Thanks to my renewed interest in vinyl I have been buying quite a bit in the past couple of years and the result was running out of shelf space and vinyl lying around on the floor - not ideal!
So I started examining some specialist and often expensive vinyl racks as I was especially keen to have a section for frequently played stuff on top displayed like a shop for browsing…
Anyway, after a bit of IKEA hacking I think I have developed the perfect solution!!!
All our old IKEA racks and bookcases were in birch and beech, neither of which IKEA make anymore, so I have chosen whitened oak which seems to blend in quite well. I may consider a wood stain if I decide it’s not close enough.
Maybe not today but I’m pretty sure that a majority of Swedish men 60+ have or have had such trays for vinyl, it was an obvious way to store vinyl during the vinyl era.
Hi Max, it’s a Kallax 4 section unit and a Kallax 2 section unit which has had half it’s depth cut by a local joinery saw. It’s tricky to fix the 2 section unit to the top of the 4 section unit as much of the Kallax isn’t chipboard but is filled with cardboard. I was going to use flat brackets on the side and back but tried wood glue and clamped it overnight and it seems ok.
Hope that helps. Total cost about £75 and I think that it’s pretty nice for that and way cheaper than any alternative option.
I am waiting the review on Soundstage ! I hope you will say if you find it better or different vs the SME 60 you reviewed too, if i remember well. @Richard.Dane heard the Acutus one day, and found it uninvolving. But it was many years ago.
Thanks French Rooster, well I can’t say I am finding it uninvolving but it is different to the SME, albeit it has many of the same qualities - huge bandwidth, inky black backgrounds and heavy engineering etc.
I don’t have a publication date yet but expect to submit it this month so Jan/Feb I would guess.
Haha - yes it is indeed a Keith Monks Prodigy. ELO were one of my most beloved bands throughout my teens in the 1980’s - happy days! Having fallen in love with the Loricraft PRC6i which I reviewed a while back, I just couldn’t afford to buy the review item. I was bemoaning this one day to one of the industry PR’s and a couple of weeks later he turned up with the Prodigy and said “try this”! I did and was pretty blown away by it, so ended up reviewing it and buying it (review due out imminently).
An absolutely superb machine in terms of cleaning effectiveness and also noise (it’s actually quieter than the Loricraft). I didn’t initially like the looks, but it’s grown on me and its slimline design means it works perfectly in the record storage cabinet because it enabled me to add a half depth support behind it to help support the records above. This isn’t visible in the pic as it was a later addition after the pic was taken. I can post a picture in daylight showing this if anybody is interested tomorrow!
I must say that this little rack has been a game changer for me as it’s enabled me to put my most played records and most recent acquisitions right next to the turntable at standing height. This avoids a whole bunch of rummaging around in my other record cabinets and has encouraged me to play more vinyl than usual. It’s pretty hard to argue with the sheer ease of streaming on the NDX2, but this has really made playing vinyl feel almost as accessible. Each compartment will comfortably accomodate around 70 discs, so when it’s full that’s around 280 albums with 140 available to browse in the standing position. Few people have more than 140 albums in frequent rotation - indeed that’s probably the ideal number!
I am just in the process of trying to build a jazz collection as it’s a genre I have always enjoyed live in a pub, beer in hand, but I had little idea where to start in terms of what to buy. My local vinyl shop in Haslemere came to the rescue and I picked up a couple of Blue note jazz records at the weekend (brand new). I think they might just be the coolest records I own. I was astonished to find them pressed immaculately on matching blue vinyl - both sound and look fabulous!
I find myself astonished that something recorded in the late 1950s/early 1960’s and played back on a medium launched in 1948 can sound this good. It makes you wonder if most modern day recording engineers with all the technology at their disposal have cloth ears!
