Custom Design is a privately-owned and managed company that makes a wide range of sought-after premium quality furniture, specifically for discerning buyers of audio and hi-fi equipment. Operating at the top end in a high-value market, the business produces tables, mountings, hi-fi supports, speaker mounts, islands and a raft of associated audio-related products at its factory in Newcastle upon Tyne.
A recent Custom Design project identified a need for speaker spikes to be fitted to the base of a new range of speaker mounts being designed by the company, so it turned to a specialist UK manufacturer in the field, Fitsco Industries, for a solution.
Experts in acoustics recommend keeping speakers away from walls and floors where possible, because close proximity can cause distortion in the sound quality – and it is in this capacity that the spikes emerge as an ideal solution. Essentially, the speaker spike is an adjustable foot or spacer that is fitted to the base of a speaker to act as an insulator and stand-off to help ensure the quality of sound delivered.
For this application, the spikes are torqued into threaded inserts, which are also manufactured by Fitsco Industries. In a classic engineering case of ‘the smallest things can make the biggest difference’, the fitting of these spikes to the base of Custom Design speaker mounts helps to guarantee that the finished products assist in providing the desired quality of sound being transmitted through each unit.
The spike itself is a threaded rod with a sharp point at the bottom end and, although one in each corner is usually the norm, dependent upon the design criteria any number of them can be fitted into the base of each speaker mounting. In this way, it is only the sharp point that is in direct contact with whatever surface the speaker is mounted on top of, thus reducing to the absolute minimum the contact area in touch with the ‘floor’. The resultant benefits to audio and hi-fi aficionados are said to be substantial. As the spikes are threaded, they can also be used as adjusters either to level the speaker unit or angle it accordingly as required by individual users.
Fitsco CEO Philip Schofield observes: “In this case, our technical competence has been music to the ears of a valued customer, manufacturing top quality products here in the UK. We introduced our special range of speaker mounts specifically to cater for such applications and we see it as a huge endorsement to have our product specified by one of the leaders in the field.”
Paul Morton, managing director of Custom Design, adds: “As a British manufacturer, we prefer where possible to source key components and expertise as near to our design and factory teams as we can. Operating at our level brings with it many responsibilities to customers, not least of which is the need to provide an absolute assurance that we only use the best materials and the best suppliers to produce the best products in our market.”
