Adventure in Carpentry part 3.14159265...
This is a bit complicated.
You can watch the "short" version below, for the "long" version... just keep reading.
Somebody could be shocked or surprised, but I've always been interested in music, not just in listening to it, but also making it.
My skills in music-making are pretty much non-existant, so I've decided long time ago that it wasn't going to be a "profession", the lack of time and opportunities didn't helped also.
This has remained always something more of an hobby or a pastime, of cours, that didn't stopped me to dump a gigantic amount of time and money into it.
Anyhow, loooooong time ago, I was having a lot of fun with various keyboards, I've never take any "serious" lesson or training, if we ignore that pathetic excuse of "lessons" that were mandatory in school and were more "history" than else. Then I stopped, mostly because I was too busy to press keys on other type of 'keyboards'. But the hitch remained.
So, some times ago I started again to play around with keyboards (of the musical kind), synths and other stuff.
What bugged me the most however, was the lack of a decent "stand" for them. I've always found the available stands either too tall (more designed to play by standing up) or too low (I bang my knees into it). The ones that are supposed to be "adjustable", are so between 2-3 positions that are always either "too much" on one side or the other for my taste.
Ok, fine, if "they" don't do it, I'll do it myself.
Since the weather these days isn't too terrible, not that cold and sunny enough, I decided to grab the bull by the horn and build my own stand.
First I started to tackle the issue of electricity supply. That has also been a source of grief. Between keyboards, controllers, synths, amplifiers, mixers and the like, there are a number of adapters and plugs that need to be plugged in, and however design those things seems to think that you have just one single adapter in the entire house, so if you try to plug more than one in a "normal" extension box, the type you can buy in any store, the adapter ends up blocking 3 sockets at once.
What I need is the Mother of all Extension Boxes.
I then went to the local DIY store and bought a dozen wall sockets (normal built-in sockets) and a switch to pilot them. After measuring the required space, I reused some of the wood that was left over from my kitchen remodeling of 2 years ago and built a box to accomodate all of them. This time I toke the time to even paint it and give it a bit of a "pro" look. Once connected everything with thick cables and performed a "smoke" test, I went on with the rest of the project.
From Ikea I got the legs of the structure, with the possibility to raise or lower the surface to my desire, this was the most expensive part of the project, and also the heaviest.
For the table, or better tables (plural) I recycled a couple of wodden panels I had already, one of the two turned out a bit curved.
Assembly was done with screws and nuts/bolts, since I want to be able to dismount and replace all parts eventually.
My "super-extension-box" was attached below with a "basket" (also from Ikea) to collect and organize all the cables.
And then it was the matter of routing all the cables and connect everything in a way that looked as tidy as possible.
The result is what you see.
Yes, there are a few things that I'll probably change (the headphone stand for example) and maybe I should give a bit of varnish to the wood, but that will came later. Probably.
Davide Bianchi
22/03/2025 07:23
