Projects, Projects, and the occasional embarrassing failure. #2: The Spalted Microphone cabinet.

I love perusing the recording studio photos of mix magazine, or Sound on Sound…and I am envious that I don’t have $70K to drop on a sweet 64 channel mixing desk and a rack full of vintage tube compressors and mic pre-amps…but one of the things that always struck me as odd was that all of the racks/ desks/ furniture was a standard design with no real character to it.

I have a modest home recording setup, but I have tried to design cool double bay tilt racks, cubby storage, and rolling padded boxes for patch cords that double as stools.

Until now I’ve been using an old wine crate that I padded, upholstered and added an elastic band to hold microphones… after seeing the Antique Spice box in an issue of Fine Woodworking, I thought that would be really cool to use as a Microphone cabinet….so I sketched out some plans…

I went with Handcut dovetails, and spalted birch drawer fronts…and brass ‘label’ drawer pulls so I can easily pick which drawer contains the ribbon mic, or the lg. diaphram condensors..etc.

For the feet I free cut them on the band saw and used my chisels to hand carve some music notes.. I still have to cut and attach the spalted banding around the front and make a frame for the drawers..and I’ve decided to use a nice molding around the top….but here’s what I have so far.

-- When my wife ask's what I have to show for my wood working hobby, I just show her the splinters.