Free Gallo Reference 3 tweak

The Gallos have received quite a bit of praise from the audio community. And rightfully so. They are, IMHO, among the best values in the speaker world. In addition, if you can find a nice pair used (like I did right here), you can enjoy their goodness for 55% - 60% of retail - truly a smokin' deal if ever there was one.

However, as good as they are, one knock against them has been the height of the soundstage or image. Some folks have said that they find the soundstage to be too low. This is not too surprising considering the fact that they stand only 35" tall.

I have been able to overcome this limitation by using the factory-supplied hardware in a slightly different way than originally intended. Gallo supplies the speakers with 4 cones (spikes) for each speaker. They intend for you to use the taller cones up front and the shorter ones in back. In addition to the cones, they also provide floor protectors to be used under the cones.

What I did was to take the floor protectors from the back cones and double them up with the ones on the front cones. This causes the speakers to tilt back several more degrees. I have not measured the degree of tilt, but it's on the order of 10 degrees or so.

Also, because I have the speakers placed on wall-wall carpeting, the cones in the back of the speakers tend to sink down into the carpet more than they would if they had the floor protectors under them. This results in even more of a tilt. It also causes the speakers to have a very firm grip on the carpet - they will NOT slide sideways at all.

I have found this little (and FREE!!) tweak to be quite satisfying in practice - the soundstage has seemingly risen about 1 ft., just enough to make it quite realistic. If you have the Gallos, give this a try, you might be quite surprised at how effective it is...

-RW-