Maple Bedrock 1 (natural maple)

Item Number: BED1-CL

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Detailed Description

Our Maple Bedrock 1 consists of a 2" thick maple base directly coupled to the floor by three massive brass feet, pre-assembled to the base. Two machined brass corner posts are mounted at the rear of the maple base to support the rear bottom of the speaker by means of sharp point contact to provide clean, efficient draining of vibration. A 2" Triplepoint footer supports the speaker front, drains vibration and adjusts tiltback. The width across the back of the maple base is 11", the depth of the maple base is 13".

On The Floor Mounting Concept:

Only low, on-the-floor mounting can make smallish speakers sound so huge, warm and transparent. Optimized tiltback positioning, combined with super-solid maple base and heavy vibration-draining brass feet, yields amazing transients and details. Percussion and piano attacks gain startling potency. Ditto for bass power and articulation—enough to cross those subwoofers off your wish list. Surprisingly, the soundstage image floats well above the floor. Here's the physics:

• The highly rigid maple/brass mounting drains sound-muddying vibrations out of the cabinet into the floor far more effectively and cleanly than any tall stand. The improvement in warmth and midrange detail over hollow metal stands is striking.

• Mounting the woofer close to the floor eliminates the sound-thinning mid and upper bass suckout caused by high-mounted woofers (the famous Allison effect). It also provides a 3 db acoustic boundary reinforcement from the lowest bass upwards.

• The direct, rigid coupling to the floor lets the speaker drive the floor at bottom octave frequencies, thereby greatly increasing the bass radiating area.

• Lastly, the adjustable tiltback allows you to time align perfectly the leading edge attacks of the tweeter and woofer, by ear. The higher the tiltback, the higher the image floats off the floor.

We recommend all potential Bedrock and Gibraltar customers try a simple experiment to hear the benefits of low mounting: listen to one of your favorite tracks with the speakers sitting on the floor in front of their current stands, tilted back with a wood or metal block under the front with the tweeter aimed slightly above your ear. If your floor is carpeted, lay down a heavy plank or cutting board first. Then put the speakers back on their stands and listen to the same track again. This preview lets you hear about half of the bass improvement you'll get from Bedrocks, but none of the treble and midrange improvements.

Ordering Tips:

• Our Maple Bedrock 1 is recommended for speakers up to 11" wide, 10" deep, and 20" tall.

• The 2" thick Maple Bedrock is our least expensive stand and an exceptional upgrade for any small speaker. We think the modest difference in price to upgrade to our 4" thick Bedrock Ultras is a worthwhile investment, especially on concrete floors. The Maple Gibraltar is our very best sounding floor-mounting stand for small speakers.

• We custom-mount the speaker rear support posts for all time-correcting stands to ensure optimal performance for the specific speaker being used. Please be sure to include your speaker cabinet dimensions in the space provided above when ordering.

• When specifying speaker dimensions, be sure to provided the width of the rear, bottom edge of the speaker cabinet. Please also make us aware of any tapering, bevels or other distinctive design elements of the cabinet shape that might affect the placement or functionality of the Bedrock rear speaker support posts.

• For best performance on uncarpeted floors, choose our standard footer option.

• To avoid leaving dings on expensive hardwood floors, use our radiused footer options.

• On carpet, it is essential for the points of the Bedrock's footers to penetrate the rug and contact the solid floor underneath.

• For high pile carpet with padding (more than 1/2" deep), you need thick carpet footers to penetrate to the floor.

• For thin commercial wall-to-wall carpet (less than 1/2"), thin carpet footers will sound slightly better than the thick carpet version.

Addressing Bad Sounding Floors:

If your floor structure is concrete slab, tile, stone or modern plywood/"engineered" wood construction, then we strongly recommend the 4" Bedrock Ultras or, even better, the Gibraltars. If you wish to extract the absolute maximum performance out of your speakers, then adding a pair of Maple Speaker Plinths under the Bedrocks as a second layer of isolation from the sound-ruining effects of the concrete is a further, clearly audible sonic improvement.

Installation and Setup Tips:

1. Set each Bedrock in place and, if on carpet, step on the platform to make sure the footers penetrate the carpet and contact the floor below. Without solid contact, sound will be severely degraded. Make sure the brass footers are tightened only slightly more than finger tight. DO NOT TIGHTEN HARD.

Room placement for Bedrocks is not, in principle, different than for any conventional stand. We recommend:

• If possible, an ear-to-speaker distance of 5', with 7' between speakers (and then keep on increasing the 7' until the center image falls apart)

• If possible, sit with the listening chair/sofa up against the center of the room's long wall with speakers directly to the front of the listening position using the 5'/7' geometry

• If the wall listening position is impractical, then place the speakers at least 15" away from the wall behind them (increasing this 6" at a time until you find the best sounding wall distance) while preserving the 5'/7' geometry, if possible.

2. Place the speakers firmly on the rear corner posts and put the Triplepoint footer under the front bottom of the speaker. Move the Triplepoint back to raise the tilt of the speaker. For speakers with the tweeter above the midrange, start with the tweeter axis pointed just below your ear height. Make sure that all three points on the top of the Triplepoint are firmly in contact with the speaker bottom and that the rear corner posts are firmly gripping the speaker.

3. To adjust tiltback for optimum time alignment, use one minute of a really well recorded acoustic guitar or upright bass solo (suggestions: Mapleshade #10452 Flamenco or #09832 Spirit and Samba) as a test track. Listen, then increase tiltback slightly from the initial tweeter axis pointing just below your ear and listen again. If the "pluck" of the guitar or bass gets cleaner and crisper, increase tiltback again and listen. Keep on doing this until the "pluck" starts getting slightly muddier, then just go back one step.

• For speakers with the tweeter below the midrange, start with the tweeter axis pointing slightly above your ear and then listen to increments of decreasing tiltback.

• When you reach the best-sounding tiltback-that is, the optimum time alignment-it will sound like the guitarist or bassist just removed cotton gloves from their fingers.

• As you increase tiltback, you will also note that the image floats higher and higher above the floor.

4. Start with speaker toe-in nearly parallel, then increase toe-in 10° to 15° at a time, listening always to the same one-minute test track. Toe-in works like a tone control: parallel speakers give more spaciousness and less presence; speakers strongly toed-in to point straight at your ear give less spaciousness but yield maximum presence. It also pays to try even more toe-in with speaker tweeter axes converging in front of your nose; this usually gives the widest sweet spot for multiple listeners.

5. For perfectionists, it is worth running through the cycle of the above adjustments-distance from wall, toe-in, and tiltback-twice because each adjustment slightly affects the optimum for the next adjustment.