How to install a horizontal Center Channel Speaker

Transcript of the Video above:

"Today I will show you how I install center channels horizontally but two wide. A lot of these center channels that you get, and one of ours in particular, actually both of ours from JA Audio, are too wide to go between 16 inch on center studs. So I will show you what the trick is to get that sort of thing done.

First you look at your walls and you'll notice you are 16 inches on center. Then we got that, but then we'll pull up the mounting for this guy and you can see you're not 16 inches on center. And these have the dog ears on all for corners that need to clip into dry wall and mount this guy flat. So what has to happen is you need to take this outline here and you are going to cut over the top of this drywall on both sides. And then clip these dog ears off all the way down to the base. And if you notice this depth here still is going to allow you to fit this flush next to drywall because it's less than half an inch thick.

This is how we do it. We take our template that comes with each of these. And we stick it up here and we notice, we are over the top. And that's okay. We've got a pencil. We want to get an outline here. Use a stud finder. Normally you guys will use a stud finder because you are not going to have the luxury to be able to see inside the wall. So you take here the stud finder, go across, and find the edge of your stud right there. Mark that and then we'll get a level and put it up here, make sure we're level and trace around. You don't have to be too exact with these, you have about a 1/4 inch on either side to take care of any sort of mistake. There is plenty of lip on these speakers. And that leaves us with that.

Next to the hard part of cutting the dry wall. I'm just gonna start on one end. What I do is I go toward the stud. Just gotta bang a little bit to get it started. And then to the edge... when you get there you know you're there. Now over here you noticed I got wire coming down. So I have got to be careful when I get over there close to that side. So I'm not gonna go too deep, I'm not gonna get too crazy next to these studs when I know they are right there. Now here up top... You kind of want to cut on the outside of these lines. That'll give you the right fit. Then you just cut down on each side. And on this side the easiest thing to do is to get a raiser and something straight and just cut straight down. What happens as you get a nice crack in there... although our wires are touching in here, so it's not going to be quite as easy. We brake that off and now we still have to get over a little further over the edge. Herein lies the problem. So we take this edge with a knife and go over the top of the stud. Up here and up here, trim down and over. The sharper your knife the easier you will be able to dig in.

Alright, so now we got our hole cut out over the top of the studs. That is going to allow for the wood that we need. Now we have to do something with these guys. We are going to take a saw and just chop them of right here at the base. See this lip. It is going to be a little bit raised. It's going to go right in here. There is plenty of room back there. It's going to clear this section because we are not quite wide enough to get to the woofers. That's going to allow us to just use these dog ears in the middle, clamp it down, and then we'll be able to directly drill into the studs on all four corners. First we'll take the dog ears of. And how you do that is you take the grill of - the grill comes of just by pushing the back of these straight through and the grill pops right out that way. So we are going to take these of first, all the screws come out and save these. They have a pretty good depth for this but you can also just use dry wall screws. Those are going to go a lot faster. After we get these all cut of, we'll show you how it looks, and we'll go from there.

Alright, we got our dog ears off of here now. Let me show you how it looks. These are basically all trimmed of. So these are gonna go flat now. We've got a lot of room all the way over the stud and this will go right into the wall. And now the easy part. First you are going to hook up your wires. Don't forget that. Insulation is going to be in here. So just press the insulation back if you are on an exterior wall which you are probably going to be on an interior since this is going to be your theater. In any case this is going to go straight in. You want to have your level with you and your screw gun. This isn't going to be exactly level when you go in, you still have some monkey room to go. So we can go up or down. Just make sure you are pretty straight, get the top tail in. And then here... we are pretty much done here. Now we just take these sides here and we are going to go in an angle a little bit because you are not exactly over the top of these holes. If you are a perfectionist, you might take it right to the corner and drill yourself a hole right there. It's gonna go straight in the side. But we are fine here. I am using an about 3/4 inch dry wall screw here, go in all four corners. If you leave them out a little ways, that's okay. You are not going to see them through the grill. And then we grab the grill, put it on the top, and we are done with this one. Careful that you are not going over the top, you scratch the sides maybe, a little pressure all the way around, and once it's in it goes flat like that. And there is your horizontal center speaker in dry wall over studs... and they said it couldn't be done. No problem!"