Your homemade tweaks?


Having just read bgmyers thread on isolating cables and some of the excellent ideas our fellow audiogoners shared, I thought it would be great for us to compile a listing of all the innovative alternatives and their uses we have come up with to tweak our systems in lieu of buying them from the pricey manufacturers.

I'll start it off with having used tennis balls as isolation devices under components.
corazon
Boos Block cutting boards are the best maple platforms out there at much less cost. Just put any feet you want on them or use blue tak?
To buy antistatic foam: Online electronics, or computer parts supplies sell small squares of antistatic foam. Radio Shack here in the USA have it. For my original DAC foam, I bought the Radio Shack foam. Got about 6 of them.
Recenty I wanted to redo some, and found by Google, places that sell antistatic foam in bigger sizes. A 'blue' foam is also available, but do not use that. The dark grey/black foam in 1/4 to 3/8 inch thick is best. I found a place selling 40 inch by 40 inch sheets @ 3/8 inch thick and I bought two of them. (enough to last me a lifetime!!) It took two months for them to send them!!! (I had given up! and then there they were!) So for the two sheets it was about $60.00 US.
When you stuff the top, connect all the plastic encased bundles of foam together with a bare wire, and cut up the foam so it really fills in the space. Just make certain the plastic you use to insulate the electrical stuff from the foam will not melt! most DACs do not get hot enough to melt plastic anyway.
For under the main circuit board, You will have to take it out put down the foam under with a thin cardboard shield (Pepsi Cola/Coke multi can packs have a perfect thickness cardboard) to protect the underside of the board (I do NOT recomment using plastic under the circuit board, as the bottom of the circuit board is full of pointed bits of soldered stuff, which could pierce the plastic, if you used plastic). Taking the main board off then replacing it is not much of a problem with most DACs. (but a CD player it would be VERY difficult.. And I would not disassemble a CD player to put it under the boards. But on a CD player, you can place the foam to the sides and top of the insde case for a bit of the effect of cutting the internal RFI.
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So just Google "antistatic foam suppiers" or the like and find one that can sell you what you need. (some will only sell to other manufacturers, or only orders over $$. (I think that is why MY order took so long, They waited until they had a BIG order, and added mine little one in to it.)
Good luck!
happy-sad balls from Arbor Scientific. Throw away the "happy" balls. The "Sad" balls absorb resonances amazingly well. They squash down, so nothing is needed to hold them in place. All you have to do is drop one to see how effectively it absorbs energy. They hit the floor and stay there, no bounce - apparently the energy is all dissipated as heat. I have not been able to find any source for the raw material.
Thanks for the detailed information on finding and installing the antistatic foam.
To help w/the thin cover on my Rotel CDP I first covered the entire cover (side>top>side) w/one piece of dynamat. I then cut an old Rega plinth to fit the top & after plugging the holes w/filler, put that on top then added some old lead leg weights on the plinth.

I have commercial absorption/isolation stuff underneath & the combo of everything together vs. nothing at all has helped lower the noise floor, which has resulted in letting me hear a little more detail & layering plus a slightly bigger soundstage.

I've done some stuff inside the CDP too but just the weight on top by itself at the very least keeps my somewhat large DIY PC from moving it off the Herbies grungebuster balls.