People sometimes ask, hey, man, why is your turntable mounted on the wall? Whaddya you, some kind of weirdo? Sometimes, depending upon who’s asking, I may go into this whole schpiel of esoteric bullshit, you know, tell them all manner of reason. I watch their eyes bounce around the room in a “oooooh, goooood for you” manner and their faces contort in confusion when I lay out the whole mechanics of sound thing and they all agree with a definate “Hmmm…” when I’m done.
You know, that’s just funnin’ pals, or teen-agers (teenagers!). Some of it’s true, though. And I’ll tell you, there are 2 reasons I mounted my turntable on the wall in the office:
1 - So I can dance my face off in the room, like nobody's watching
2 - Because it's badass. Dude, chains - wall-mounted!
The plinth on that particular turntable is very heavy, it’s true. It handles vibrations well and I could walk around it, mostly, when I had it on the gear-shelf. But I couldn’t dance, especially my face off, nor could I sit at my desk and find my feet bouncing off the ground in time. You ever hear Zeppelin do “When the Levee Breaks” and manage to keep still? Turntables need good isolation and damping. There’s nothing worse than running through the room and hearing the needle bounce around your favorite album – bzzZZZZIP!
Ouch!
It still looks pretty plain up there, chained-in on its shelf. Of course, I planned to paint the shelf and chains, and I will, but once it was up and I dropped the needle – to test the dancing thing – it was all over. I left it there because grooves. I’ll get to it but for right now I don’t wanna mess with a good thing. It’s up, it’s groovin’ and that’s where it’s at.
When I do get around to taking it down and dressin’-up the whole area I also plan to add rubber washers top and bottom of the eye-bolts securing the chains to the front of the shelf. The chains are secured into studs and the dense particleboard shelf make this setup super strong and vibration absorbing. Where the shelf meets the wall it rests on a support board (red oak) I secured to the wall that also hits 2 studs. I could dance with a zebra in the room without skips.
Anyway, all this is ridiculous, falling well into who cares. It’s clear I lack discipline and used my thumbs to have my cake and eat it, too. It’s a fine line, man. B’dip.