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How much lead shot is needed to fill a speaker stand?

chaiguy

chaiguy

Audiophile Wannabe
I have a pair of B&W 24" standard speaker stands on order to go with some CM-5's and have also located a metal dealer near me in Surrey that sells lead shot by the 25 lb box, and am just wondering roughly how much lead shot I'd need to fill them with.

I don't really know how much volume-wise 25 lb of lead shot is, or how much volume the speaker stands have inside.

Should I buy one box? Two?
 
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chaiguy said:
I have a pair of B&W 24" standard speaker stands on order to go with some CM-5's and have also located a metal dealer near me in Surrey that sells lead shot by the 25 lb box, and am just wondering roughly how much lead shot I'd need to fill them with.

I don't really know how much volume-wise 25 lb of lead shot is, or how much volume the speaker stands have inside.

Should I buy one box? Two?
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Hey Chaiguy,

You don't give sufficient information to allow even a highly suspect guess.
Lead shot comes in different diameters, so the volume of the shot depends on the guage of the shot. I can always find uses for lead shot, so I'd probably buy several boxes.

BTW, if you run short of lead shot, just top it off with sand.

However, YMMV..........

Best Regards,
TerryO
 
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Hi Terry. All I'm looking for is a rough idea... someone who has filled a speaker stand (such as the B&W ones mentioned) and happens to know how many pounds of lead shot it took per stand.

The diameter of the shot averages between #7 and #9.
 
Smaller shot packs more densely. Those stands look like they could take about 75 lbs each. A 4L paint can held that much shot, with room to spare, close to 100 lbs for 4L. I mixed my shot with a 50 lb bag of pool filter sand (clean, dry and bug-free), and used the mix to load my Atlantis rack 4 columns 1.75" ID x 40 " high, and my Atacama speaker stands. You'd be surprised how much volume gets swallowed up in such applications. My Atacamas hold nowhere near what your speaker stands will hold, maybe about one-third.
 
luvvinvinyl said:
Smaller shot packs more densely. Those stands look like they could take about 75 lbs each. A 4L paint can held that much shot, with room to spare, close to 100 lbs for 4L. I mixed my shot with a 50 lb bag of pool filter sand (clean, dry and bug-free), and used the mix to load my Atlantis rack 4 columns 1.75" ID x 40 " high, and my Atacama speaker stands. You'd be surprised how much volume gets swallowed up in such applications. My Atacamas hold nowhere near what your speaker stands will hold, maybe about one-third.
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Yikes! Well perhaps I will stick to sand for now. :) At ~$50 per box, 3 boxes per stand is a fair bit more than I was looking to spend.

Thanks for the rough idea though--that's basically what I wanted to know. No point buying a box or two only to find I need 4 more! :)

Cheers,
Logan
 
Here's a site which may help you out, They sell shotshell loading supplies (I shoot and handload a fair bit). A 25 lb bag of standard chilled lead shot in common sizes (2-8) is about midway between 1 and 2 quarts - will fill a 2 liter soda bottle about 2/3 full. The size doesn't effect the volume much at all. The cast Iron ballast the link leads to is a brand new product, they just added it to thier site. It looks good, is non-toxic, but not cheap either.

Sand or aquarium gravel both are much cheaper, and the gravel is clean, attractive (if it matters) and readily available in whatever quantities you need. You also won't have to ship it.

I've used aquarium gravel in 2 sets of "filled" cabinets and it worked great. The lead is really too dense for those kind of applications, and is really expensive. Current rates are about $90 per 50lbs (2 bags) delivered. (they put it in a flat rate box!!!) which will net you roughly a little less than a gallon of volume.

These are all US prices, and you can buy the shot local, so it may be more practical for you, especially if the Canadian prices on lead are lower than what we are being subjected to here in the US.

My thoughts, hope they help.

http://www.ballisticproducts.com/Steel-Ballast_Cast-Steel-Shot-bag_10/productinfo/SHS780/
 
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Scott594 said:
Here's a site which may help you out...
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Well their prices are even higher than the local metalsmith I found, and shipping on top of it.

I think a $7 bag of sand beats $200 of lead shot at this point. I mean, for that difference in price lead shot would have to be seriously superior for me to spend that much money on it. I mean that's how much the stands cost!

Thanks anyway though. I think I got what I came for. ;)
 
Chaiguy, I woiuld have used just sand, but my shot was free, so I mixed it into the sand.

If you use the "pool filter sand", instead of sandbox sand, the contents will be clean, dry, bug- and seed-free.
 
Pool filter sand, huh? I'll keep that in mind. My intention was to look for kiln dried sand as I heard that was also good.
 
chaiguy said:
Pool filter sand, huh? I'll keep that in mind. My intention was to look for kiln dried sand as I heard that was also good.
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Why not just mix up some concrete and pour it into the stand? I know it's a permanant thing, but ...........

With concrete there are no voids, no settling, and it makes one solid mass.

I made up a home-brew set out of 6" PVC with the quick-set type for fenceposts. Worked well and heavy as ****, and they're only 24" tall. Very stable too.
 
