buying studio furniture vs. building it yourself

  • Thread starter Thread starter fabfour1257
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I can heartily recommend speaking to John at Studio Racks (http://www.studioracks.co.uk) - cheap as chips and one of the most helpful guys I've dealt with. I used some of his sturdy steel rails to build my racks.

Maplins also pretend to have them in stock, but don't even bother.

sansarin said:
Where can i buy rack rails? (uk) ?
 
lets c a picture of yours:) im going to make mine a shelved rack that you can move the shelves up and down depending if its a 1u or 2 u unit :) ill get pictures tomorrow.
 
Track Rat said:
Yeah, I built my racks and console stand. I figure I saved over $1000.
Excuse the stoopid question I'm about to ask ... but isn't it a not good thing to have glass directly behind your monitors? I have a window behind mine and people keep telling me to get thicker curtains to draw across it.
 
Hmmm ... clearly I need to read up for myself on this whole thing they call acoustics. That's an awesome-looking set of DIY, by the way. Must've taken a while to build but when it's all customised ... there's nothing better! (Well, in terms of studio furniture anyway)
 
Customized furniture, if you can make it, is the way to go. I had originally contacted Argosy to build me a console desk, however, based on their quoted price I opted to build my own. While it doesn't look anywhere near as profession as there's, the price was about 1/10th of what they'd have charged me. A lot of my homemade console desk was made out of steel scrap I had lying around, and I purchased some additional material to complete the structure.

Picture before installing gear:
IM000785.JPG


Picture after installing gear:
IM000811.JPG


The main structure of the console table is 2"x2", 1/8" wall square tubing, and the minor pieces to tie it together are 1" square, 1/8" wall square tubing, all mild steel, welded and ground, primed and painted.

Before I humped the sections from the driveway where I built it, to my garage loft studio, I fully "tested" it for strength. I laid plywood across the top, then proceeded to jump up and down on it. Repeatedly. :D

And here is a picture of my open-frame under-console rack, with felt feet so the steel frame doesn't scratch the new floor:
IM000799.JPG


While it looks lilke its attached to the underside of the console table, it isn't, it just sits there. Without any gear installed you can twist it just a little, but with 16U (8 and 8) of Akai hard disk recorders its rock solid. And on top of the 8U of recorders (per half), there is 3U (per half) of available space for other things I need in the front of the room as well.

The two pairs of 12U rack rails cost me about $20 a pair, I lopped off 1U giving me 11U per side, and the steel was just stuff I had left over from building the console table, so it cost me a whopping $40 or thereabouts. And took less than a day to build. Probably about 4 hours tops.
 
Frederic, I love the "Mission Control" look. VERY, VERY cool. :D
 
Track Rat said:
Frederic, I love the "Mission Control" look. VERY, VERY cool. :D

Thanks!

Now if I could keep the flat surfaces (which is most of it) uncluttered I'd be a winner :D

I have to say, making the vinyl covered poplar "front shelf" the computer keyboard and such rests on, slightly lower than the little mixers and such, was smart on my part (that's a first!), because it makes the equipment unaware that I've spilled several cups of coffee over the last few weeks.

:)
 
frederic...

Maybe you should invest in some sippy cups early (since you'll need them anyhow). :D :p

Velvet Elvis
 
wow... can you actually imagine a camelback full of hot coffee?

You wouldn't even need heat in the studio.

Actually I'm surprised that frederic just didn't take some scrap radiator hose from his gigantic Ford and some cold rolled steel and weld himself his own drinking aparatus :)

"Frederic MacGyver"

Velvet Elvis
 
Velvet Elvis said:
frederic...

Maybe you should invest in some sippy cups early (since you'll need them anyhow). :D :p

Velvet Elvis

heh-heh, I have a few... but my favorite mug is rather large, and I'm emotionally attached to it because of how I acquired it. Anyway, its a wide-brim mug, with a smallish base, which is why it tips over so easily.

Today, I have a sippy cup, and no mess LMAO
 
Velvet Elvis said:
from his gigantic Ford and some cold rolled steel and weld himself his own drinking aparatus :)

"Frederic MacGyver"

Velvet Elvis

Hahahaha.

Actually, if I put a table near the entry way, I can install my commercial grade "bunn" coffee maker... no filters, no pouring of water, it needs a cold water feed. Just dump the coffee in one side, push "brew" and get a perfect pot of coffee :)

Its a little further back in the attic, otherwise it would be running right now!!!
 
So let me get this straight frederic...

You risk dumping coffee into thousands of dollars worth of automated mixers just so that you can use a mug that you are "emotionally attached to"...

You 'da man!! ;) hahahahaha

That's almost as bad as me balancing my ProMix (which I recently had to repair) on a barstool just so that I could have it "centered" in my listening area while I worked on some CD copies :)

Velvet Elvis
 
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