Hi folks,
A new piece of gear is arriving (I will keep you in suspense on the details) and it won't fit in my current rack set-up. So I found a cheap rack on craigslist to use for the time being. And I got to thinking that it would be a good candidate for some mods. So I was wondering what mods to racks y'all have tried and liked. The rack is modular with up to 5 shelves and has separate hollow aluminum posts that scbrew on. Shelves are ply or MDF. From looking at different manufacturers of higher end racks here are some of the possibilities that have come to mind so far for potentially improving the rack:
1) fill the tubes with sand or kitty litter (Skylan recommends kitty litter for their stands, but they aren't aluminum). Thoughts on which might be preferable are most welcome
2) inserting rubber or sorbothane washers (or would they be called gaskets?) between the tubes and shelves. Seems SolidSteel does this on some of their amp stands. SolidSteel advertises: "Composite rubber decoupling between frame and shelf."
3) finding a way to attach cones to the bottom of each tube, and attaching those dimpled receptacles on the shelf to place the cones in.
4) Dynamat? Folks seem to love it. But not sure how it could be best used here or whether it would help.
5) Upgrading the cheap plastic footers. Not sure what would be best here. Spikes or something from Herbies or something else? The stand will be on tile and/or wood.
6) And some of those SolidSteel stands also mention painting their MDF shelves with a paint with some rubber content. I quote: "MDF shelves are coated with a special rubberized paint coating, making each shelf acoustically “dead,” with almost all resonances removed"
I'd love to hear some thoughts on these options. Which might make the biggest difference? Any other ideas you'd add to this list? Fun lil project that doesn't require a soldering iron.
