How to Install a Speaker Wall Jack

Installing a speaker wall jack can go a long way to cleaning up your environment of unsightly wires trailing across your floor and along your walls and ceilings.

If your receiver is on one side of the room and you wish to have speakers in a variety of places around the room you will have to decide prior to installing your jacks where exactly you want your speakers.

Step 1 - Position Your Speakers and Cut the Wall Opening

Find a position between wall studs near where your speakers are and using your keyhole saw cut a rectangle hole a bit smaller than the wall plate to allow for an edge upon which your plate will sit. If you cut the hole too big the plate will just fall through the hole and it will be unsightly. Reference the package instructions for guidance on the hole size.

Step 2 - Run Your Speaker Wire

You will need to cut a hole between two studs near your audio source and feed the fish tape wire down the wall from the attic. Attach the speaker wire to the fish tape and pull it up inside the wall to the attic. Take the speaker wire over to the section of wall where you will be locating your speaker and feed the wire between the studs to the opening for the wall jack. Pull out a length of wire through the hole cut for your speaker.

Step 3 - Install the Speaker Jack

Depending on the type of wall jack you purchased you may have a just two pieces, a bracket and a wall plate or you might have a three piece configuration including a jack with a separate wall plate and a bracket. The back of the jack will have positive and negative terminal to which you will attach the corresponding positive and negative speaker wires. Look at the wire which is actually a split wire from one cable. Red is positive black is negative. You will have to attach the wires according to the type of jack that you purchased. You may have to solder the wire to the terminal or you might be able to just crimp it or there is another method using plastic wire nuts. Once you have connected the wires, position the wall plate to the wall with the bracket that is included with the jack.

A Word about Connections

• The soldering iron require a small amount of skill but should not be too difficult to master. You will need a coil of soldering wire also.

• The crimping method requires a crimping tool and the appropriate crimps.

• The wire nuts do not require any additional tools but simply involves matching the wire guage to the proper gauge designation on the wire nut.