You might wonder just how much of a manual you need to add a block of aluminium to the bottom of your speaker. You’d be surprised. The SX base is heavy enough and sharp-edged enough to command considerable respect. Stenheim suggest that lifting it out of the carton is a two-person job and, in general and from a safety perspective, I don’t disagree. The step-by-step photos show you clearly how to use the packaging that protects the base in transit to protect your speakers and floor during installation, rolling the speaker backwards onto the thick, top layer of foam, thus protecting the terminals, while a thin layer protects the floor from the rear edge of the cabinet coming into contact with it. There is then a picture of two burly men offering up the SX base, while a third inserts the four bolts that hold it in place. This is where I diverge from Stenheim. Even if you can lay your hands on a couple of hefty individuals to do the heavy lifting, holding the base steady and aligned isn’t going to be straightforward. In fact, I’d think it’s an open invitation to cross-thread the fixing bolts… Far better to open the second carton, take out the top layer of foam and slip it under the bottom/lower edge of the speaker cabinet while it’s lying on its back. Offer up the base and the foam supports it at exactly the right height: no fuss, no hurry and plenty of time to make sure the mounting bolts are running smoothly and tightened equally. There’s one other thing missing from the manual. Make sure that you grease the fixing bolts – and the over-sized spikes when you insert them. As usual, I used Copaslip, metal paste that seems to aid energy transfer as well as smoothing rotation.
Both points can easily be added to what is already an excellent manual that covers what is a rather trickier process than it might at first seem. Meanwhile, full marks to Stenheim for providing a set of fully illustrated instructions: Instructions that could well save you considerable swearing, dents in your floor and quite possibly, an injured back.
Having spent considerable time with various Alumine 5 models, I still invested nearly a week in reacquainting myself with what amounts to the current SE model, set up on its standard spikes. Fitting both SX bases took around an hour and then it was time for a total re-set. Lateral spacing remained consistent, along with toe in – but every other placement parameter changed. The bases raise the speaker by around 120mm (nearly 5”) so you might expect to move the speakers back. Instead I ended up with the speakers approximately 4cms forward of their previous position and (less surprisingly) with a significant forward rake – around 0.2 degrees as opposed to a 0.1 degree rear rake for the standard model. Height off of the floor also proved to be critical when it came to tuning bass weight and attack. Here, the T-bars really came into their own and getting predictable changes in attitude was both easy and the results easy to hear.
