Bobland

A walnut Thorens TD-124 with a little extra sheen.

A client photo of his beautiful Technics SP-10 in a fully custom Bobland plinth. I’ll share details of the plinth and build in another post. This was a collaborative effort with my client who wanted a flush mount appearance between the turntable and plinth. Which sounds fairly simple but was quite complicated considering the beveled shape of the SP-10’s deck. Plinth was veneered in birdseye and flame maple.

A straight grain walnut plinth with dramatic corner joins sent off last week.

Another Thorens TD-124 plinth sent off last week. Layered Baltic Birch veneered in Santos Rosewood from Certainly Wood Inc. This plinth had some extra internal damping and weight I’m experimenting with along with IsoAcoustics Gaia III feet.

Looking back through my photo albums I realized I hadn’t shared anything from this collaborative project with . Working titled “Super Valencia” I designed the cabinets to Eddie Pletka’s specifications and created sleds for the Markus Klug horns. This is still in-progress but will be fitted with a cable system to suspend the 15” woofers, plus custom crossovers. Lots of nice details like the engraved binding post plates and colored felt around the openings. Bass port tubes will be cut for tuning later. There were many, many l stain tests to match the subtle difference between the beechwood of the Klug horns and the Baltic birch of the speaker cabinets. Finished with a satin clear coat. Not pictured are bases with adjustable casters that were built shortly before these left my shop.

Looking forward to hearing these when it all comes together.

Most who know me know that I love bowling, so I made this faux bowling lane bench top for my shop. A friend at an ad agency contacted me about 1-1/2 years ago to see if I wanted to take away their massive, outdated conference table. I had no idea what I’d do with it but I eventually relented and picked it up with the help of a couple friends. It sat disassembled in my shop for months before the lightbulb came on that the pieces were nearly the perfect size to make an L-shaped benchtop.

I got the top panels planed at Creative Woodworking in Portland and glued them into wider pieces at the shop. The idea to inlay walnut arrows and dots came to me later after several visitors assumed the top was made from an actual bowling lane.

It’s been hard to find time to complete this project, but I finally applied topcoat over the last couple of nights after abusing it unfinished for way too long.

Oh the day to day joy this fake bowling lane will bring me.

This Rek-O-Kut (the Frank-N-Kut as I affectionately call it) came back to have some armboard alterations so could swap in a Dynavector tonearm on it. I think it’s a perfect match for this created-in-a-lab set up. Before I ever touched this turntable it had been taken apart, deconstructed, and modified for assorted tonearms. I remade the wood parts out of maple scraps a few years ago because the old base was looking pretty battle worn.

Capping a great day of family and friends with some LPs and disco light.