Record Handling and Storage Tips

i used to do this when i owned a linn turntable but i used 2x2’s and forced them in place worked great, this method is better because u can adjust it when the house changes and the walls and floors shift.

My apartment floor is wooden, and suspended.
Just walking around had the needle skipping.
So I use a pair of turnbuckles against the wall. And have weighted the floor where the stand is with a couple of large rocks from the lake. Looks great and is apparently great for my Feng Shui.

...you are genius ( not that I ever doubted it before).

Your suggestion may solve a problem that I have been stuck with for the past couple of years. My rack is stable vertically and horizontally but apply any torsion (like bumping into a corner) and it is as floppy as can be. Not great for turntable support. Unfortunately the wall behind is not structurally suitable for a wall mounted shelf solution. But this looks like it could do the trick. And at minimal expenditure.

Many thanks.

Just so you know, those open-ended bolts you describe are commonly known as coupling nuts.

...as my old Arcici rack is tall and a bit wobbly with a 35lb TT on the top shelf.
And it's nice to see that I'm not the only one with a rat's nest of cables!

Hard to imagine a room that doesn't have an exterior or load-bearing wall at least adjacent to the listening room front wall. If that's the case, though, I suppose the rod and bolt bracing may be worthwhile.

Still, there's no substitute for wall mounting with 15 or 20 dollars worth of the large shelf brackets HD, Lowes, etc, sell. My table is set on a 2" thick slab of maple, then those HVAC isolation pads between the maple and a piece of Baltic Birch isolated from the brackets by E.A.R. SD-40.

Nothing better, I believe, until one get's to a $50,000 air suspension rack.

My system is built into a room which was previously a garage. It has a poured slab floor at ground level, with the room's current floor about 18" over that. When we moved here in 1985 I reinforced the wooden floor a bit and had the contractor build a wall system for the stereo, TV, LP's & CD's. The support for the turntable is a cinderblock column which starts on the poured concrete floor and rises through the wooden floor and wall unit, not touching them. Saving wire, here's no mechanical connection between the turntable and the rest of the room. The equipment rack uses a UniStrut sliding-nut and rail system, with shelf standards as well, to flexibly support both rackmount and non-rack gear.

Preach Mikey!

I have been recommending this solution for years, but usually a lower tech version with just something like a block of wood wedged between the back of the rack and the wall.

There are other problems out in the environment besides footfall that you have to isolate your cartridge from. A properly designed suspension as you would find in a Sota, SME, Basis or Dohmann turntable will do the job in a comprehensive fashion. You can put a Sota Sapphire on a card table jump around right in front of it and it will not miss a beat. You can even hit it with a hammer. If you have a suspensionless turntable you can do the Job as Mr Fremer has with a MinusK platform. A Sota Sapphire costs less than a MinusK stand.

I went to the hardware store within hours of seeing this. My Technics SL 1600 MK2 sits on the standard Ikea record boockase (4x2 cubes) on the second floor of my house. Footfalls were a huge problem. This did not 100% fix the issue but improved it greatly. Now only a hard foot directly in front skips the needle.
I think it also had a slight improvement on overall sound, though that could also be the "I did something so it sounds better" effect. Anyway, I am not a big spender and love these creative solutions.

Take care we all 've seen your wires and they don't seem to be from the HE market !

This problem is as old as Adam and Eve. The wall brace is a partial fix, but the best idea is to either buy a table like a SOTA Sapphire with a proper suspension or use a wall-mounted shelf like Rega used to sell. Walls don't move around like floors do because they are loaded in compression. Floors are loaded in tension like banjo strings. (This is Engineering Mechanics 101 for you Liberal Arts majors).

I have been lucky to own a vintage Linn LP-12 I bought in 1988 complete with IItok IV arm, Valhalla board and the original Linn Troika MC cartridge (rebuilt three times). The best “tweak” of my vinyl setup -by far- was to mount the table on a low mass wall shelf anchored to studs which are lashed to the exterior brick all resting on the cement foundation. Of course, no more footfall problem (dance anyone?), but the biggest deal was how the bass significantly tightened and deepened and how the soundstage opened up and relaxed. Short of those 200 pound monster turntables now being sold, I can’t see why anyone would not properly wall-mount their deck. Another advantage is the shelf can be situated at chest level meaning you don’t have to bend over to handle your tonearm, a very unstable position for those of us who are of a certain vintage.

This (or a variation of it) is EXACTLY the TT audio life-hack I've needed for years now. I live in a 160 year old house that, though it's built than almost anything you'd find today, with huge cross-beams under the floors and a granite foundation yet... with a listening room on the the second floor it has springy floors like you wouldn't believe! As soon as I read your explanation it all made so much sense as to why it's been near impossible to minimize this issue, let alone solve it. I know just what this weekend's project is going to be, so a huge Thanks!

In fact, my only gripe is: why'd you wait so long, haha!? In all seriousness, this is the type of link that should be permanently pushed to the top of your TIPS section!

This is exact how I coupled the top of my floorstanding speakers to the back wall for an even more accurate sound.