I would just follow the instructions to use sand as recommended by the site.

These speaker stands feature vertical metal columns that can be filled with sand to dampen resonance for crystal-clear sound. Each base features adjustable screw-in spikes to enhance stability.
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For a rough estimate, you are given the specs for the product are about 24" tall with 9 1/2" width. So visually gauging, it looks like maybe about 4-5" would be the width of both columns, maybe about 2-3" single column width.

A bag of sand should do it with plenty to spare for the patio.
 
cablephil212 said:
Why not just mix up some concrete and pour it into the stand? I know it's a permanant thing, but ...........

With concrete there are no voids, no settling, and it makes one solid mass.
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When anything becomes a "solid mass" it transfers energy. Some materials less or more than others. Things like shot and sand tend to dissipate energy so that vibrations are unable to travel from one end of your stands to the other.

It's hard to feel someone walk past you at the beach but I can feel the cars driving two floors above me in my parking structure at work.

I'd go with sand.

Good luck.

Eric
 
62sunbeam said:
When anything becomes a "solid mass" it transfers energy. Some materials less or more than others. Things like shot and sand tend to dissipate energy so that vibrations are unable to travel from one end of your stands to the other.

It's hard to feel someone walk past you at the beach but I can feel the cars driving two floors above me in my parking structure at work.

I'd go with sand.

Good luck.

Eric
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OK. I'm at a loss here. I thought the whole idea of this was if speaker stands were designed to be filled, it would add mass to the stand and transfer the "vibrations" produced by the speaker and couple everything to the floor.

I'm going to (safely) assume since the sand or shot is not square, this will leave voids in between the material used to fill the stand. If the whole point is to transfer the vibration somewhere else, then the only product that will do this is a solid mass that doesn't absorbs it, but transfers it (to) something else like the stand base or base spikes.

I also question about how the fill dissapates the vibration. As the fill is absorbing the vibrations, is it not vibrating itself? What is absorbing "that" vibration?

I also have a problem the way some stand/speakerbox combo is not mechanically coupled to the stand. How is the speaker box supposed to transfer the energy if it's not solidly attached to the stand somehow? Is it not just moving sitting on the platform?


Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with them. Just questions on how it works and about what to use to fill them.

Someone shed some light on this please.

Thanks. Phil
 
terra1 said:
I would just follow the instructions to use sand as recommended by the site.



For a rough estimate, you are given the specs for the product are about 24" tall with 9 1/2" width. So visually gauging, it looks like maybe about 4-5" would be the width of both columns, maybe about 2-3" single column width.

A bag of sand should do it with plenty to spare for the patio.
Click to expand...
+1 manufacturers instructions are the way to go
 
cablephil212 said:
OK. I'm at a loss here. I thought the whole idea of this was if speaker stands were designed to be filled, it would add mass to the stand and transfer the "vibrations" produced by the speaker and couple everything to the floor.

I'm going to (safely) assume since the sand or shot is not square, this will leave voids in between the material used to fill the stand. If the whole point is to transfer the vibration somewhere else, then the only product that will do this is a solid mass that doesn't absorbs it, but transfers it (to) something else like the stand base or base spikes.

I also question about how the fill dissapates the vibration. As the fill is absorbing the vibrations, is it not vibrating itself? What is absorbing "that" vibration?

I also have a problem the way some stand/speakerbox combo is not mechanically coupled to the stand. How is the speaker box supposed to transfer the energy if it's not solidly attached to the stand somehow? Is it not just moving sitting on the platform?


Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with them. Just questions on how it works and about what to use to fill them.

Someone shed some light on this please.

Thanks. Phil
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Maybe this will help, maybe not. I live on a lake. In front of my house is a solid wall (breakwater) made of locust timbers. In the past when a boat came by, the waves from the wake would hit the breakwater and bounce back, with no loss of energy, just like a mirror reflects light. I had rip-rap piled against the wall and now when the waves come in they are broken up by the rip-rap and bounce back as little ripples. The shot or sand in your stands should/would act the same way with the vibrations. It will break them down into insignificant little "waves" that don't have enough energy to be noticed. Like I said maybe or maybe not. I shooting in the dark here.:D
 
Ok so my understanding is that it's primarily to reduce "ringing" of the hollow metal tubes that might resonate at certain frequencies and sound bad.

I ended up going with the sand route. The instructions that came with the speakers actually recommend "silver sand" (SiO2) but that sounds expensive, and I already had a bag of regular dried all-purpose sand so I used that.

Anyhow I filled them up almost to the top (leaving a couple inches maybe). Suffice it to say it was an ordeal so I didn't try them out before/after or at varying heights of sand.

Anyhow I'm not getting as much low-end as I expected. Could it be I used too much sand? Is that possible?
 
Actually heck they're sounding fine now. I don't know if they just needed to be broken in or if the first couple records I played had no bass.

Bowers & Wilkins CM-5's. Wow. I'm blown away. I've never heard music sound like this before. :)
 
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