Design Plans or Kits for LP storage Rack

www.rackittm.com

I built all my own storage shelving for the 2500+ LP's I have collected over the years because I have had experience in furniture building and have the tools to do the job correctly.

I experimented with a few designs and finally chucked the idea of "front-facing" shelving that Lugnut mentions for my own usage, but I might seriously consider it for a 200 LP collection. My decision was based on the number of records I have, to be sure. But also because I could never find a way that satisfied me of being able to keep the records from "slumping" (like they do in many records stores) while, at the same time, allowing me enough space to actually view the album covers easily. Spacers will work, but are too much of a hassle to move around, at least for me. I'd be interested to see Lugnut's application, though.

If you go with a tall vertical stack of shelves or modulars, make sure they have either a solid, well attached backing or some sort of rigid diagonal bracing. The tremendous weight of even a couple hundred LP's can cause severe lateral stability problems and cause your LP's to come crashing down. Too, make sure that if you buy something ready-made that there is no molding or trim around the front perimeter of the shelving or racks that will not allow for the first and last LP in the shelf to run flush against the inner sides. It is fine if the shelving is deep enough to accommodate the entire LP, but you are asking for “warpage” otherwise.

One of the best "systems" I ever used was one where I didn't care too much what it looked like. In an old apartment, eons ago, I stacked cinder blocks spaced closely enough to support plywood shelving and ran the shelving that was L-braced to the wall studs along one entire wall. Placed the height just below chest-high for easy selection and put my components and various decorative bric-a-brac beneath. It looked cool and can also be done using materials as fine as one’s budget will allow. My current storage is a pleasantly refined, albeit quite expensive, double-tiered variant on this general design. But, you have to have plenty-o-wall-space to do it with a large LP collection.

Hi Raymond; Here is a picture of a cabinet I built for records and audio magazines. This is a DIY project and a bit of experience with this kind of cabinetry will help, but this could be contracted out quite reasonably. The beauty of this is its simlpicity and access. If you do not expect to get over 1000 records and can allocate some space, nothing looks cooler that being able to flip through them. My cabinet is 2 feet deep and 11 feet wide, good for about 1000 records. The easiest way to build something like this is to get kitchen cabinets and put a flat piece of MDF on top of it and them trim the front, back and sides with 6x1" melamite or wood shelves and use 4x1" dividers. make each divided area about 13" wide. Total width of cabinets is determined by adding 13" space, 1" or 3/4" divider, and multiplying by the number of rows. Let me know if you need more detailed help.

Search the archive.

I wonder why people *still* don't search the archive first...

Arcmania-
Iron Butterfly, Ronstad, Art Pepper(great LP), Eagles, Supertramp? Nice wide variety, there. Personally, I like your setup very much but, sadly, don't think it would pass the WAF in my home. Maybe if I used 1.5" solid red oak, used some nice strip inlays from Constantines along the edges, and did some tasteful marquetry designs on the "columns", I could get it to pass. Such is my lot.

I particularly like height of the LP's themselves and your use of shelving and storage beneath to add stability. Your design provides me with inspiration for a project.

Psychic - please lighten up. The guy is obviously not as learned as you have become with the archival process. But, as a psychic, you probably knew about the archive feature even BEFORE joining! HA! :-) Maybe the guy searched the archives and was just looking for more opinions.