An Ode to Custom Vinyl Cabinets

We pride ourselves here at Sidetracked Workshop in having a strong lineup of standard furniture pieces. Better than that, our designs are all modular. Our furniture uses a shared design language so that furniture pieces can be pushed together and moved around as your vinyl collection grows or your space changes. So as a default your listening setup can be customized.

I often encourage customers who reach out for custom work to double check that there isn’t a solution we can come up with just by mixing and matching our standard models.

‘Can’t quite fit all of your audio gear on a Headliner? Sure we can make an extended one, but have you thought of using a A-side + an Encore, or how about a Headliner + an Encore’

Don’t get me wrong, we love to tackle custom projects here at the workshop , but frankly, if you stick to our standard models you will save money. One of the reasons we can provide, in my opinion, exceptional value to our customers, is because we can get our costs down by getting super efficient and skilled at making our standard models. Our crew members can build a ‘sidekick’ model in their sleep. Additionally we have already maximized all the little savings we can like buying ‘sidekick’ shipping boxes by the pallet, etc. And we pass those savings on to you!

But we understand that a ‘one size fits all’ solution isn't going to work for every collection, person, or space! We are happy to accommodate custom changes (in fact it's a nice change of pace for our building team)! We build multiple custom pieces every week here at Sidetracked Workshop. Never hesitate to reach out.

The most common request we get by far is: can you make this piece deeper to fit my “specific piece of audio equipment ?” The answer is always yes.

The trickiest decision to make when designing the standard dimensions of our furniture pieces was the depth. If we make our pieces all extra deep to accommodate every possible piece of audio equipment then we never have to worry about fitment issues. The cons of doing that are as follows:

The aesthetics start to get a little murkier as spine facing records start to ‘swim’ a little in the cabinet that might be a little bit too big for them, likewise your 8” deep receiver or 6” deep preamp can look a little sorry in your 18” deep cabinet. But generally these are negligible issues

But the far bigger issue is that larger pieces use more materials, take longer to make, and cost more to ship. So we would have to increase prices by ~20%+ for everyone just to accommodate the 5% of people with deeper than average audio gear (looking at you McIntosh owners). So we chose the other route and we ask the 5% of folks to pay the custom fee when they need it. Don’t worry, our prices are reasonable

The second most common requests we get are for aesthetic changes. 

These are pretty easy for us and usually don’t cost very much (often they don’t cost any extra if they are a 1 to 1 swap). These are things like, dropping the hole pattern in favor of solid panels, or using brass elements on a white oak piece, or using a different wood entirely, like cherry or birch. 

Adding dividers or additional shelves:

The ‘Audio Gear Tower’, or at least that's what I call it. 

One of the common custom pieces we make is basically a custom “Encore” that has several dimensional changes and shelves added and only/mostly holds audio equipment. One of the perks of this is that you can do all of your customizing on one relatively small piece. Often customers will get a ‘Gear Tower’ and then pair it with a standard piece or two, like a couple of “Double Sidekicks”. This is often more economic than spreading several customizations over multiple large pieces. 

Combining all of the above:

For example, take this heavily modified Headliner (Below). We were able to work with this client to find a highly customized solution to his needs without needing to redesign a totally new piece from the ground up.

This is a “Headliner” with

Cherry Wood

Extended Length

2 (removable) upper shelves added

1 upper partition added

1 lower partition added

“White oak style hole pattern” on the second tier of the piece only

Large Custom pieces

At some point a piece stops being a modified version of another piece and just totally becomes its own thing. These are a lot of fun for us to do, but are actually not as common as you might think.

Why?

Well I think most customers are already covered before the need for a fully ground up new design. The percentage of customers that need something this specific is pretty small. You would have to answer “no” to all of the following questions:

Do any of our standard pieces work for you?

Do any modular combination of our standard pieces work for you?

Can any standard pieces be modified by dimensions, adding of shelves, or by changing the aesthetic?

Do any modular combinations of modified pieces work for you?

And sometimes the answer to all of those is "no". 

Usually it's because of a specific audio gear + lp storage requirement combinedwith a space restriction. That's why one of the most common themes in this category is 3 tier builds that are often made for spaces where there just isn’t much horizontal wall space for a wider unit.

Don’t worry! If you did answer 'no' to all of those questions we would still love to work with you to figure your custom setup out. 

Click the button below to reach out to us about your custom project!