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 | | | | Mar31Written by:Bill Park
Sunday, March 31, 2002 6:00 PM  Okay, so you know that I have just got the new studio to the point where I can start to put gear into it. I'm chomping at the bit (heh heh, bit…. What, you aren't going to byte on that one?) to get some recording done. But I have other issues. First I need to put in the speakers, run some tests, take some measurements, and properly treat the room.
I have done much of this work myself, and with the help of my friends and particularly with the help of my brother Bob. I'm just not up to tackling another DIY project for the studio right now. In the past I have either built all of the studio furniture myself, or contracted out to have it custom built. The new layout requires new racks and a new desk. I did have one custom rack shopped out. Built from all birch, it is a dual 12-space rack with a birch tabletop, on 4-inch wheels. Still, I need a new main desk, and a couple of more rack spaces wouldn't hurt.
So I look at the pre-fab offerings. I'm not too excited about any of them, but I was sort of attracted to the Raxxess "Big Apple". Oddly enough, fellow Pro Rec Editor Garry Simmons was also interested in the same desk.
There are several manufacturers churning out prefab racks and desks. Most are just so-so, being functional, cheap, and quickly and poorly made, with little attention to detail or fit and finish.
I have had no previous experience with Raxxess, so this was totally a shot in the dark for me. Raxxess offers several models of desk and desk/rack combo sets in their "Studio Furniture" line. The "Big Apple" has a large work surface and two 14 space racks, one on each side of the kneehole. There is a 60-inch long adjustable height shelf to hold audio and video monitors.
 Raxxess Big Apple
Garry shopped around, and was able to get quite a good deal from Sweetwater. I just jumped on what looked like a reasonable price from another vendor. As it turned out, Garry got the better deal. He paid $40 more than I did, but he got the sliding keyboard shelf. This shelf sells for about $100. I hadn't really looked at it, because I still have a similar shelf sitting here from a previous custom desk. I'll have to modify it, and work out a new mounting for it. It would have been well worth the extra $40 not to have to deal with retrofitting the old shelf into the new desk. I haven't done it yet, I don't know when I'll get to it, and I'm not looking forward to it, though I know that it will have to be done. But gee, I saved 40 whole dollars! (It appears as if I have outsmarted myself again…)
Painful Delivery
Garry ordered his Big Apple a few days before I did, and he received his desk quickly. I ordered mine, and I got a call from the freight company on the Thursday before Easter, telling me that it had arrived but would not be delivered until Monday. Okay, no problem.
When Garry's desk was delivered, the 40-foot semi rolled into his neighborhood, and the driver could not unload the 300-pound crate. No loading dock, no forklift, no lift gate. Garry's wife had to open the crate and carry the pieces down the driveway and into the house one at a time. The driver was a Nice Guy, and he helped her, though he was under no obligation to do so. Then he had to try to wind his 40-foot trailer through Garry's winding residential neighborhood.
Now, I live in the city proper. At my place, the driver could bring any size truck and just dump the crate in my driveway and leave, provided he had a lift gate or ramp. Being a Nice Guy, I mention to the trucking company representative that they might want to send it on a truck with a lift gate, since I don't have a loading dock. Otherwise, the driver would have to hang around while I unpacked the crate.
This concept caused much confusion with the trucking company. They wanted to charge me to deliver the crate on a truck with a lift gate. They shuffled me to four different people. The last guy told me haughtily that the driver would not help me unload the crate. Well, that's fine. I never mentioned that he should or that I would want him to do so. He told me that the driver would not wait while I unloaded the crate. So, was the crate just dropping by for a visit? I'd get to wave at it while the driver drove off into the sunset? He was all round snotty and shitty, and was not at all interested in helping me. He said that he would "have to talk to Raxxess." As if he was going to set them straight. I told him that I didn't care what he did with the crate. I had only mentioned this for –their- convenience, and they could deliver it or they could send it back to Raxxess, but in any case I wasn't paying any more money for delivery over what I had already paid.
I was, at that moment, in the middle of flying a bunch of truss in an arena. Frankly, I was more interested in the safety of the procedure than in taking the names of rude service personnel. But it was New Penn trucking, if you are looking for a company to avoid.
When I got home I fired off an email to Raxxess, explaining the situation, and suggesting to them that they might want to explain to New Penn that the success of New Penn hinged on the success of the business that they deliver for, and since that is the case, New Penn might want to treat Raxxess's customers as if they were New Penn customers. I got a very nice email from Raxxess, thanking me for my feedback and saying that they would look into the matter. Still, the desk was not delivered on the promised Monday. I did get a phone call on that Monday from a contrite sounding individual from the trucking company asking if they could deliver on Tuesday.
This was actually no problem for me, as I was expecting another delivery on Tuesday. But the problem was that I had also taken Monday off of work in order to receive the desk. So I was screwed out of quite a bit of money.
Still, the desk was finally delivered, in a small truck with a lift gate. The driver was a very nice fellow who lives in my neighborhood, and he even came equipped with a pallet jack. He rolled the crate onto the lift, rolled it off the lift and into my driveway, and was gone in probably 90 seconds.
