Turntable stand, steel, aluminum,shelves of ?

Salectric, do you use the buttons under the Gavia spikes?

I have built a stand utilizing sandboxes with hard maple shelves. I first tried my Gavia (just arrived Wednesday!) directly on the maple the sound seemed to muffled so I put the buttons under the spikes and did make an improvement. It is possible that I made this swap too soon as the table only had 2 or 3 hours on it at the time. I may also try a sheet of aluminum on top of the maple shelf to see if that makes a difference.

Point here is that it is possible to tune what ever you end up building as long as you haven't backed into a corner. I.e., with the sandboxes dampening things, I could experiment with either stone or metal shelves. I'm not saying that this is the only way to go, just offering food for thought. Keep your options open if you're building your own rack.

Interesting idea about no spikes, Dave. And thanks for the tip on the battery!

This afternoon I picked up a sheet of 16 guage steel and .032 aluminum and placed these on top of the maple with the spikes into the metal. Really improved the attack on piano notes, bells and cymbols.

It occured to me that this is alot like tube rolling. Different configurations can change the sound, then you have to decide if you like the change or not.