In your Victorian situation you'd best avoid ferrous metals altogether. Make wooden moulds and fill with Postcrete? No, seriously. Sort of. 😛
I used arrow points with round, flathead cabinet knobs right out of Home Depot to make equipment isolation points. The knobs were heavier back in 1994 when I first tried it, but it still works.
I have a big aluminum tray to dry sand. I pop it in the oven after my wife does her baking. It's basically free heat for drying.
My vote goes to Angel Secrete, pending on the angel involved, and the type of secrete.
Edit:
The next project here will be constructed of 15mm OSB, just trying it out, a lot cheaper than decent plywood. More than good enough on most speakers I am sure.
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For "sand" I use glass bead blasting media - comes packed dry in a 50lb bag. Larger particle size than even coarsest masonary sand, but still quite dense enough to do the job.
Used these for phase plug in place of dust cap.
Screw in the base hold it to he magnet.
Almost no vibration on the cone.
Wooden Doll Bodies by ArtMinds(R)
Screw in the base hold it to he magnet.
Almost no vibration on the cone.
Wooden Doll Bodies by ArtMinds(R)
Has anyone tried concrete for speaker stands? Not to everyones taste but I imagine excellent for mass and stiffness. Not sure how "dead" concrete is.
Back in my very early days in the hobby, concrete building blocks were very commonly used as both speaker stands, and along with cheap pine shelving boards, as equipment racks.
I think concrete is certainly "dead" enough for the purpose.
A buddy of mine used a combination of fired clay flue liners, large concrete pavers and sand for a pretty massive turntable stand. Hard to get dead level, and not all models of tables had adjustable feet, but a few hardboard shims took care of that.
I think concrete is certainly "dead" enough for the purpose.
A buddy of mine used a combination of fired clay flue liners, large concrete pavers and sand for a pretty massive turntable stand. Hard to get dead level, and not all models of tables had adjustable feet, but a few hardboard shims took care of that.
Having put in a sandbox for the kids, I can report that Toys-R-Us sandbox sand is much better and dryer "beach-type" sand out of the package than the wet Home Depot Sand. Get it now before bankruptcy kicks in.
People have also suggested lead-shot type stuff and glass beads for the same purpose but I have never seen where you would actually buy these; and certainly lead shot is now not politically correct to use. I actually think I put lead shot into my speaker stand years ago but cannot recall where it came from.
I've bought Lead shot at gun stores as shot for reloading shotgun shells.
I've used it for making counter weights before
First Google hit is reasonably available in US and south Canada.
25-lb. Bag Magnum Lead Shot $39.99 ($1.60/lb)
Non-toxic shot at MidwayUSA, steel $2/lb, tungsten $30/lb
Per pound, lead is just a hair cheaper than steel, and a pound of steel may fill more volume than lead and still be as heavy as you need.
I would not be too concerned about lead in a box. Label it clearly on the back. You will never spill it out in the yard. When you pass-away, your daughters will ask around and find that lead is totally recyclable: a battery shop may take it, and a metal-scraper sure will, though not pay your gas to drag it there. (Scrap lead sells near $0.10/lb, very variable.)
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I use a mixture of lead shot and toy store sand for my turntable stand and the "sandbox" under the TT. I recently moved and a young weight-lifter friend helping me got a big surprise when he went to pick it up. Fortunately we don't have the rust/humidity problem here in New Mexico. Way back when we used lead bricks for doorstops at work.
Keeping clean, tight connections is my favorite tweak, it that's even a tweak and not routine maintenance.
Keeping clean, tight connections is my favorite tweak, it that's even a tweak and not routine maintenance.
Cents under speakers or amplifiers, if the later don't have any feet.
Bare copper speaker cable with cotton dielectric.
Speaker positioning.
Regular contact cleaning - RCA, tube sockets, binding posts.
Power plug reversal, if socket permits.
Experiment with pieces of wood on different equipment - amplifiers, sources, cables.
Bare copper speaker cable with cotton dielectric.
Speaker positioning.
Regular contact cleaning - RCA, tube sockets, binding posts.
Power plug reversal, if socket permits.
Experiment with pieces of wood on different equipment - amplifiers, sources, cables.
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I recently used 16"x16"x2" stepper stones to raise speakers 4" off the floor. They weight around 40 lbs each and cost around $4 each. Could be rough on fine floors. I'm using it on concrete floor with thin pile carpet. The steppers could be wrapped to protect floor.
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I read about doing this years ago and ran into how to make holography and other optical vibration isolation tables. The ultimate is floor, inner tube(s), slab on that, another inner tube(s) on the slab, then another slap probably of different weight on the top two inner tubes. This is so the resonance of the bottom tubes/slab will be different from that of the top tubes/slab, to greatly reduce transmission over a large range of frequencies.
I didn't find the webpage I remember from years ago, but this guy did something similar with a lot of experimentation to "tune" the thing:
SIDELINE #2: Building a vibration-isolation/damping stack for holography
But this might be overkill for a turntable.
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