Kanto SX26 Speaker Stands

General Information

  • Designed to decouple the speaker stands from the floor to prevent unwanted vibrations from transferring into the room
  • Includes optional foam padding for top plates
  • Dedicated channel to conceal cables and speaker wire
  • Includes bags to fill with a material of your choice to further reduce vibrations and ensure stability
  • Features spiked feet with removable silicone pads for carpet or hardwood floors
  • Adjustable feet and included bubble level ensure your stands are perfectly level
    Kanto SX26 Black.jpg

Latest reviews

Sonic Defender

Headphoneus Supremus
Well appointed speaker stands
Pros: Quality metal and materials used
Well designed and strong
Ease of assembly
Understated and attractive
Cons: More design flourishes perhaps
Positioning finished stand could be improved
I would like to thank Kanto Living for the opportunity to review this product. I have owned Kanto Living products in the past having purchased a pair of YU5 powered desktop speakers along with the YU8 subwoofer. I was very impressed with the quality of build and sound and was also pleasantly surprised to see that Kanto Living was out of Vancouver, British Columbia Canada.

When I was approached to do a review of the SX26 speaker stand it was excellent timing as I was living with less than ideal stands for my Jamo bookshelf speakers having them placed on two small Teak end tables. The end tables were far too low and being all wood and moderately light, sound vibration was clearly being transferred through to the wooden floor below. Even with the less than ideal Teak end tables as stands in my lovely studio apartment, with a big listening room featuring 11 foot high ceilings the sound was very good, but not optimal. It would only improve with being able to get the speakers elevated and more isolated from the floor. Enter the Kanto SX26, I opted to review the black version of the stand.

I will not be ascribing significant changes in sound quality of the speakers because of a speaker stand. Speaker stands aren't designed to tune a speaker, rather they are ideally to be neutral and not impart any introduced sonic qualities to the sound. Saying that, it should be noted that if one takes a bookshelf speaker and changes it's height so that it is better positioned at or close to the optimal ear level relative to the listening position, the sound will change. Regardless of that fact, the job of the speaker stand, in this case the well appointed Kanto SX26, is to provide a stable, attractive and as acoustically inert as possible platform for your beloved speakers. In the case of the Kanto SX26, in my opinion, job done, and done very well.

So accepting that the SX26 does exactly what it should, and it does, I will describe some of the things about this Kanto offering that I think should and will matter to potential purchasers.

Assembly: This was actually quite easy and I did it alone (although having another pair of hands would have been better and more fun). The stands were extremely well packaged, double boxed and even within the secondary packing box all the individual components were also well packaged. I had to do some work to get the shipping boxes open, but beyond a few curses being uttered, I gained access in a timely manner. I did need a screwdriver, sadly I forget the type, but I was easily able to find the right sized and style of driver head with my interchangeable driver set, almost ubiquitous in the modern household.

It took me about an hour to assemble both stands, and I was not rushing so it could be accomplished more quickly if somebody wished, or had a helper. I would say the experience of assembly was very straight forward and there were no surprises or hard to understand instructions so really anybody should be able to do this.

Materials and fit and finish: I think the Kanto SX26 stands are made from quality, and seemingly very durable materials. Okay, those base plates are extremely dense and heavy, which you would want and expect, but I was still surprised at just how heavy they were. I used to have a set of Atacama stands supporting my KEF R300s, and they were absolutely fine, but by way of direct comparison the Atacama stands were not nearly as robust feeling. I know at a certain point weight can be an issue when we think about product materials, but I feel that it is perfectly reasonable to suggest that a speaker stand should feel very well planted, and the Kanto SX26 feels well planted.

The metal components were well finished, blemish and burr free with no sharp edges. The only caveat here was that when using the included metal screws it did seem that the threading was being cut (finalized) while the screw was being driven into the channel. This is fine, and normal, but here I would like to have had a more premium feel. The threads were all tooled properly and things went in straight and with not too much effort, but even so I remember thinking that this step could have been better yet and given the market segment the SX26 is in, I almost think it should be expected. Very small thing to note, but I am trying to be balanced and fair.

