Designing a turntable stand
I love vinyl records!
I got my first turntable around mid 1980’s and I never gave up vinyls although CDs, MP3s and Spotify came into picture too. So don’t call me hipster. I’m one of those original vinyl generation kids ;)
Some time ago I decided to buy a new turntable and ended up to get Rega P3 turntable and Rega Brio-R amplifier. I also wanted to have a new record player stand, but the problem was that I wasn’t able to find suitable one or they were way too expensive. It was time to design my own turntable stand!
I like to tune secondhand furnitures and give them a new life. I wondered if I could come up something cool for this case too. After searching some time what was on a market, I found a nice, old telephone table from the 1960’s and got an idea.
I paid 20€ for that old table and then it was time to do some design. The biggest change required was to remove the drawer compartment and replace it with a frame which is big enough for vinyl records. Another thing to improve was to make it more steady, which is very important feature for turntable stands to avoid needle jumping. I sent the design to a local carpenter and in few weeks, I got it back with my modifications done.
I asked the carpenter to remove the old varnish and I did finishing by myself. The final result can be seen in the image above. I can honestly say that I was very satisfied with the result.
The big drawer (under the turntable) has a very unique look and I wanted to highlight it. Instead of making to look like rest of the stand, it was just oiled without dyeing it too much.
What about the price?
The whole turntable stand cost me less than 150€. It includes everything and is totally unique product. Can you imagine to be able to buy something similar, fully wooden stand in that price? I can’t.
Few words about Rega
If you’re not familiar with Rega, it is a company which has built turntables for decades. During CD era, they never gave up designing turntables. I also like their philosophy and compatibility between different turntable models — I can easily update my turntable to have better components or if something breaks, it’s easy to find replacement parts.
Rega’s Brio-R amplifier is built for Rega turntables. It has built-in RIIA but no equalizer, bass, mid or treble adjustments, only volume. It’s because Brio-R has been designed to play audio as it comes from a vinyl played by a Rega turntable.
All this comes to User eXperience. I want to have a high quality product, which has a philosophy behind it. Not just yet-another-turntable. I want it to last for the next 30 years, I want to be able to repair it, if it breaks and I want it to be functional.
With Rega turntable and amp, I can get exactly these features.
Industrial design?
I have always been “wannabe” designer whether talking about graphical design or industrial design. It’s always really refreshing to be able to design a new “product” which is practical, ecological and looks nice. Ecological because I was able to give a new life for an old furniture. The world drowning to a waste anyway.
The turntable stand has now been in use for some time and it works very well. It does exactly the job which I designed it to do. Only problem with it is that it takes about 80 vinyls, so records needs to be selected carefully there.
My next, and already ongoing, “industrial design project” is to build new speakers. Let’s see if I have time to write post here about that project too, but believe me, they will be awesome!
I hope this post has motivated people to think how to use something old to create something new instead of always buying new things.
Thanks for reading my blog!
