Speaker stand ideas

I'm going to build two sets of speaker stands. One set will be for the hi-fi system's stereo speakers, the Dayton BR-1s, and the other set will be for my home theater. I have a 5-piece surround sound set of Philips|Magnavox speakers (aka "Ghetto Blasters") that won't fit on the entertainment center I have, so I'm going to make a set. I've had trouble finding good stands, especially ones that will fit big speakers. Even the "cheap" ones are around $50. Since the center speaker will sit on top of the tv and the surrounds are wall-mountable, I just need two for the front left and front right speakers.

First up, the hi-fi speakers. I'll probably make these 3 to 3 1/2 feet tall. Here's my idea: (3D work was done in Caligari's trueSpace)



Basically, two sheets of wood, one for stabilization on the bottom and one to put the speaker stand on the top, then two 2" x 4" wooden beams for support. I liked the look of two beams better than one for the hi-fi project, makes them a bit more interesting. I thought about different finishes, and I think I'm going to do them in glossy black. Home Depot (HD) sells some great spray paint for grills/ovens that gives a nice shiny black finish without using primer.

The TV speaker stands will be a bit different. They're only going to be about 2 feet high. I already have the wood for them, too. I'm using a 4" x 4" wooden beam for the pillar and 1/2" sheets of wood for the base and stand. This was the original idea I developed:



Not too fancy, very easy to build. Spray paint and stick a few drywall screws in the top and bottom, bam, insta-stands. However, I didn't like the thickness of the base and stand. I already have a large, flat piece of wood to use for them but it isn't very thick. So the next idea I came up with was based on the same design, but added a second base and stand layer, but an inch shorter or so around the edges, on the interior of the stand, like so:



I think this looks nice, especially since the stands will look kind of squatty and the base/stand material isn't very thick. Then I started getting more ideas. I came up with one other idea I like:



Same design as above, but it adds 4 round dowels on the interior. These look neat, but I don't think they'll look very good on such short speaker stands. I will probably use this design when it comes time to make some speakers completely from scratch. Since these will be used by a tv, I'm going to paint them flat black so they don't have reflections from the tv's emitted light. I picked up some gray spray paint primer and flat black spray paint from HD the other day. I'm going to build these stands first and see how they turn out before moving on to the hi-fi system's stands. Please post some comments if you have ideas or suggestions!