Do you have rack-mounted gear you move in and out of your recording, control room area? I’m constantly working with literally, piles of gear. I have a lot of little wood blocks which I use to provide air space for cooling between stacks of gadgets. I have a lot of equipment racks in a variety of sizes but the problem with racks is all the space they take up. What if there was a way to have many of the benefits of a rack, without the rack?
The most popular format for equipment racks uses formed steel pieces with drilled and tapped holes in it which are spaced according to industry standards, these steel pieces are called “Rack Rail”. In the past I’ve bought sticks of rack rail which are six feet long, then you must use a steel cutting saw to chop off the length you want. Usually rack rail is oily to prevent rust and it often has sharp edges - it’s not very friendly to deal with.
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| Small box of two rack rails from Amazon |
NEW RACK RAIL SOURCE
I was digging around on Amazon and found rack rail in a variety of pre-cut lengths. I ordered two pieces of 4U rack rail and it came the next day. Each piece was packaged in a little protective plastic bag, there was no oily mess (no oil at all). The steel pieces had no sharp edges and they were made from 3mm thick steel, they have a nice strong and hefty feel. Originally I planned to make some compact racks but now I had a new idea, racking without a rack.
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| Two 4U pieces of rack rail w/mounting screws |
Here are the pieces of rack rail on my workbench. They cost $16.95 for the pair of rails and they came with two bags of rack screws and a single bag of self tapping wood screws for attaching the rails to wood. The threaded holes and rack screws are 10/32”, exactly the same as industry standard specifications — also the spacing of the holes for mounting gear conforms to industry rack-mount guidelines.
A TALE OF TWO 1176
Maybe you saw my review of the 76-KT compressor(s), I bought two of them to use with my synthesizers. My Eurorack synthesizer system is a very fluid rig, it’s constantly changing as various pieces get tried together. I’m not taking any of these things on “the road” so I don’t need the protection of a rack with removable lids, I don’t even need a rack, blocking in airflow and holding in heat. My main goal is I don’t want the gadgets sliding around on each other and getting scratched up (nothing kills resale value like a bunch of scratches) or worse, sliding off one another and crashing to the floor (broken gear also kills resale ;-).
I have the two 76-KT compressors ready to use (with no rack) but I’d like for them to be more of a unified module. The answer seems to be the two pieces of rack rail, which firmly mount the two pieces of gear together and prevent them from sliding, scratching and separating from each other.
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| Positioning top piece of gear |
MOUNTING THE GEAR TO RAW RACK RAIL
The two pieces of rack rail and the 10/32 screws are powder coated so it’s a good idea to carefully run the screws into the holes you need before attempting to mate the rails with your equipment. For this round I decided to flip the rails backwards from the way they would be if they were attached to wood racks — by positioning them this way the left and right edges seem more friendly for transporting the unified block of gear around the studio.
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| Note, the rack rail is reverse mounted |
I mounted the rails to the bottom 1176 compressor first, then I mounted the top 1176 to the rails which were sticking up. Once I got all the screws in and the gear nicely centered I tightened everything up to form a solid block of compression processing. These two compressors don’t have “detector” links so the left-to-right image can shift but for synthesizers I kind of like the drama this imbalance can bring to the mix.
UNIFIED POWER CONNECTION
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| IEC Power Cord "Y" Connector |
BIGGER = PROBLEMS???
The rack rail is available in various lengths from this supplier, each longer section is two-rack spaces longer than the previous. So far I’ve been experimenting with four-space rails (two 1176), six-space rails (Kemper rack plus Behringer mixer) and next up, 12-space rails for mounting gear under my mixing console.
There are two problems I see with making bigger combination packages of gear:
- Creating a pile with a high center of gravity which could lead to equipment being more prone to falling over backward or forward on its face.
- Putting stress on the bottom piece of gear which is acting as a base to the whole pile
I urge you to move slowly in your experimenting, keep your racks-without-racks down to eight rack spaces (or less) and make sure the enclosure, and more importantly the rack-ears, of the bottom piece of gear are not getting bent or stressed from a bunch of weight. The bottom piece of gear becomes the base for the whole contraption so be careful or it could be damaged.
EPILOGUE
If you shop at Amazon you won’t have any trouble finding the rack rail in this article and probably some other alternatives too.
Thinking outside the box, or in this case, outside the rack, can lead to cooler-running gear that is easier to move around, easier to connect and takes up less physical space. I’m surprised it took me this long to try mounting equipment in this manner but I’m very happy with the outcome and look forward to implementing this more in the future.
Thanks for reading High on Technology, Good Music To You!
©July 2025 by Mark King, it is NOT ok to copy or quote without written permission from the author.
Have a great day and create something beautiful . . . . . . .
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| Note the reverse mounting of the rack rail, provides better handhold grip on sides |
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| Ready to use, racked together into one unified package |
