Plug and play

[Dave Plowman (News)]

A pal has a home cinema setup in a smallish house and would like the surround speakers to be relatively easily removable. And fixed to the ceiling. When removed he'd like the ceiling to look as 'normal' as possible. The speakers aren't heavy - say a couple of kilos each - and I was thinking along the lines of an XLR plug adapted to take a tube attached to the speaker with the cable down the middle, and fitting XLR sockets to one gang blank plates in the ceiling. But I'm not too happy with the load carrying capabilities/reliability of an XLR latch. Any other ideas? Speakons would take the load, but fixing a tube to them might be tricky.

[John Rumm]

I think I would go with the simple gimble brackets - they only need three small ish screw holes which would be easy to fill once removed. The wire can be just poked through another hole and connected to the binding posts. The gimbles also allow accurate positioning of the speakers for optimum sound.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Then you'd have the wire dangling out of a hole when the speakers were removed? And I don't like the idea of bare ends for connections. In case it wasn't clear they he wants to remove them when not in use rather when selling the house. ;-)

[John Rumm]

Ah, that does paint a slightly different picture...

How about the Klik range of commecial lighting connectors. They have a bayonet action can can support at least 6kg IIRC: