Does anyone know about Mana tables?

Here are some set up instructions posted by John Watson on the long defunct Mana forum:

"BTW, regarding "The Ring or Tone" on Mana. Simply set three of the spikes so that an allen wrench will just fit between glass and frame. This is the proper distance between glass and frame. Leaving one of the front spikes untightened, adjust the height of this spike while tapping on the glass (using your knuckle) mid-way between each group of two spikes (left and right front, front-right and rear-right, etc.) while listening for the quality of the tone or ring. When you hit the ideal or perfect tone (described in a moment), you'll find the quality/duration/pitch stays the same at any of the testing mid-points in the last sentence (this is simply an optional test provided by JW years ago). You also might find it beneficial to tap, say two inches in towards the middle from any spike as well (works especially well if this particular piece of Mana doesn't want to produce an absolute clear tone or "pitch")...believe this one came from our Dev(?) If I remeber correctly the instructions say to tap over the spike--a lot of us found this method useless-the quality of tone sucks no matter what the spike height. Anyway...while you're adjusting this spike, notice the range of travel from too high (glass rattles) to too low (glass rattles). Usually the best, strongest, clearest, most ditinct pitch is mid-way between these two points of spike travel. Once you hit this point, you can't mistake it. On an x-tier amp rack the tone (pitch or "ring") can be so distinct and strong it almost overwhelms all other sounds happening in the room at the time (it almost hurts your ears if your head is close to the glass)! You may find one shelf out of three in a 3-tier only resonates this strong (so don't get paranoid if the other two do not...this is normal). When you hit this point or "quality" of tone...you're done! Lock the nut (only an eighth of a turn or so past finger tight!). If this purest-of-tone can't be achieved on a given shelf (or all shelves) simply adjust the spike height for the best tone this particular shelf can achieve.P.S. Only place one piece of glass on a rack at a time during tuning...which means... you can use just one piece of glass to tune each of the levels (or shelves).This does not affect adjustment and it minimizes glass lying all over the floor during a lengthy installation (less chance for the kids to step on it and break it ;-)

Once you do get Mana setup properly, it won't go out of tune. If this happens it is usually because it was slightly off to begin with, or you have a particularly bad floor or thick carpet.One way to avoid this is just to position the Mana rack where you want it to go, and get it seated firmly on the floor by altering the bottom spikes. Then go to bed and leave it overnight. In the morning any spike sinkage will have already occurred. You can then happily tune the shelves, setup your system, and it should stay perfectly in tune indefinitely.Also, it is worth noting that once you start to add stages it does become less of a hassle. Get the very bottom stage right, and adding new stages and setting the rack up properly becomes dead easy because you have a perfectly level surface to start off with, with no issue of sinkage.

Short spikes, tighten 3 spikes each, then work with one, but if the floor is badly not level, you may have to work with 2 to level the shelves.
No clattering when tapping the glass on all 4 sides where the upward spikes are, finger-tight + just a wee bit of tightening with spanner (tightening with thumb and forefinger, not with your entire fist), tapping on center for that ringing tone."

I haven't implemented my stage 2 Mana yet, but I vaguely remember Manaman telling me to put my wood shelf(of my second mana)underneath the top Mana, and the top Mana should have glass on top. Sorry, I may come across some information in the (far)future, and will try to post it here. I think you use a level. You might have to have 3 of the spikes in correctly, then the fourth is critical. I think it's easy to hear the "sound", but hard to determine if it's the correct sound. On the Mana forum, they laughed, when I mentioned the Ikea lack table(which is what I had my turntable [either Linn or Ariston] sitting on). My Mana sits on the Ikea Lack table, hence my desire for the 2nd Mana, to get the correct heighth for me. I do think the Mana is a good table, and should be worth it, because, even today they are looking/arguing about what table to put the Linn on(latest trampolin not withstanding). I also bought stainless steel(?) spikes on the internet, which are claimed to make the Mana sound better, and should be used under the glass. I think, towards the end, that the Mana guy introduced these(mine aren't the original). Good luck.

Hi,

I just acquired some Mana stuff and would be grateful if Manaman or someone else (Mmakshak, Sgn ?)could send me too the setup instructions as it came without. Many thanks!

Hi Manaman/Mmakshak, could you be so kind and let me have a copy of your Setup instructions for the Mana from John Watson Please, as I no longer have mine.
Many thanks.

Use the laminate board on the table ,and then put the reference top on the table with the glass on top of that.
the top level{phase) should always be glass and any level in between should be laminate board.

Great information guys, and thanks for those setup instructions Manaman. Just curious, does anyone know if I can use the Mana Acoustics table(wood top)with the Mana Reference table(glass), or would it be better to use the Mana Acoustics table with the Reference top(glass). It appears that the Mini table is a short table with a wood top, and these are generally the ones used to add stages.

I wrote the first Mana review for "Listener." I think generalizations about racks, stands, and isolation devices are usually foolish since it's been my experience that the performance of these things is very much dependent on the system and the environment. A rack that sounds great on the second floor of a balloon framed house might sound wretched on a concrete slab in a basement, for example. That said, the improvement rendered by a Mana stand compared to a Target stand (probably the most widely used stand in the '80s and early '90s) under my Xerxes was so obvious that a cinder block could have heard it. Art Dudley burst into surprised laughter when I demonstrated the difference to him by moving my Xerxes from the Target rack to the Mana stand. The downside to the Mana stands is that set up is tedious and time - consuming, and Mana auteur John Watson's instructions were intentionally abstruse. You were told to tighten the nuts on the spikes "finger tight" and "snug" but not too tight, for instance. Since this tightness has some critical influence on the sound of the rack Watson could and should have specified an exact torque number for the nuts, but he always refused to. Similarly, Mana users were instructed to tap on the glass while adjusting the supporting spikes and listen for what was described as "The Tone," a ringing sound that indicated perfect adjustment. Again, since achieving this sound was so important, Watson should have made things easy for his customers by posting a little MP3 of it on Mana's web site but he never did. Despite the set up hassles Mana stands certainly had their enthusiastic admirers. As I recall Dave Gilmour of Pink Floyd had custom Mana stands under all the gear in his recording studio, and Brian May of Queen used one under his Vox amp.

Each mana product you add is refereed to as a phase.
you have a mana table and a reference top,and therefore on phase two.
add another mini table you are at phase three and so on.
every-time you add a phase you move the glass to the top and use boards between the phases.
Back in the day i belonged to the mana forum and had special
advanced set up instruction emailed to me by John Watson of mana acoustics which i can email you if you like.
the long spikes where nicknamed by us "evil spikes" and the short ones "studies".
A well known tweak at the time was to use evil spikes on the glass as well.
once you hit phase four you really start cocking on gas,i have my Krell KPS 25SC on phase nine.
Keep your eyes open for some mana gear i will be selling soon!
Hope it helps
Jake

good stuff but tricky to set-up.
Do a search on the Naim forums..

Listener magazine, now defunct, had some very favorable articles on them. Do a google search and they may turn up.

You might try the Pink Fish Media site - Mana was big in the UK, and a lot of the Linn/Naim crowd swore by it for a long time. They'll tease you for even mentioning Mana (there was bad bad blood there), but you'll get a forthright answer.

-Richard