What is the best way to hide speaker wires when you cant get into the wall or under the carpet?

Thanks for any suggestions
Merlin

Paint 'em the color of your walls. run them along the corners to be less obvious.

You could get devices to run them in, but then those are visible. At one point I ran flat speaker cable under a large rug to get to the back speakers.

The least visible way is the flat wire tape. You can use joint compound to feather them into the wall and paint over with no visible lines. The major problem with this is that most of these products have a very high gauge rating and might not meet your demand for output.

I was thinking about the joint compound idea but cant seem to find it. Any web dealers with kits for that or should I just use regular caulk.

I'm not real familiar with this, but wouldn't it just be normal joint compound from a hardware/paint store? And then repaint over it.

Most baseboard trim has a recess behind it. If you have a fairly direct path from amp to speakers (no doors) and can pop off your baseboard the speaker wire can be hidden there. File small grooves from the recess out the top of the trim to get the wire down into the trim and up behind your speaker.

If the room is carpeted, you can probably push the wire down between the carpet and and the baseboard.

I've actually run speaker wires from the front of a long room to the back UNDER the carpet. Using a tape measure pushed into one hole and pulled out the other, I attached two lengths of flat wire top the tape and then pulled it all back through the carpet. In the back of the room, the wires simply spread behind the sofa to reach each speaker.

There are some wireless speakers available. I've seen them used as rears where running wires was impossible. RF is prone to RF interference, so they are not a perfect solution. Also, they are self amplified, so need to be plugged in.

Good luck. Once you figure it out, you'll really enjoy your work.

Dave

Merlin / Spiky,

This would be regular All-Purpose Joint Compound. You can buy it at any home center / hardware store.

I was going to recommend another solution, but since we have some confusion on the joint compund, I think that is your best solution.

No, seriously, if you can get the baseboard off, the trick of running behind that is a good solution. The problem is when you get to the point where you want to terminate the wire at the speaker. The only wall that raises a serious problem is a concrete block wall. Most block walls have furring strips (1x2 boards) nailed to the wall and then drywall or wall board is placed ontop of that. This leaves a hollow cavity behind the drywall for running the wires. You can cut out a 2x2 square in the wall behind the baseboard and then cut a very small hole (about finger sized) in the wall where you want the speaker located. Take a fishing line with a small weight attached and drop it in the top speaker hole and it will come out at the bottom. Tie the fishing line around the speaker wire and pull the fishing line from the top and the wire will come out the upper hole. You can then reinstall the baseboard and is will cover the lower hole and the wire you ran behind it. You have to be careful when nailing the baseboard back on so that you don't drive a nail through the wire. You can use this technique on most any wall. The top hole can be filled with the joint compound we discussed earlier.

This technique will allow you to run a lower gauge wire directly to the speaker.

Merlin,
In certain cases where you do not want to see any wiring, and that your front wall is an exterior wall.. you may want to bring the wires to the outside of the home and run wiring to either up to the attic or around the overhang. Use paintable PVC and CL rated speaker cabling.

John

FYI: Flat wire.

This is what I did...

The holes are finished with Radio Shack white RG6 wall
bushings and the cable is Radio Shack 16 Gauge CL-2 In
Wall OFC which is run through the attic.

Leave it to Greg and/or Brett to dig up a 7-month-old thread and breath new life into it. :-)

Larry