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hardwood floors, area rugs, and spiked feet

We're putting in solid oak hardwood floors and have purchased decent quality oriental area rugs, one of which is going into my listening space to cover the flooring between the listening location and the speakers. The rug will extend under the speakers. So the question is, what to do to stabilize the speakers on top of the rug without the spikes damaging the flooring underneath. The carpet is pretty thick and dense; it won't do just to remove the spikes and depend on the speaker feet.

I need a method to somewhat blunt the spikes but still enable them to get down into the backing of the rug. It won't do to just round over the spikes; the weight of the speakers will still damage the flooring. I'm thinking there's got to be some sort of a combination of a disc and shallow spike setup. I looked in several catalogs but came up empty.

Surely one of you folks has run into this problem in the past?
fripp1
fripp1 OP
54 posts
 
Now that's a good idea. Two or three extra inches in each dimension (of the speaker's base) should give me enough room for fine tuning the position. Basic luaun (I think that's the spelling) carpet underlay is only about 3/16", and it's soft. That'd work.

Thanks for that!

I still think there ought to be something designed for this application that can sit under the spikes on top of the rug.
srwooten's avatar
srwooten
694 posts
 
How 'bout a piece of sheet metal lined with cork? Wont make your rug look funny.
mitch2
4,076 posts
 
If your situation changes so that the speakers will not be on the rug, try spikes or cones (e.g., Audiopoint, Mapleshade, etc.) with coupling disks by Audiopoint (or similar) sitting on Herbies Big Fat Dots between the disks and your hardwood floor. Protects the floor, decouples the speaker and sounded better than spikes in my former set-up over an oak hardwood supported floor.
onhwy61's avatar
onhwy61
5,249 posts
 
Don't use spikes, use a decoupling type device like the Aurios. It's been my experience that unless you move your speakers around alot, spikes don't noticeably damage hardwood floors. The marks they leave are quite small.
stanwal's avatar
stanwal
3,147 posts
 
If the rugs are wool watch out for static electricity, I damaged some componets that way even though they were grounded.
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