[AliG]

Well, after reading all the "hooo-haa" about hard maple, I decide to spend a grand getting a rack made with 2 inch flat grain maple, but I was quite disappointed with the impact the rack has on my turntable, my vinyl now sounded like it has lost quite a bit of "weight" and "liquidity", to the point that I thought it now sounds a little bit "brittle".

I much prefer the rack I custom-built using one type of exotic hardwood from a remote island named Borneo. The wood is called "Borneo Ironwood" or "Eusideroxylon zwageri". This wood is actually harder and denser than maple. See picture below,
the black-lacquered rack on the left is the hard maple, the red rack on the right is made from Borneo Ironwood with no lacquer.


Oh well..so I'm now back to square-one...

[tanchiro58]

AliG,

I totally agreed with you with your opinion about Maple wood. I did put my Scout TT on a maple block and when I tapped on the Scout I could hear the tapping sound through my speakers. But when I put four pieces of madagaska ebony wood under each foot the tap sound is gone.

By the way very nice looking system and I heard it has very impressive sound from F100.

Tan

[ecramer]

Well, after reading all the "hooo-haa" about hard maple, I decide to spend a grand getting a rack made with 2 inch flat grain maple, but I was quite disappointed with the impact the rack has on my turntable, my vinyl now sounded like it has lost quite a bit of "weight" and "liquidity", to the point that I thought it now sounds a little bit "brittle".

I much prefer the rack I custom-built using one type of exotic hardwood from a remote island named Borneo. The wood is called "Borneo Ironwood" or "Eusideroxylon zwageri". This wood is actually harder and denser than maple. See picture below,
the black-lacquered rack on the left is the hard maple, the red rack on the right is made from Borneo Ironwood with no lacquer.


Oh well..so I'm now back to square-one...

Its the paint you killed the maple with it and changed the harmonic accord of the wood. what you need to do it sand it all down and use a natural finish 

ED

[AliG]

Its the paint you killed the maple with it and changed the harmonic accord of the wood. what you need to do it sand it all down and use a natural finish 

ED

ED,
Indeed.. I am begining to think that perhaps the maple rack needs 400 hrs of break-in time..


Tan, the big part of my sound came from my "extensive" room treatment. Getting into vinyls has been an eye-opener. I'm now listening to vinyl almost exclusively (95% of the time!). I think soon I'm going to sell my entire digital front so I can get the cash to subscribe to more 45rpm releases. aa

[Imperial]

Here goes:
A super simple resonance tester...

Take a piece of wood, a stick, it must be EXACTLY 26.78" long... that is 441Hz by the way, the wavelength..
Then you take a tuning fork and make it sing and put it against one end.
Then you move you hand to the middle of the stick and feel for a resonance, while still holding the vibrating tone fork hard against
one end of the stick you push it through your hand and feel for an increase or a decrease in vibration...
It should have one of these somewhere from the middle and out towards either end... a node.

Say you find this point. Cut the stick there. Do this one more time, it now got even shorter right?  aa
What kind of stick, say its made of the same thickness as the platform, and of maple and it is exactly square in shape, do we have now?

We have a maple resonator that should be put against the bottom of the maple block the record player is sitting on.
Just balance it against the floor or something.
Next step, the two pieces that we cut of, remember them? Well now they come into play.
place one of them standing on top of our maple platform, then place the tone fork on top of it so that it is sitting there "singing".
A bit of a balance act I'm sure, but still.
4 places on the top of our maple block the tone fork will seem to not sing at all on top of the short stick, but remove the stick
and it will sing just fine right on top of the maple block itself.

Or take any other wood for that matter, just do the same...
What are these 4 point on top of the wood block? Where the footers should not rest..
Perhaps if you tested your maple rack, you will find that indeed the footers of your record player rested there...

Of course this method is somewhat over-hyped, the good old knuckle test is FAR superior!!!   

Right... 

I think it is more about getting a good combination of player, footers and rack or platform that is the trick!
We all don't like the same tweak...

There is nothing wrong with maple, it's rather the task of just getting the sweetspot of that setup to work that
is the lesser hyped fact of the matter... what ever one ends up liking the best!!! That is the important note here!

Imperial 

By the way... resonance in a plane looks like this: Greatly amplified of course..


Now when one places a footer on a point of the plane, this picture will change, say one places 4 then.
It would make perfect sense to place the footers on the point that resonate the least right...? Dead spots...
Just in case everyone thought I was being a right ass in my writings above...