"Tuning" an LP player by using a resonant wood support structure strikes me as wrong-headed as adding a tube buffer or pre-amp (or whatever) to add "warmth" to a system, as is often done to offset a "cold" CD player. The value of tube circuitry is it’s liquid transparency and high resolution---in contrast to the dry, bleached, colorless, and sterile sound of all but the best solid state---not in the "warmth" some attributed to tubes. Warmth is a coloration, just as is coldness. The best tube products don’t sound warm, and the best solid state doesn’t sound cold. If you have a system which produces a universally cold sound to everything played on it, adding a tube will not correct the situation---tit-for-tat doesn’t work in this case. Tubes should be used to prevent that kind of sound from being produced in the first place. Once it has, it’s too late for a tube to "correct" the situation. +1 and -1 sum to zero, but for a tube inserted in a system to exactly offset the cause of the coldness of that system is highly improbable.
But back to the topic. Surely I’m not alone in thinking a shelf/platform/rack should have no signature sound of it’s own. The "musical" sound I’m after is not that produced by the wood shelf under my table adding it’s own sound to that of the recording (or to the player, if that is the thought), but of the sound of the wooden instruments in the recording itself. Maple-shelled drums sound great because maple possesses a lot of resonance and sustain---good characteristics in a music producing instrument. Are ya’ll saying you want your table’s support to have a musical sound of it’s own? And that you think a resonant, ringing material makes for a "musical" sounding turntable support?
