Stacking power amps mono blocks

I agree that stacking the amps is NOT a good idea in terms of heat dissipation. If the amps are high bias designs, i would recommend appr 8" of free space above them. This lets the heat rise out of them unimpeded. In your case, not only is heat trapped in the bottom amp, what does rise out is only helping to cook the top amp. NOT a good thing in any aspect.

Unfortunately, I can't offer any good suggestions. I was also in that boat but ended up changing racks for similar reasons. Since all of my amps ( except two ) are all very richly biased and run hot, i didn't want then cooking to death. As such, i hated loosing a shelf or having a giant "dead space". To correct this situation, i ended up changing racks. I can now adjust the shelf height on several of my racks. This now gives me the ability to accomodate ANY situation or component AND the looks that i was searching for. Sean
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Detlof: I routed the aluminum plates, just two routes per plate. They are about 3/8" wide and almost as long as the plate, stopping about 1 inch from either end (long being side to side in this case--if that makes sense). Then you have one with the grooves on the top, put two marbles near the ends of each groove, then put the other aluminum plate with grooves downward onto the four marbles. That's my recipe for my aluminum marble sandwitch. As to the concerns of heat dissappation--these concerns are probably correct for tubes or other types of amplifiers which do not have the heat sinks located to the outsides as mine do. Also, the ambiant tempurature and air flow around the units play a significant role. My units are only about 2" separated, which is adequate, although I have been considering increasing the flow under the bottom amplifier. In this situation it's really how much airflow you can get around the heat sinks--how much heat dissapation per hour. With tubes, this is probably much more difficult to accomplish since the heat generating device is located centrally in the amplifier--rather than on the external sides with massive heat sinks. I should have considered this with my original post.

Thank you. I am starting to get convinced. Need to run to look for amp-stands for my mono blocks.
Cheers.

Thanks for your time and consideration Abstract7. You make very good sense to me. I 'm thinking of following your footsteps and doing something similar.
Regards,

You can also try a couple of very quiet running fans...I've rigged 2 three inch cooling fans to blow across the top of each of my VTL monoblocks (they're on their own shelves above each other). I don't actually run them when I'm listening, but for the warm up period (approx. 1/2 hr.) and in between songs- whether I'm changing CD's or albums, a 2 min. or so cooling will quickly bring the temp. of the upper shelf back down to "reasonable limits". I'm using a standard [adjustable shelf] Salamander #5 rack and have about 4"-5" between the top of tubes and bottom of shelf above.What I did was simply rig a wire from the front right vertical support rod straight back to the aft one at the very top just below the shelf above it.Pull the wire very tight and then a couple of cable ties or whatever,to hang the fan on the wire. Rig yourself a switch and a plug and you've got yourself a "cross-flow" ventilated rack.Obviously this will only work with an open design rack(no side panels),but if you really wanted to (depending on the material) you could conceivably drill a hole into a side panel type,and mount it somehow? - Where there's a will.... Bottom line,it can be done and still be effective and neat looking. Regards