All of my plaques are working, I can place items on them, but especially with the right / left (weaponrackCOArightACTIVATORPlayerHouse) and shield types, it is really hard to grab the weapon once placed. the activation point seems almost out of reach above the weapon and plaque.
Shields work like a charm.

Any idea on how to bring the "take steel sword" activation point down to eye level like the take shield seems to be?

What influences the height of the take item activator?

I set them with the white activators lower than the actual plaque. That tends to make then easier to reach when they are high up on the wall. I have also noticed that they won't work quite right on certain types of walls, especially the double high ones from the Whiterun set. The plaque itself needs to be moved out away from the wall some distance to make the weapon sections activate correctly and certain weapons are always more difficult. Like you said, the shield mounts are easy. I tend to use the shield mounts now and have given up on the COA plaques for new work on the double height walls.

To use the COA with the Whiterun walls, I had to remove the collision from the mesh and the replace it with a collision plane in the CK.
See picture -

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/tambos.turf/Skyrim/Collision.jpg

I heard you can see the collision planes with f4? I am using tall Solitide walls, so that probably explains some issues.
I have noted that the single arms plaques are pretty solid performers.

Also, steel warhammers (2H) won;t go into arms racks. The bounce off, lol!

I'll try moving the activators around to see if that helps.

The single weapon plaques do seem to work pretty well. I've not had any complaints about them. I was guessing that the collision plane on the walls was causing the issues but no other activators had trouble with it so I ultimately decided that the COA plaques were not worth the trouble.

Hmmm. I am thinking about a hybrid, then - the single plaque with a shield. Best of both breeds!

BTW, Ch0k3hold: I used your mod merge method and it saved the day!! I put up a synopsis (your basic instructions with my added clarifications) on the wiki as a discussion item.

I'm glad it helped you. I looked at doing a wiki for it, but I haven't had the time to learn how the wiki pages work, yet. Maybe after I complete the first phase of the Armory I am working on now. The method probably becomes moot when they release TESVGecko.

Note: I moved the coa plaques to eye level (on the wainscotting on the Solitude pieces ) and they worked much better ! That and making sure "playerhome" was on all the piece names! My hybrid system also works.