Hack #20. Add Metal Plating to Support a Center Speaker
Most home theater television sets have a large center speaker sitting on top of them. This is generally the ideal placement, but over time, a heavy speaker will warp your TV set. A simple piece of metal on top can solve this problem.
The bigger the speaker, the better, right? Well, that's not always true [Hack #37] , but it often is. However, these big speakers also are heavy speakers, and over time they'll create an ugly indentation in your TV set. Although that might be a great excuse to buy a new set, it's too easy of a problem to correct to let lie. Besides, you can't resell a TV with a warped screen!
To solve this problem, locate (or buy at your local sheet metal shop) a good size sheet of either 1/2- or 3/8-inch aluminum. Cut this down to the size of your television top, minus about 2 inches.
Tip
If you're not comfortable working with sheet metal or don't have the tools you need, a sheet metal shop (or even an auto body shop) can cut down metal like this for a nominal cost.
It shouldn't just be the size of your center channel's footprint; in addition to leaving you no room to upgrade, all you've done is added to the weight in the middle of your set. Instead, you want a plate large enough to distribute the weight of the speaker across the entire set, as shown in Figure 2-23. You can see that a little extra time resulted in a nice-looking stand rather than an ugly piece of metal. Paint the plate the color of your TV, place ...
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