Design Flaws of 1961 Monitors

[Sebastian Balhorn]

Hey,

besides the non existing white/light grill covers of white speakers, I noticed some points on the 1723 monitors as surrounds and I believe these will be found on other speakers as well. Hence, I was wondering if I am the only one noticing/bothering about it or doing something wrong?

1. The wire terminal: First of all the screws stick out further than the speakers back, when a cable is in them. Thus, flush mounting on the wall using the key hole is not possible. Also, banana plugs barely fit in the cut out when not plugging them straight in but using the screw. Very likely to scratch the speaker with them.

2. The vesa mounting nuts are not standard vesa screw size. When buying a mount the screws coming with it (M6 I believe) don’t fit, since the nuts take M8. But even worse: The holes of the mounts often don’t take M8, so you have to extend them with a drill.

These things make the setup unnecessarily cumbersome.

[Luis]

I could be wrong, but I didn’t think the 1723 Monitors have vesa mounting capabilities due to their weight; I have the 1961 series and I used the Arendal brackets and another generic vesa mount that I purchased on Amazon, both fit perfectly fine.

There’s an Arendal wall mount specific for the 1723 and 1723 s speakers; have you seen it?

1723 Wall Mount

It’s a preference, but when flush wall mounting I typically use bare wire to avoid any clearance issues.

[Sebastian Balhorn]

This …. is … embarrassing. But I am actually talking about the 1961 and NOT 1723.

I bought 2 generic mounts for them and both have the screw M6 vs M8 issue. Also my computer monitor vesa screws do not fit.

Also: Even with bare wire the screws overlap the speaker back a little bit and banana plugs do make everything a lot easier…

[Sebastian Balhorn]

Apperently a reply from Luis Vazquez just got deleted without any information about it… He asked for the type of mount I am using and it is a Mount Massive MNT 50, which acutally is pretty slim with 10mm to the wall. Another one, which promised 12mm or so was actually 16mm like a lot of other (cheaper) ones. I also used a Mahara Home mount for one of the Surrounds and had the same problem with the screw and hole size.

 

Hence, I do not believe it is just one unlucky mistake. Unfortunatly, the slim vesa wall mounts from Arendal have such unattractive shipping costs, that it is just not worth ordering them.

Oh and also, I cannot find an option to edit my first post. It would be nice, if an admin could change the 1723 to 1961. Thanks.

[Luis]

Yea… not sure how my reply was deleted / removed.  Weird indeed.

When I ordered my 1961 speakers, I added a couple of their mounts to the order.  Take a look at this mount, not sure of the quality, but from the pictures, it seems similar to the Arendal mount.

https://amzn.to/45LLxhg

[Sebastian Balhorn]

It’s due to your amazon links, I believe. Still a not “post deleted” or just remove the links would have been nice.

Your mount for example is not close to what I am looking for: Picture says 0,5 inches, description 0,55 inches, which is 14mm already. As I said: I got one, promising 12mm or so and ended up with 16-18mm in reality as well. That is a lot more than the 10mm I have now or the 11mm from Arendal. And if I would have known that I basicly need the mounts due to the wiring issue, I would have ordered them right away as well.

Now Arendal charges as much shipping as a set costs and I actually only need 1,5 sets. Going with my mounts costs me 33 Euro, the Arendal would end up 83 Euros. I just don’t get why Arendal builds their speakers with vesa measurements, advertising it with “vesa” and then lots of other vesa mounts come with a different screw size….

[Luis]

Gotcha… I obviously can’t comment on the vesa design aspect.  I can only say that based on the two mounts I’m using, Arendal’s and the one pictured below, I haven’t had issues with spacing, screw size, etc with my 1961 speakers.  Hopefully someone from Arendal can comment and help you out.

 

[Sebastian Balhorn]

Well, it is good (and you are lucky) that yours did fit.

But as I said, Arendal does not use the standard:

Vesa standard 75 x 75 or 100 x 100mm uses screws M4 x 10mm. The 1961 uses M6 screws (not M8 as I assumed earlier). It’s not just getting M6 screws, but extend the M5 hole to M7 in the mount as well.

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[Kristoffer Svendsen]

Hello Sebastian,

It seems like Luis has answered most of your questions, but I’ll give my take as well!

From my experience, most VESA100 mounts support both M4 and M6 bolts, and I’m very sorry that has not been the case for you. We also chose the larger M6 bolts because some of our speakers are quite heavy. The larger M6 inserts do a much better job of distributing this force in the HDF than an m4 would have. If you want the exact specification of the inserts we use, please check out this article.

I also changed the title of the post, as requested.

[Sebastian Balhorn]

Thanks Kristoffer for editing the title.

My questions have not been answered or my concerns adresssed to my statisfaction.

You say the mounts fit from your experience. Well my experience from three mounts is, that they don’t. And yes of course I understand your weight issue. But vesa 100 is supposed to hold 14kg (?), most of your speakers are under that weight. As I wrote earlier: The standard is different. I am not denying that there could be mounts out there which fit, but how can Arendal state the speakers use vesa 100, when they obviously don’t?! (And what bothers me more is how you just put it aside here…). I mean one pretty simple solution would be that you just ad M4/M6 adapter screws to your speakers and not just leave your customers alone with their problem.

Furthermore, you don’t adress the issue with the connection terminal at all. IMHO the terminal should be a bit further in and the cut out a little wider to be more usable and cause less issues.

[Kristoffer Svendsen]

Hello Sebastian,

I’m sorry if you feel like I didn’t fully address your concerns. I’ll try to do better!

Another reason for using M6 bolts rather than M4, is because some customers (like yourself) like to get tilt/swivel mounts. This will put the speaker at an angle, which puts a lot more stress on 2 of the bolts. If we used m4 in this case, the inserts wouldn’t have had enough surface area to properly grip the wood, which would greatly increase the chance of failure. I’m going to be honest and say using an M6 to M4 thread reducer never crossed my mind, but that’s not a bad idea at all!

As for the terminal screws: When using the flush mount bracket, it will add enough distance for the slightly protruding screws not to matter. I understand that this still won’t allow for the use of banana plugs, but if you’re going to fix them to the wall, there isn’t any real benefit with banana plugs. Sure, it will make the initial connection a little quicker, but since it’s fixed to the wall, you most likely won’t be removing and re-connecting the speaker wire. If you use a tilt/swivel mount that puts the speaker even further out from the wall, you could probably get away with angled banana plugs.

I hope this gives some more clarification. Please don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any other questions.