Best building material for vibration free shelving


I am building some built into the wall shelves for my VPI Classic 2 SE turntable, amp, preamp, CD player, and old Burwen TNE 7000A transient noise eliminator (that’s one for you old-timers to remember), as well as my DISH Network receiver box. The shelves must match in appearance the typical looking built-in wood bookshelves already in the room. The shelves will be located directly under my 45" wide flat screen television. They will be wide enough to hold two components side by side, other than the VPI turntable which will have the top shelve to itself due to its extra width. I will be building the shelves high and deep to allow for plenty of air circulation around the components. They will be painted.

My question is, what materials might you suggest building the shelves with to minimize vibration? If they were for books I’d normally build the sides, and top out of 3/4" birch sided plywood, the back out of 1/4 inch luan plywood, and the shelves out of oak to deal with the weight of the books without bending. I will be adding vibration damping feet under each component and am not looking for suggestions along those lines, only material and perhaps design recommendations to reduce vibration.

I was researching this last night online and on site, and saw recommendations to use four thicknesses of 3/4 inch High Density (HD) MDF, also to use granite or marble under the turntable, among other recommendations. I was wondering how birch veneered plywood would work too, as it’s ply’s, I believe, have their grains running in opposite directions. Maybe there’s some way to isolate the uprights from the horizontal shelves to reduce vibration transmission.

What would you think would work best for these built-ins. I’d appreciate any recommendations you have or your experience on this subject. Thank you for any ideas.

Mike


skyscraper
I picked up my brass/bronze feet (cones) today. I had them turned at a local metal fabrication shop the make bearing, spigots etc...

I purchased the bronze and brass from Metal Supermarkets - they have locations globally.

I had three diameters
- 2 1/2" bronze
- 2" brass
- 1 1/4" brass
- 3/4 " brass

The angle of the cone is 10 degrees from horizontal. I kept this angle shallow (less pointed) because from what I had read, maintaining mass seemed to be quite important.

The vertical shoulder
- on the 2" and 2 1/2" cones is 3/4"
- on the 1 1/4" cone is 3/8"
- on the 3/4" cone is 3/16"

Botom line - they improved the clarity and details and expanded the image over the Beech cones I had purchased

Bass seemed to have more tone without the loss of detail or texture

Some instruments seemed to be placed further back into the image - so they seemed to get lost a little compared to the Beeach cones

The Beech cones sounded a little richer in that you could hear more of background instruments

I think it’s all a matter of taste as to which ones each individual would prefer

There was no difference between the Brass and the Bronze cones - except the bronze was a little more expensive - there was also very little difference in appearance.

The Brass/Bronze cones (5 sets of three) cost a little over $330 CDN.

The wood cones (3 sets of three) cost $100 CDN

All of the cones worked great on my Granite/Foam/MDF shelves.

The brass/bronze cones looks so much nicer than the Beech wood

Hope you find this info useful

This isn’t an exhaustive comaprison into Feet/Cones - just something I was able to try to satisfy my curiosity:-)

I will try to post pictures in a couple of weeks on my system page

Regards - Steve


I know this might not be practical for most people but when I placed my Denon 51f turntable on my handmade console with a 250# granite top there was a very notable improvement from the 3/4" ply shelving it previously perched on. I say push the boundaries of normal and use some different materials. There I had my say! Good luck 
Has anyone used carbon fiber to set their equipment on? I noticed dragonplate has balsa sandwiched inside two layers of .030 carbon fiber. It looks like it would work well for smaller platforms (strength wise), but not sure how effective that would be.