Homemade Speaker Stands For Any Home Studio

Building A Professional Home Studio A no-skimping guide to turning your living room into an A-Room.

Recipe for homemade speaker stands
When mixing, it’s good to have more than one pair of speakers as a reference. When I was setting up my workstation, I decided to pull out my trusty Tannoy PBM 6.5’s and place them next to the Mackie 624’s on top of my Argosy desk. This would complete my midsize near field speaker requirements, but I needed more space for the larger speakers. I looked around for speaker stands and almost died. Hundreds of dollars for a pair of stands. No way!

Then my dad emailed me a link to a site that had an inexpensive speaker stand design that he thought we could expand on.

For each stand, you’ll need:
• 3″ schedule 40 PVC pipe, cut two inches shorter than the actual height you want the stands (you’ll have to cut the pipe even shorter if you’re placing feet on the stand)
• 1″ thick piece of solid wood board
• 3 1x4s cut to the total height of the stands (minus the feet, if applicable)
• a 50 lb bag of fine sand (that’s enough for two speaker stands)
• a threaded 3/8″ rod cut 1 3/4″ longer than the length of your pipe
• 2 washers and bolts

Cut two pieces of board to your preferred size (either 10, 12, 14, or 16-inch square): one for your base, the other your top. A 7/8″ hole is counter sunk on the top of the top piece and the bottom of the base, each about half way through the wood right at the center of the square. Then a 7/16″ hole is drilled all the way through.

Rub silicon glue along the bottom of the PVC pipe and affix it to the bottom piece of wood. Slide the threaded rod through the base and attach a washer and bolt on the underneath. Make sure that your PVC pipe is centered. When the glue has dried sufficiently, get a funnel and fill the PVC tube with sand. Tamp down to help the sand “settle” then pop the top on, and affix with the washer and bolt in the counter-sunk top piece.

Now get the three 1×4 boards and screw these into the sides and back of the stand’s top and bottom solid wood. I used six 2 1/2″ wood screws for each board (three top/three bottom). Depending on the weight of your speakers place heavy objects such as decorative paving stones around the base.

You can stain or paint the wood, paint the pipe, or cover it in fabric. A carpet square can be attached to the top or you can use a foam pad for the speakers to sit on. You can put felt, rubber, or metal pin feet on the bottom, just remember to factor in their height when determining the cut on your PVC tube. These stands are very sturdy, cost less than $25 each, and they can be the exact height you need rather than an off-the-shelf approximation.

Disc Makers Home Studio Series
Volume 1: Building A Professional Home Studio
A no-skimping guide to turning your living room into an A-Room
“Home project studio” can mean a thousand things. It can be a 16-track digital board tucked in the corner of a guest room or a laptop loaded with Pro Tools and a tiled bathroom as an iso booth. Maybe it’s a semi-constructed main room with an adjoining control room. Most any home recording setup can be classified as a “project studio.”

Conversely, a home studio can be a not-so-modest suite to rival many professional studios. With the proper construction, materials, dimensions, and gear, the sky is the limit. More correctly, the budget and the available space are the limits (along with variables like neighbors and traffic noise). This guide chronicles Philadelphia’s Grammy-winning producer/engineer Mike Tarsia as he set out to build a studio in his home after the sale of the legendary Sigma Sound, where he had recorded classics for the likes of David Bowie, Patti LaBelle, Vanessa Williams, The Average White Band, and Stephanie Mills, to name but a few.