Wall shelf

[MajorFubar]

Been looking at a few of these online recently. I can't believe how much money they cost for a few pieces of powder-coated tubular steel welded together, particularly one deep enough to safely hold the Thorens (needs about 14.5" / 37cm). There doesn't seem to be enough competition to drive prices down.

I really can't see why I can't get away with using some sturdy microwave brackets. If I drill the arms to accept adjustable speaker spikes, they will slot into the cross-head screws that hold the turntable's feet on. Couple of nuts on each, level the turntable and lock the spikes in place with the nuts.

I just need to be bang-on screwing the brackets to the wall, so that the horizontal distance between the spikes is the same as the turntable feet. Easy to practise though before I drill the holes in the wall for the second bracket: take the base off the turntable, balance it on the brackets and mark the wall where the last pair of holes are to go.

All in, change from £20 including the spikes + nuts, instead of ten times more.

 

[Al ears]

Been looking at a few of these online recently. I can't believe how much money they cost for a few pieces of powder-coated tubular steel welded together, particularly one deep enough to safely hold the Thorens (needs about 14.5" / 37cm). There doesn't seem to be enough competition to drive prices down.

I really can't see why I can't get away with using some sturdy microwave brackets. If I drill the arms to accept adjustable speaker spikes, they will slot into the cross-head screws that hold the turntable's feet on. Couple of nuts on each, level the turntable and lock the spikes in place with the nuts.

I just need to be bang-on screwing the brackets to the wall, so that the horizontal distance between the spikes is the same as the turntable feet. Easy to practise though before I drill the holes in the wall for the second bracket: take the base off the turntable, balance it on the brackets and mark the wall where the last pair of holes are to go.

All in, change from £20 including the spikes + nuts, instead of ten times more.

Whilst doable I would think getting it perfectly level or building in enough adjustment to level the turntable will be the most difficult part.

 

[bigboss]

IKEA is cheap.

 

[MajorFubar]

IKEA is cheap.

Had sort of dismissed pre-made generic wooden shelves, on account of the the unlikelyhood of finding one which isn't either miles too big or miles too small, and the need for it to hold the weight of the turntable.

Whilst doable I would think getting it perfectly level or building in enough adjustment to level the turntable will be the most difficult part.

Definitely, hence the adjustable spikes

Will keep you all posted - with photos - if I go ahead with it. If it goes a bit Pete Tongue I've wasted £20ish and have four holes in my wall.

The brackets I've been looking at are powder-coated satin black and can hold 40kg, so my 8kg turntable will barely make them sweat.

 

[MajorFubar]

Ok...so here's what I bought. Microwave brackets, powder coated in satin-black, £6.39 delivered. I will be turning the hinged section round in the wall-mounts and mounting everything upside down so that most of the wall-mounts are hidden behind the oak hifi cabinet that the turntable is currently sat on top of:

A set of four speaker spikes with M6 threads and four nuts, £3.29 delivered. The arms of the brackets will be drilled to take these as a loose-ish fit:

A set of five M6 nuts, to use as locking nuts with the above. Only needed four, but the pack contains five. 99p delivered:

Currently that's me at £10.67 delivered for everything, but I also decided to buy a new set of feet for the TD160 to replace the original ones which are a bit split and aged (they are about 45 years old), so another £3.29 delivered:

So that's me up to a grand total of £13.96, though £3.29 of it is unrelated to the shelf project.

I already have the metal-drilling bits to drill holes for the spikes in the brackets, and I have better set of rawlplugs and screws than the ones which would appear to come with the brackets. They really don't look like they could latch into my wall well enough to hold my 8kg turntable, let alone the claimed 40kg.

So I now wait for the senders to send and for Royal Snail to do its thang.

 

[Al ears]

Ok...so here's what I bought. Microwave brackets, powder coated in satin-black, £6.39 delivered. I will be turning the hinged section round in the wall-mounts and mounting everything upside down so that most of the wall-mounts are hidden behind the oak hifi cabinet that the turntable is currently sat on top of:

A set of four speaker spikes with M6 threads and four nuts, £3.29 delivered. The arms of the brackets will be drilled to take these as a loose-ish fit:

A set of five M6 nuts, to use as locking nuts with the above. Only needed four, but the pack contains five. 99p delivered:

Currently that's me at £10.67 delivered for everything, but I also decided to buy a new set of feet for the TD160 to replace the original ones which are a bit split and aged (they are about 45 years old), so another £3.29 delivered:

So that's me up to a grand total of £13.96, though £3.29 of it is unrelated to the shelf project.

I already have the metal-drilling bits to drill holes for the spikes in the brackets, and I have better set of rawlplugs and screws than the ones which would appear to come with the brackets. They really don't look like they could latch into my wall well enough to hold my 8kg turntable, let alone the claimed 40kg.

So I now wait for the senders to send and for Royal Snail to do its thang.

Looking forward to some pics of finished article.

 

[MajorFubar]

Looking forward to some pics of finished article.

Looking forward to being able to play some records without worrying the cartridge will jump the minute someone walks in the room! Suspended floors and suspended turntables don't mix. Least that's my experience.