I was really impressed with the accessory box of goodies where I found 8 spike units and 8 floor discs. These components felt and looked very precisely and well made, and when it came time to use them the results confirmed this. The isolation discs are quite attractive in their elegant simplicity, and again like the base plates, they feel very dense and substantial. I like that. I was pleasantly surprised that the spike system uses a pressure fitting approach with each spike unit being just the perfect size, wrapped in a thick rubber like material. The spike units push into the precisely tooled compartment in the base plate and it was nice that there were no screws required here. The fit was very precise and snug. The spike units would not fall out, but if you needed to pull them out you could without much trouble. Nice user friendly design feature I feel.

The SX26 retail package features two speaker mount plates and the larger of the two was just perfect for my Jamo speakers. Again, the materials felt substantial, were well finished and everything aligned precisely and easily. The adhesive foam pad designed to go between the speaker and the metal top plate is of a substantial density, well tooled and very easy to precisely fit onto the top plate. I like that when in place the foam pad guarantees that the metal screw heads needed to attach the top plate to the stand column will never come anywhere close to the speaker base.

I didn't use the included column cable directing feature. I actually forgot, how sad is that? Saying that, I did get a good look at the column and the cable section was well executed providing plenty of space and ease of use for sure. I fully intend to use this feature in the future, but suffice it to say that it is a well thought out and executed feature from the Kanto design team.

With the included allen key levelling the spikes, which I needed to do, was very easy. The hard discs with their silicon padding go against the floor and accept the spike into them via a well tooled depression that was very well finished and precisely milled.

Final thoughts and suggestions: I am very comfortable with my 4.5/5 rating of this product and I would be equally comfortable recommending it to family and friends. There is one key caveat that I will offer, and that it is important that you know exactly where you are putting the stands, and I mean precisely as after the fact moving them is not as easy as it should be. Consider in my scenario, on a wooden floor you absolutely will be using the floor isolation/protection discs. The issue is that they don't slide so when my stands needed to be moved, it took some doing. I ultimately found it possible to achieve, and I wouldn't say that it was difficult, but I do believe that it should have been easier nonetheless.

The floor disc should be made to include a super low friction floor contact material so that the stand with speaker could be easily slid into place and adjusted. This I would highly recommend Kanto consider doing as it would greatly enhance the user friendliness of the SX26. So when you are getting ready to use these fine speaker stands, and I believe that you will like them very much, just be prepared and plan the precise positioning of the stands ahead of time to minimize the potential challenge of making minor positional adjustments after the fact. Again, I was able to do so, but it would have been nicer to have been able to glide the stands over the floor with the speakers.

I know how important this is. I have some large Monito Audio floorstanding speakers with substantial spike feet and to make them easy to move I went to a hardware store and purchased some appropriately sized furniture sliders. Those allowed the spikes to get a nice deep bite without breaking through into the actual rounded face that touches the floor and now I can easily move my speakers whenever I wish. That convenience is in my mind a minimal functionality consideration.

Lastly, I would like to have seen a little more design flourish. For example, where the stand column attaches at the floor base, here you find a very subtle raised plastic ridge that seamlessly integrates into the column and it has the word Kanto tastefully placed there. I may have liked a subtle colour distinction to ever so slightly show the word Kanto. Just enough use of a colour here, not bright and bold, but understated and sophisticated. These are premium products and I think as a finishing design flourish that would be nice. Last but not least, after you are done leveling the stands via the base plate access holes, it would have been nice to have been provided with some pressure fit, but removeable black foam like plugs. While I absolutely get that the small holes are there to provide access to level the stand via the spikes, I still think after that tasks has been completed, it would be nice to be able to visually hide the holes.

Thank you again to Kanto Living for allowing me to access the SX26, I am absolutely thrilled to have them and without a doubt they are full value for the money. I didn't use the included fill bags that can go into the stand column to add even more stability and dampening, but that would also be another thing that had I been better prepared at assembly time I would have done. It really isn't needed though, these stands even unfilled are substantial and very sturdy.

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