Easy Assembly
Now I break open the crate and take the pieces round back to the studio entrance. I laid out the pieces around the floor, and removed all of the packing materials. The packing materials are clearly labeled as to what pieces they contain, so look at the labels before you remove the packing. If you have ever put together any Ikea furniture, this is similar. Similar, but far easier. I literally put the desk together in less than ten minutes. The first rack probably took twelve minutes, and the second one took less than five minutes, because by that time I had gathered the proper tools and I knew what I was doing, having already done it once.
Garry and his wife assembled his desk, and he suggested that I might need help to build the Big Apple. Maybe because his room is small and filled with stuff, and mine is larger and currently empty, but I spread the pieces out all over the place and had no trouble assembling all three pieces by myself. There was nothing to the process.
Everything fit together properly and with ease. The directions are superfluous, and that is good. There is one page of text and a couple of pages of rough drawings, but they are not very clear. The more critical operations that would benefit from pictures have none, while the obvious operations are sketched out. Still, none of it is rocket science and a couple of minutes spent studying the pieces makes everything clear, since almost everything only goes together one way. You might be able to put the metal foot panels of the racks on backwards. You could put the tops on backwards, so that the oak beauty strips faced the opposite way as the ones on the rack face. You could put the desk shelf so that it hung off the back of the desk and ran the risk of tipping over when you put a load on it. That's about all the placement mistakes that you can make, and they are all pretty obvious.
I used a hand operated Phillips screwdriver for most operations, and this is recommended in the instructions. Going into particleboard is always risky, and I prefer the tactile sensation that one gets from a hand driver in this situation. I did use my Dewalt battery powered screw gun on the sixteen 2-inch machine screws, with the clutch set to 12. This was just about right to prevent stripping of the heads or threads. I used a large flat blade screwdriver to turn the cams that attach the tops of the racks to the sides.
There are also several plastic inserts, which receive threaded rods. The instructions clearly warn about this, but I will re-iterate…. Hand tighten, and then tighten an additional quarter turn, and ONLY a quarter turn, with a hand screwdriver. It is too easy to strip these pieces with just a little too much force.
A BIG bonus was that Raxxess thoughtfully provided extra pieces for most of the small metal parts like screws and connecting rods. So often in this type of pre-fab assembly there are small parts missing.
Versatile Performer
The fit and finish was better than I expected. I know a bit about custom furniture. As pre-fab cabinets go, these look pretty good. A very minor complaint that I have is with the desk shelf. The receiver square stock on the desk is larger than the square stock from the shelf brackets that have to fit down into the receivers. As a result, the shelf is less solid feeling and kind of rattles around when there is no load on it. This has nothing to do with actual performance… the pieces are solid, the receivers are securely welded to the desk legs, there are even double locking pins for each bracket, and gravity is your friend… the shelf is not going anywhere. But everything else fit so well and was so easy to put together, that this little oddity stuck out. Another oddity was with the Raxxess logos. These are metal foil stick-ons, and are stuck onto the front bottom metal panels of each rack. So far, so good. But on my set, one was perfectly straight, while the other was very crooked. I would think that if you were going to install your logo where the entire world is going to see it and where the worker has to look at it every day, a little more care would be taken in the placement phase.
One cool part of the layout is that the tops of the racks can be put in two different positions relative to the location of the sides of the rack. The top can sit with a couple of inches of overhang, bringing the front of the rack forward. Or the tops can over hang the racks by quite a bit. Raxxess recommends the first option. But the second option allows the racks to act as a table, and provides legroom for anyone sitting in front of them. No doubt that Raxxess is concerned about stability, but with any amount of gear in the rack, the chances of tipping the rack over by leaning on the table edge would be very small.
The laminate edges were trimmed and smooth… much better than what I see on a lot of prefab units, and the joints between laminate and oak stripping were crisp, though a little more care could have been taken to wipe up the excess glue. The powder coat black on all metal parts is clean and smooth.
Garry and I both expected the desktop to be one piece, with the racks fitting underneath. Most indications are that this is the case, since you can even buy wheels for the racks, and in the pictures, that is the way that the desk appears. But the desktop is actually three pieces, with the left and right pieces forming the top of the racks. Once you see this, the drawings on the site become clear. "Oh, yeah… I get it, NOW!". In practical usage, this turns out to not be a problem at all. The desk comes with hardware to attach the rack tops to the desk, to make it in to one solid, contiguous unit if that is what you want.
But Garry chose to leave the tops unattached. This allows him to pull the racks out to get at the backs with ease. On the other hand, I chose a totally different approach. I took both racks and put them together in a different location. Side by side they make a great producers desk, because of the tabletop overhang that I mentioned. So I have my desk with the fairly open skeleton of the welded legs, flanked by the Dunlavys making a very clean look at my mix position; and in another location in the room there is a nice worktable for visitors that also holds 28 spaces of gear. I know that this will come in handy, as some of my clients arrive with lots of notes.
Minor gripes aside, I think that this is a superior piece of work and I'm happy that I bought it. I wish that I had got the keyboard shelf, though. When I think of all of the time that I have spent either building or designing custom studio desks and racks, I am very glad to have just looked at a web site picture, made a decision, and plunked down the cash. If you are looking for a new desk or desk and rack assembly for your room, be sure to look at the offerings from Raxxess.
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