Meinl Percussion Workstation |
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Back in the my younger days I created myself a percussion rack from several 8 feet long scaffold poles painted black and held together with heavy-duty scaffold clamps. It was a monster! It actually looked pretty good but was highly impractical due to its weight and size, and due to the time it took to put it all together (and the fact that you needed to be a qualified scaffolder to do it - and wear a hard hat). I wish this Meinl Percussion Workstation were around back then as it would have provided a far more elegant and workable solution! The whole ensemble came to me in two large cardboard flat packs which once opened revealed no assembly instructions whatsoever! I had one of those “Ikea” moments because I hate assembling flat pack furniture, not a pleasant task even with the instructions, so to be faced with working out how to connect all of the parts of this workstation together with no plan at all was not an inviting prospect. |
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| Needing at least some kind of guidance I hit the Meinl website and printed out a picture of the assembled unit and worked from that. In reality it was actually a fairly easy task, which I completed within 35 minutes. Having now done it once I am confident that if I had to do it again I could slash that to 15 to 20 minutes. And if you could get away with not taking it down completely each time you could actually lower that time period again.
The frame of the workstation is made from black powder-coated steel, the main two components being the 1.5” diameter vertical bottom sections, which have 32” long horizontal base sections complete with anti-slip rubber feet on the ends. These two sections bolt together at the bottom by way of a horizontal bar 30” long and 1” diameter. The top vertical sections then slide into and clamp onto the bottom sections by way of sturdy 8mm dia. bolts and chunky wing nuts, with another 30” x 1” horizontal cross bar holding everything together at the very top. These horizontal bars are bolted through the main frame by way of 8mm bolts which you tighten with the supplied Allen key. The main 22” x 24” table fixes between the vertical sections by way of 6mm bolts, clamps and wing nuts, and when this table is in place and everything is tightened up the whole structure takes on a very sturdy, rigid form indeed. Once the main frame and table are in place the two 18” x 12” tables can be clamped to the main frame again using 8mm bolts, clamps and wing nuts. Finally you clamp two 15” long horizontal bars to the vertical members at the positions you choose to be most convenient, and then fix the 8 supplied rods through the top horizontal bar and the two 15” bars – these rods simply pass though holes in the cross members and are held in place via sturdy wing nuts. You get 4 straight rods with hooks, 3 angled rods with hooks and 1 “Z” shaped rod with hook. The rods of course are used to accommodate cowbells, poly-blocks, wood blocks, mounted tambourines and the like while all manner of bells, triangles, legs of ham and whatever else takes your fancy can be hung on the hooks. I would imagine that you could even fix the top section of a cymbal stand instead of one of the rods and therefore have a small splash cymbal as part of the set up. The possibilities are almost endless!
The tables themselves are constructed of fibreglass, and are therefore reasonably light but very hardwearing. The tables, of course, can accommodate all your other percussion instruments and necessities such as quiro, shaker, cabasa, maracas, your pint and fags etc. so that everything you need is very close to hand and ready for when you need it. All of the tables are like trays with raised sides, which should prevent instruments from rolling off, and are “carpeted” inside with special Meinl percussion tray carpeting to protect instruments and stop them from slipping. The two smaller trays can be rotated so you can position them for convenience depending on the space available to you. In fact the beauty of this set up is that is almost infinitely variable in that can be expanded or reduced to the situation you find yourself in. Plus all of the tables, the top horizontal bar, the two smaller horizontal bars and the rods can all be raised or lowered so that everything is exactly where you want it and close to hand. The predominantly black finish to the unit apparently means that it is less likely to interfere with your lighting director’s carefully thought out plans, and certainly your sound engineer will be happy because there are no unwanted rattles apparent. Also with so much framework available it could also help with microphone placement as they could again be easily clamped to the vertical bars. Conclusion: Upbeats: Downbeats: Price: Distributed by: Tel: 020 8693 5678 Web Links: |
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