DIY improvement of racks

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Paaf
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DIY improvement of racks

Post by Paaf »

The TV stand I use for my hifi gear today is ridiculously un-tuneful. It tremendously improves with simple DIY mods like placing the amp on a random wood board on top of silicone feet. What else can I do to improve it?

Looking at some professional racks to get inspiration, I see that the construction varies a lot. Some place the shelf on spikes, others directly on metal legs with damping. Some use spruce (a material notorious for being soft) or bamboo (quite hard, plus it's glued) and others use MDF. Some have metal frames under the wood boards, or two layers of wood etc.

Any pointers?
sunbeamgls
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Re: DIY improvement of racks

Post by sunbeamgls »

Seek out Paulssurround's thread on the Linn part of the HifiWigwam forum - lots of stuff there that has been tried. However, Paul is open enough to acknowledge that all he's really doing is suggesting some materials to trial between the kit and the rack. He likes different materials for different combinations of kit and rack, and that each needs to be trialled as it seems to be unique to each combination.
He refers to stuff in the music that isn't necessarily tune dem related, but the materials he refers to are low cost (cork, felt, bamboo chopping boards, Ikea silicon pads etc.) and worth a try but probably best to not read about the reported outcomes before trying them yourself, then you have no pre-conceived ideas.
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Tendaberry
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Re: DIY improvement of racks

Post by Tendaberry »

I would point you in the direction of 8 mm plywood, preferably composed of 16 layers glued together. I use them with Oehlbach mini spikes on top of my Quadraspire rack levels.
Paaf
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Re: DIY improvement of racks

Post by Paaf »

@sunbeamgls
Nice! I remember reading his Linn Forum thread, or if it was a blog post somewhere - it started my own experiments with wood and silicone, which has given excellent results. I have used the tune method.

@Tendaberry
Interesting! I would not have expected Plywood to be good for this!
I checked K-Rauta, Bauhaus and Hornbach here but none of them have 8mm, and none of them specify the number of layers. Where did you buy yours?
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