Does anyone use wood for vibration control?


What kind of wood have you found to be best?
bksherm
While an Anechoic Chamber is a great place to analyze sound and sometimes benificial in some aspects of recording - not such a great environment to listen to a live performance, as is completely dead and sterile.
The floor in my listen room is carpeted, with heavy acustic drapes on the wall behind the speakers and otherwise normal furnishing - sofa, recliner, coffee table etc. My system is set up on a relatively cheep, but sturdy 3 shelf rack, I have had great success using grade A, 2" slab cut, Black Walnut boards (approximately 18W x 15D) isolated from the rack shelves with 1/4" felt/rubber iso pads. The components are  coupled to the boards using brass cones, with a thin felt disc between the base of cones and component.
I agree with what Michael and others have said, while taking care of unwanted resonance is important, we can sometimes go too far -  live music, in its' real environment, is full of resonance and texture, not dead and sterile.
Am plenty happy with my system, rack and room as they are now. I  could have spent a lot more money to get the same or lesser results and as is - my system, in my room, has just the right balance of detail and clarity with enough fullness and lushness to be musical and  engaging......Jim 

@geoffkait

I have Neve used, but would be interested to try ceramic cones. Do you sell them?....Jim

As far as spikes go I like brass, zinc and some mild steel. I’m not crazy about the sound of too much hard material in the system, to easy to get frequency clusters and stage holes with harder materials. I’m cautious about the sound of Maple. Maple is the Aluminum of the wood world. Sometimes I will use Maple or Aluminum for Tuning bars but that’s only with certain woods or sizes of side boards on speakers, rare for me though.

With cones, Brass blends are my fav. Not always 360 but 360 is a great standard to start with. Doing Copper/Zinc alloy blending can get pretty expensive. 360 is so great because you can play with speeds (turn) and different shapes easy. I should give this tip as well if folks are using the brass cones (mine or others). If you’re using Brass cones and you’re finding the highs still a little too forward or brittle, take 220 grit sand paper and gently sand the end of the cone tip just barely and it will smooth out the transfer. You can do this same trick on your other cone types as well, just be careful to only do this on the tip or top surface. If you do this with the main part of the cone you can screw things up. And always sand in the direction of the turn and in circles, don’t do side to side sanding on metals. Since I have moved to the desert I find myself blending less metals and curing more wood. LTR has been a major hit for me and I can voice the wood to different grades, and that goes a long way in helping folks get those missing tones they’ve been hunting for.

There’s lots to look into when using any material and shapes and the only way to come up with a formula is to jump in and do it. Folks who just throw out material names without giving a formula of use are not very accurate. But if you talk to someone who has takin the time to play around they can help you.

Michael Green

I no longer sell the NASA grade ceramic cones. But Golden Sound does. 
Glubson, as with many of you posts I’m filing your last one in the file labeled WHATEVER.