Music room progress

Having the attention span of a fruit fly, I hadn't made a whole lot of progress on the music room until the past two weeks. During this time I was moving my desk all around the room and trying different layouts for my gear. I also got around to buying a three-tier A-frame stand (locally off Craigslist), and a bag full of String Swing wall hangers (Strait Music).

The A-frame style of stands are great when you have a lot of gear and you want to go vertically. I intended to fit all of my synths and drum machines onto this baby, so I also bought some shelves from Home Depot for $15. These help the aesthetics, while also allowing for several pieces of gear per tier. The only trick with these stands is that the whole system depends on you 1) getting all the arms locked together correctly, and 2) applying mega-torque to each connection. I didn't intend to find out, but I presume you would have a messy synthesizer landslide if you half-assed these steps.

Hanging the String Swings was pretty straightforward - each hanger mounts into a stud with the two included screws. This is only frustrating if you have two anal-retentive engineers trying to get the spacing and levelness perfect.

Here is a picture of the A-frame setup and String Swings once we were done. The synth-related gear shown is as follows (top to bottom): Moog Sonic Six, Roland CR-78 drum machine, Electro-Harmonix Mini-Synth (on top of the CR-78), Moog Minimoog D, SCI Prophet 5, Moog Taurus I pedals. Hanging on the wall is a random nylon-string guitar, Fender banjo, reissue Hofner violin bass, '76 Rickenbacker 4001 bass, and '62 reissue Fender P-bass. Amps below are Roland KC-500 and '65 Ampeg B-15N.


Here is a picture of the "organ district". Featured are Hammond M-102, Leslie 147, and Lowrey TBO-1 (back wall), Vox Continental (Italian), silver sparkle Fender Rhodes Piano Bass, Farfisa Compact Duo (effects version), Farfisa Combo Compact, and Gibson G-101.


Finally is the electromechanical section of the room. Here you'll find (starting at the back) Hohner Pianet N, Fender Rhodes Suitcase 73, Hohner Clavinet D6, and Wurlitzer 200A.


Next steps are to make room for a Baldwin Combo Harpsichord (arriving next week), get some shelving for the CDs/books/etc, and start working on a wiring design. I'll close by letting George Carlin remind you about people and their stuff:

A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it. You can see that when you're taking off in an airplane. You look down, you see everybody's got a little pile of stuff. All the little piles of stuff. And when you leave your house, you gotta lock it up. Wouldn't want somebody to come by and take some of your stuff. They always take the good stuff. They never bother with that crap you're saving. All they want is the shiny stuff.

That's what your house is, a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get...more stuff!