I was in need of a wall mount shelf for my turntable. But I wasn't overly enthusiastic about what I was finding on the market. I went looking for something custom.
Here's a bit of a rundown of the adventure.
After bouncing some ideas around, I decided on a custom built floating shelf.
I had several concerns
- The table is a bit heavy @ 30lbs
- The shelf needed to be around 3x as deep as typical floating shelf
- I needed to make sure the shelf would be secured to the mounting bracket
- I needed a hole to pass cables thru the shelf
After a bit of thinking on it, I realized I would need TWO shelves. My tonearm has captive cabling so the phonostage would need to be close by. I would need a shelf for it as well.
I reached out to Don & Heather (via custommade.com) about getting this thing built. After a bit of discussion, we settled on the following:
- Maple hardwood with matching veneer in black finish. (I wanted a black finish and did not want particle board or plywood)
- 1st floating shelf: 24" wide x 20" deep x 2 1/4" thick.
- 2nd floating shelf: 20" wide x 16" deep x 2 1/4" thick.
- 1" hole to be towards the back centered on each shelf.
- Includes sturdy custom steel brackets and lag bolts to attach them to the wall. (Each shelf is attached to 2 wall studs!)
Build time was about 4 weeks. I received updates along the way. They were VERY well packed and had the bolts + mounting instructions in the box.
I had my installer come by and put them up. They looked amazing right out of the gate. We were concerned things might sag a bit due to torque and dry wall compression. I had some dumbbells still in their box which totaled 32lbs. I left them on each shelf for several nights.
Something was off kilter with the larger shelf so my installer came back about 10 days later. At this point we realized the bracket for the large shelf was upside down. I had him speak directly with Don & Heather. They had us apply a few teaks and re-tighten the bolts into the wall studs. All of that was corrected and things were nice and level.
I should mention at this point, the shelves fit snugly onto the steel bracket and they are they are connected with screws. You'd have quite the time removing the shelves from the brackets without removing the screws. This add-on feature was a must for me due to the cost of the gear I am dealing with.
So now it's level and solidly bolted in. It's not going anywhere!
I got all of the gear mounted and things looked fantastic. However there was a small problem with the larger shelf. The smaller shelf was fine. Rock solid! But the larger one was sagging a few degrees with the weight of the turntable on it. Previously I had the dumbbells hugging the wall. The turntable is farther out on the shelf.
The reality here is I'm doing something with the shelf it was never really designed to do. Not at these extremes. The steel bracket is not very tall and it's dealing with a lot of torque. It's a minor thing. I was able to add some cork and rubber risers under the turntable feet and level it.
I'm happy to report, after it being in place for over a month, it has not sagged any further!!
Before/After Impressions:-on skipping and sensitivity-I had the turnable on a hifi rack previously. My room's suspended floor caused me constant problems. The rack's isolation features helped very little. I would have to tip toe gently near the table or it would skip or cause large bass distortions for a brief moment.
NOT ANYMORE!! I don't have to even think about my footsteps at all with this wall mount setup. I've even had the dogs rough housing near the sofa while playing a record. NADA! No skips - nothing! It's completely oblivious to what's happening on the suspended floor. I couldn't be happier.
-on general sound impression-The overall sound now is better and cleaner now as well. I didn't realize it at the time but general speaker vibrations were causing tracking issues but on a much smaller scale. Comparing apples to apples, standard playback is noticeably tighter with the turntable wall-mounted. I think we all know this.
-on doing it again-If I had it to do all over again, I would make a few minor changes.
1: I would have put two holes per shelf. Say at the 1/3 and 2/3 marks instead of a single hole ½ across the shelf. The reason here being I would put power cables thru one hole and signal cables thru the other.
2: I would have explored more support options with Don & Heather. I do think a taller bracket would be a benefit here. I'm sure we could have come up with a way to do it. Be it a taller bracket, or perhaps some attachments at the front of the shelf for extra stabilizing support. I could even add something to it now, after-the-fact.
Overall I'm really happy with his setup!!
onto pics of the rig: the setup is a 3 part system:
-1- Top shelf for the turntable itself.
-2- Middle shelf for the phonostage
-3- Bottom “shelf” is for the phonostage power supply. It's actually a platform from Buther's Block Acoustics. It cost a lot more to get this platform in black – so I skipped it.
Links:Don & Heather:
https://www.custommade.com/by/customcorners/Butcher Block Acoustics:
https://butcherblockacoustics.com/
