only three legs. On my suspended wooden floor I periodically have to adjust the Kann stands as vibration as you walk past causes minute movement. To digress, when Bob first showed me these in the Sound Organisation shop before lockdown, I said they were designed on the same sound principle as the three legged milking stool which is secure on any terrain. I went on, "why has a milking stool got only three legs?" "Because a cow has got the udder". [udder = der euter; "other" partial homophone for "udder". Example of childish English joke.]. You only get this level of erudition on Mr L's forum!

The stands are well made, neatly finished and feel heavy and solid.

There is a top plate of fibrous material mounted on three ball bearings (very Naim Frame like). This arrangement is held down by a large bolt in the middle.

I went to bed puzzled about this, and then in a sort of dream the opportunities presented themselves to me. (as tends to happen on mechanical design things I have found).

I wondered if this bolt should be tight or quite loose.

To my mind, if it is tight, it firmly couples the top plate to the leg structure below. As far as I can see this would largely obviate to need for ball bearing suspension. Certainly no freedom of movement in that area could take place. If you slacken off the central bolt so that, while it serves to prevent gross lateral movement, it relies on the ball bearings to decouple the vertical component totally. So the decoupling would be exactly Frame-like.

Needless to say I have tried both. I prefer the bolt tight (using bluetack at the bottom corners of the speaker in both cases.). It has a fuller presentation and more solid bass. I can in some systems the other option is preferred, it certainly sounds detailed enough. A tune-dem evolution would be useful.

These speakers, although not cheap, certainly are a bit different. I understand you can remove the feet to fill the tubes with sand and/or lead shot. My experience of doing this in the past has not been totally joyful.

Apologies for a post that has been almost ThomasOK-like in its extensiveness but I hope it is of interest. If you have a chance to evaluate these, do. There is a range of sizes available. The firm is Italian I believe, but available worldwide.:

https://solidsteel.it/my-product/ss-6-v ... er-stands/

Cheers
Donuk damp downtown York
Ozzzy189
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Re: Solidsteel SS-6 Vintage Hifi Speaker stands.

Post by Ozzzy189 »

There's a reason why cameras tend to be mounted on a tripod. It's the ultimate in stability. I've often been bemused by the fact that speaker stands and racks along with hifi equipment tend to have four feet. It makes no sense to me whatsoever. Why have the hassle of trying to get 4 absolutely perfect points of contact when three almost the same size feet will be just fine?
ADS3/SagMono/Tundra 2.2- . Totem Tribe Tower.
Lejonklou demos available in the N of England.
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