Ultimate Stand TLF162 Tripod Leg Fitting Repairs

Bill and Bob continue with our 2016 Summer Tour of Cranbury, NJ ! See more at BillandBobLiveMusic.com

As careful and as choosy as I am when selecting well designed and manufactured equipment, touring (OK, using the word touring is a bit of an exaggeration) can be hard and things are going to break.

Case in point.  For the second time in the past 5 years, my now 20+ year old Ultimate speaker stands have broken. They have one weak point in the design and that is part# is TLF162 Tripod Leg Fitting, a plastic clamp that locks the tripod legs into position. It is entirely to easy to over tighten and break the plastic housings for the hand knob.

Last show, I found it had broken again and my search for the replacement part was not as successful as the last, as part is not in stock and appears to no longer be manufactured. 

These are great stands with this one exception and I was not about to replace them.

With some thought and consideration I came up with this fix.

The new Ultimate stands are now manufactured with metal collar clamps which looked like with some alterations to the existing fitting,  could be used to repair the break.. Without specific size specs, I gambled and ordered the Ultimate Support 13519 Speaker Stand Collar Clamp and rigged a solution.

By removing (cutting and filing) the protruding plastic loops that accept the tightening bolt and hand knob, I was able to fit the collar clamp into place.

The screw on the hand knob was now a bit to short and would not reach the nut. The hand knob has a plastic shaft into which the metal screw is set. By  removing (cutting) slightly less than a quarter inch of plastic from the shaft, it then had the needed length.

I reassembled with the new collar clamp and I was back in business. 

The tools required were:  

• Socket and ratchet, for disassembling the legs from the tripod fitting for removal
• Allen wrench for loosening the screw and removing the telescoping collar clamp
• Vise for holding tripod fitting while making modifications
• Hack saw, for removing the broken hand clamp housings and cutting a small piece from the hand clamp plastic shaft
• A file for cleaning up the hack saw cuts

The entire process took 20 minutes to disassemble, make the modifications and reassemble. The longest part was the waiting 3 days for delivery of the collar clamp from parts express, ordered through Amazon. Part was $6 + $5 shipping. I think that may have been cheaper than the original replacement tripod fitting.

Hope this was of some help!