General Asylum: REVIEW: DIY TNT Flexy Rack by Randy Bey

I had some money burning a hole in my pocket so I thought I would make a DIY Flexy rack for my stereo.

I have been using a ..... TV stand ..... with three shelves made of fibreboard up to now.

So off to Home Depot I go, and get all the hardware, MDF (cut to size by a friendly HD employee) and a wood drill bit a little larger than the 5/8" threaded rod I got. This shopping trip took an hour(!) given the fun of finding everything and waiting on the MDF cutting by HD.

All I had to do was drill some holes for the rod in the MDF. Normally I have the woodworking skills necessary to lick envelopes, but the measuring and drilling of the MDF was quite satisfying. I ended up with a quart of MDF dust which I promptly mainlined, using a discarded syringe left over from juicing my transport bearing.

Then there was the putting it together part. No one exactly mentioned the need to thread the nuts down the entire length, more or less, of the 3' rod. But there it was, staring me in the face. So I sat down and did the deed, until visions of spinning nuts on threaded rod swam before my eyes. The MDF dust was starting to kick in.

I have one word of caution: don't get too lightheaded doing this seemingly brainless activity. I had finished (whew!) the threading when I noticed that somehow I had left off the washers and nuts on a middle shelf. Crimeny! Now not only did I have the pleasure of threading all those nuts, but I got to unthread half of them, and then do it all over again!

Even with my stupid mistake and the drilling part and all I only spent an hour putting the thing together.

The next day (yesterday) I started the migration from old .... TV stand ..... to new Flexy rack.

I leveled the shelves, which was quite easy and they were already pretty level. Then I started moving stuff over. Now I had six shelves where once I had three, and so everything got it's own shelf. While I was at it I used the opportunity to rearrange cabling like I couldn't do with the old rack.

Signal cables went in first, then power cables, and everything properly spaced from each other and the floor.

During this exercise my wife walks into the room.

"What's that?" she asks.

"My new rack from Home Depot," I answer.

"Where did you get the money for that?"

"Not to worry, I used the proceeds from my recent DIP sale" I say.

"It's nice," she says.

So, not only do I get a new rack with a definite techno look, but the WAF is there too. Bonus!

I finish all the cabling, etc. and sit down for a listen.

I can't believe I am "auditioning" the rack for sonic improvements. If it did nothing else but hold my stuff in a (more) attractive way than before, it was worth it.

This was not a "hard" audition though since I surely wouldn't switch back and forth, listening carefull for change. This was purely based upon years (well weeks since the last upgrade) of familiarity with the sound and foibles of my old rack.

There was a difference.

I cannot tell if it is the repositioning of the cables, the re-plugging of everything, the increased distance between everything, or what, but the rack surely influenced all that, so can be described as responsible.

What difference? Clarity, reduced noise level, purity of essence.

Then with the MDF dust dying in my veins I think, "What does a rack allege to do?" Well, reduce vibration comes at the top of the list. I spin up some PJ Harvey, which will put paid to the vibration theory.

Now, some people, myself included, like the way tubes sound. When I first got a pair of SET amps, I noticed a quality that I later learned was called "microphonics". This is where the vibration in the tube itself generates sound audible through the speakers. Think of a spring that's been "boinked" and you get the sound that comes from the tubes. This is primarily audible when you pause the music and you hear a quickly damped ringing from the speakers.

At first I tried to remove the microphonics, but later learned that some people come to associate that with the "liveness" of tubes. Surely the effect was not particularly noticable during music, only in the sudden silence after a loud passage.

So PJ helps me test this with my rack.

Guess what?

The microphonics are gone.

I thought it was air borne vibrations that did the dirty deed, my floor is slab concrete, but I guess not. Perhaps the crappy TV stand was doing it.

So all in all I am very happy with the results. I would highly recommend this to others looking to get a good rack (surely not the best, but quite cost effective -- the damn thing was actually cheaper than my TV stand).

REVIEW: DIY TNT Flexy Rack Review by Randy Bey at Audio Asylum