 

[Al ears]

Looking forward to some pics of finished article.

Looking forward to being able to play some records without worrying the cartridge will jump the minute someone walks in the room! Suspended floors and suspended turntables don't mix. Least that's my experience.

Mine too, luckily my current deck is not suspended type.

 

[GeoffreyW]

HiFi Racks wall shelves look better than powder coated steel, can be made to measure, but are a bit more than £10, I'm afraid.

 

[MajorFubar]

Hoping to get a few sonic benefits from this such as a less mumbly / more distinct bass and better attack on midrange transients like snare-drum hits. Those are the first things that suffer on this turntable when it's not isolated from vibration. Even if I nail everybody down it still gets vibration from the speakers, because despite trying to accoustically decouple them from the floor, you can never be truly successful in doing that when you have suspended floors. Not unless you wall-mount the speakers as well, which is fraught with its own problems and restricts their positioning.

 

[Nemo]

My house was built in 1926, with floorboards with a void beneath it. I had problems with dry rot in the floor beams, and got the builders in. I was expecting him to recommend filling in the void with hardcore and concreting over it, but we went for a system called block and beam, which is what you see in new blocks of flats and offices when they are being built. Google block and beam floors. The void remains, but with concrete rather than wood beams, concrete blocks like Lego almost, on top, with a level of insulation on top of that, and then skimmed for the final floor. Or something like that. We went off on holiday and left the builders to it! Rather than carpet, we put down “karndean” flooring on top of it. It’s more like Lino than wood or laminate. Anyway, after putting back the furniture I put my modest hi fi back together again, and was surprised how different, in a good way, my records were sounding. The room which was draughty and cold, is now much better insulated, for sound as well as heat. Probably the most expensive upgrade I have ever made at £3,000.00. Just glad my builder didn’t figure it was a hi fi upgrade or he would have charged me double!

 

[Al ears]

HiFi Racks wall shelves look better than powder coated steel, can be made to measure, but are a bit more than £10, I'm afraid.

They are great for custom sizes but as you say not cheap. I use one of their rack systems primarily for the custom leg length.

 

[bigboss]

Karndean is vinyl.

 

[brownz]

Karndean is vinyl.

So if the house had many floors would they have vinyls ?

;-) :-D

 

[Nemo]

but I didn’t want anyone to think my floor was covered in records!

 

[MajorFubar]

Everything turned up between Thursday and today. Wouldn't you know it but the last thing to rock-up was the brackets themselves, this afternoon. Drilled the brackets and spiked them:

Four M6 nuts on the other end of the spike shafts will allow me to level the spikes and lock them in place by winding the top nut down the shaft and the underside nut up the shaft.

You can see the new feet I bought for the turntable still in the poly bag on the left. They're bigger than expected but should still be ok.

The yellow wall plugs will be going in the bin. The screws that go with them are fine, but I'm not kidding, I've used more substantial wall plugs to fasten the bog-roll holder to the bathroom wall.

Downed tools at this point. Hopefully will be picking this job up tomorrow shortly after lunch.

 

[MajorFubar]

Think I might have made my first boo-boo on this project: the Thorens rear feet are right at the back corners so there is hardly any overhang, therefore I didn't give a huge amount of attention to how far back I drilled the holes for the rear spikes, other than making sure they were in the same place on each bracket.

But now I've remembered that the lid of course needs sufficient clearance, and I might not have left enough room for it.

Worst case scenario is I'll have to drill another rear hole in each bracket about 1cm further down. Not the end of the world if that's the case, I'll bung the two other holes with some 6mm blind grommets.

 

[Al ears]

Think I might have made my first boo-boo on this project: the Thorens rear feet are right at the back corners so there is hardly any overhang, therefore I didn't give a huge amount of attention to how far back I drilled the holes for the rear spikes, other than making sure they were in the same place on each bracket.

But now I've remembered that the lid of course needs sufficient clearance, and I might not have left enough room for it.

Worst case scenario is I'll have to drill another rear hole in each bracket about 1cm further down. Not the end of the world if that's the case, I'll bung the two other holes with some 6mm blind grommets.

Not too sure why you would go to the bother of grommeting those holes.

 

[MajorFubar]

Not too sure why you would go to the bother of grommeting those holes.

So they don't play havoc with my OCD *biggrin* . Might not come to that yet. I'll know tomorrow.

 

[Al ears]

Not too sure why you would go to the bother of grommeting those holes.

So they don't play havoc with my OCD *biggrin* . Might not come to that yet. I'll know tomorrow.

Ask a stupid question and........

 

[MajorFubar]

Proved in principle, but yes I will have to re-drill the rear holes. *blush*

 

[Samd]

or could you not have moved the cross bolt in each upright further up so as to completely hide the upright once kit is installed?

 

[MajorFubar]

or could you not have moved the cross bolt in each upright further up so as to completely hide the upright once kit is installed?

Not without re-drilling all the brackets, no

 

[MajorFubar]

Done! Just about to check everything's still calibated correctly then have a listen *music2*

 

[Al ears]

Done! Just about to check everything's still calibated correctly then have a listen *music2*

Looking good...