Use some freakin' plastic washers!

[Reptil]

I know a guy that keeps t-shirts in the plastic, after buying, and even after wearing.
He says it gives him the "new t-shirt" feeling.
You want to keep your stuff new, right. Is there any spray like "new car smell" spray?
New gear spray.
That would help.
Smelly old Siemens preamps bah.

[airmate]

i must admit i'm not using a star grounding pattern in my studio. however, i'm using plastic washers ("humfrees" or similiar things) with all my rack gear, and i've never ever experienced any issues with ground loops.

but i'm sure it all depends - and i can imagine sometimes there are weird things going on which may change on a daily basis...

[Jim vanBergen]

Please bear with me as I consider this.
Hmmm.

A $0.02 plastic washer = cheap =low end, noh?

Badly scratched ($30,000.00 Fairchild 670 or insert your fave piece here)=ultimate high end...again, right or wrong?

Me, I prefer to rack my gear nicely, sometimes though the older rack screws tear up a tiny bit of metal and some small part of me dies. But...are washers not inherently low end?

So I have found a solution. I like to use all all natural cotton fiber rack screw with a special organic washer that is hand weaved by celestial island virgins out of dandelion fronds grown in the fields that wild alpacas roam in. THAT leaves no rack rash! (Makes me sneeze like a muthaf*kka, though. )

[DeepSpace]

Originally Posted by Jim vanBergen

...a special organic washer that is hand weaved by celestial island virgins out of dandelion fronds grown in the fields that wild alpacas roam in.

Now you're talking.

Hope you've got a patent on that design, though!

[maestro]

Do the black washers (nylon bushings) that come supplied with Argosy rack furniture mark the front of preamps etc?

[joeq]

oooh rack rash! the latest GS tempest in a teapot

If you buy something used, when you put the gear into your rack, your screws cover up the marks left by the previous guy's screws.

If it drives someone crazy to "know" it's there, he is probably bothered by a lot of other inconsequential 'issues' that will never all be resolved. I heard about a client nearly walking out of a session because the refrigerator door in the lounge opened the 'wrong way'...

If a little rack rash keeps a couple more OCD guys from bidding on the unit that I am after on eBay, I say bring on the Cosmetic Damage!

[emrr]

Everything before a certain time will have rash, as the rack itself was almost always the ground. You see gear that clearly used screws that were meant to dig in to the paint and find metal. Was on purpose.

[Bassmec]

Originally Posted by joeq

oooh rack rash! the latest GS tempest in a teapot

If you buy something used, when you put the gear into your rack, your screws cover up the marks left by the previous guy's screws.

If it drives someone crazy to "know" it's there, he is probably bothered by a lot of other inconsequential 'issues' that will never all be resolved. I heard about a client nearly walking out of a session because the refrigerator door in the lounge opened the 'wrong way'...

If a little rack rash keeps a couple more OCD guys from bidding on the unit that I am after on eBay, I say bring on the Cosmetic Damage!

What about pink latex washers for those with HOCD.

[deft_bonz]

A bit of rack rash at the screw holes doesn't bother me, when buying second hand. Nevertheless I'd like them as little as possible. That's why I use always washers.

A little rash can happen, but I don't know what people do with their gear, when the corners are twisted and bent

[McPhaul]

Originally Posted by joeq

oooh rack rash! the latest GS tempest in a teapot

This is a 5 year old thread

[deft_bonz]

Originally Posted by maestro

Do the black washers (nylon bushings) that come supplied with Argosy rack furniture mark the front of preamps etc?

No they don't. I use the Argosy washers.

Originally Posted by McPhaul

This is a 5 year old thread

So what?

[joeq]

Originally Posted by McPhaul

This is a 5 year old thread

that explains it

nobody in 2011 would have a whole thread dedicated to something like this

[ddageek]

Over the years I have seen so many of those stupid plastic washers destroyed by over tightining and worse, not big enough to cover the whole !
For years I used a larger rubber washer under a metal washer but guess what! Stuff still got scratched ! You want perfect looking gear ? Buy new and put it on shelves!

Oh and for the grounding isolation OCD crowd , you need to isolate the front, the back, and the threads of the screw ( no matter how hard you try a couple of pieces are going to have the threads touch a piece or two).

[Tone Laborer]

Some time ago I bought some rack screws that had a flat plastic washer on the outside and an offset washer for the inside, designed to keep the screw and rack completely isolated from the gear.

It made things a real pain to rack and as Fletcher mentioned, it wasn't a cure all for ground problems.

As far as rack rash goes, I think crotch rash is a lot worse.