Low Heavyfeet V.1, set of three (closeout item)

Low Heavyfeet V.1 (closeout)

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These solid brass footers are the original version of our Low Heavyfeet featuring a conical point type intended to be used on hard floors and thin carpet. Each footer has been hand polished and may have cosmetic imperfections that do not affect functionality.

Part Number: LHFV1

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Detailed Description
Design & Performance
Owners Manual

• These solid brass footers are the original version of our Low Heavyfeet featuring a conical point shape intended to be used on hard floors and thin carpet with pad & pile thickness up to 1/2" deep.

• These footers are not threaded and are meant to be used unattached.

• Each footer has been hand polished and may have cosmetic imperfections that do not affect functionality.

• We recommend audiophile wanting the best performance use one of our current brass footer options which feature higher mass and different point options optimized for hard floors and carpet.

• Closeout items are are non-refundable and excluded from out money back guarentee. All sales are final.

Specifications

• precision machined, optimized alloy, solid brass

• Low Heavyfeet V.1 untapped: 2" D x 1-1/2" H, 0.9 lbs.

• closeout item, non-refundable

• limited quantity available

Brass Footers Drain Distortion-Causing Internal Vibrations

Fluctuating electrical signal currents create unwanted vibrations—through both magnetic and/or piezo-electric forces—inside every electronic component, whether digital or analog. Equally unwanted are the strongly distorting vibrations generated inside turntables by belts or rim drives, bearings, motors and above all by the stylus oscillating in the vinyl groove. In speakers, the mechanical movement of the cone or diaphragm transfers vibration into the speaker cabinet or frame. In 1986, we did a carefully controlled, easily duplicated listening experiment that proved these internally generated vibrations distort and muddy the music signal far more significantly than any speaker-driven, external airborne or floor-borne vibrations, quite contrary to the common wisdom.

That pioneering experiment has shaped all subsequent Mapleshade vibration control design efforts. In particular, it dictated that our brass footers be designed for the single purpose of cleanly draining as much internal vibrational energy as possible from electronics, turntables and speakers. By extensive listening tests, we laboriously optimized our footers' shapes, contact points, material, alloy, and mass to maximize the vibrational energy transferred out of the gear and to minimize the resonances and energy reflected back. Our footers do so more effectively and yield better sound than any competing high end footer, even the most highly touted $600 ones.

Mounting components or speakers on standard isolating and damping devices (like springs, rubber feet, Sorbothane, sand boxes, magnetic suspensions, air suspensions or air bladders) does the opposite of draining vibrational energy: isolation traps the internally-generated, sound-degrading vibrations inside the component or speaker, thereby exacerbating the muddying of the music signals. The more effective the isolation, the worse the sound—particularly so in the bass.

Learn more about our complete vibration control system here.

Additional Info

• Footers work best on solid wood surfaces, but still give well worthwhile sonic improvements on poorer sink materials like plywood, MDF, concrete, granite or tile. On glass, the worst of all sink materials, you will hear excessive treble brightness due to the strong high frequency resonance of glass reflected back into the footer. On concrete, granite, glass or tile, we strongly recommend adding a Mapleshade Platform under the brass footers to eliminate the severe sonic degradation caused by these particularly poor sink materials--the platform will at least double the improvement over just footers.

• If you use three footers under a component, they do not need height adjustment. If you use four footers (for added stability), check each one to make sure it is bearing full weight. Typically one of the four will be too short and slightly loose due to slight unevenness of the equipment bottom or the mounting surface below; a loose footer causes audible sonic degradation. For unthreaded footers, use a shim above the loose footer to fill in the needed extra height. To shim, use three of the smallest possible brass washers (or tiny squares cut out of brass shim stock), evenly spaced around the circumference of the top surface of the footer; if more height is necessary, superglue together several stacked washers or shims.

• Footer effectiveness is almost always improved by adding weight on top of the component. Brass weights sound much better than weights of lead, iron, bricks, stone or sand (that’s why we offer our Heavyhat brass weights). Weights sound best if supported on three tiny points (like our Micropoint Heavyhats) rather than just resting on their flat bottom surfaces. Increase weight by increments of no more than 3/4 to 1-1/2 pounds. You’ll eventually reach a total weight where just one extra weight dramatically dulls the sound; “eventually” may be as soon as the second weight. The optimum number of weights cannot be predicted and differs from one component to another.

Brass footer supports for speakers, turntables, CD/Blu-ray players, DACs, streamers, routers, power conditioners, satellite and cable boxes, surround receivers, amps and preamps markedly improve sound quality—and video quality—by draining vibrational energy out of the component down into the underlying shelf, stand or floor. Years of careful listening (and viewing) experiments have led us to the following conclusions:

Heavy footers sound better than light ones.
Tall footers sound better than short, shallow ones.
Sharp pointed feet transmit vibration and sound better than rounded ones—and far better than any flat contact feet.
Footer material makes a big difference: brass sounds significantly better than aluminum, carbon fiber, titanium, steel or ceramics.
Draining vibration out of video components like monitors, disc players, processors/receivers and streamers yields picture quality improvements just as significant as the sound quality improvements for audio gear.

Brass Footer Improve Speakers

Nothing hurts the sound of a speaker more than mounting it unrigidly on a carpet, on isolating rubber feet, on damping pads, on flimsy stands or on shaky shelves. Flexible mounting lets the speaker rock back as the cone moves forward. That means boomy bass with slowed attacks and weakened dynamic punch These flexible and/or damped mountings also prevent draining vibration out of the speaker enclosure, thus allowing the freely vibrating speaker enclosure panels to muddy the midrange and treble.

To make a speaker sound its best you must stop it from rocking and you must drain panel vibration efficiently. This requires coupling the speaker, via massive brass footers, directly to a sink that will cleanly receive the vibrations without reflecting them back in distorted form—for example, a sink like a solid wood planked floor, a thick and rigid wooden stand, or a massive wood platform. You can’t get good sound just by placing the speaker’s flat bottom on the floor or on a flat-topped stand. Because of the large area, low-pressure contact, much of the cabinet’s vibrational energy is reflected back instead of being drained efficiently and cleanly down into the floor or stand.

Electronics Sound Better With Brass Footers

All electronic circuit parts—particularly transformers, inductors, capacitors, tubes and transistors—generate significant mechanical vibrations when fluctuating currents flow through them. These vibrations are efficiently transmitted through circuit boards and cases to all nearby electronic parts. There, the vibrations received audibly distort the waveform of the audio signals flowing through these nearby circuit parts. You hear the effect as slower, fuzzier transients, blurred harmonic detail and smeared, weakened treble. Massive, rigid, pointed footers under the component efficiently drain almost all of these mechanical vibrations out of your equipment chassis. This yields often-startling improvements in sound, particularly in turntables, all digital front end gear, amps, power conditioners and power supplies (both solid state and tubes).

Our Best-Sounding Brass Footers

The weakness in conventional cone footers is that the footer’s top flat surface does not fully drain vibrations from the component resting on it. Why? Because large area, flat surface contact tends to reflect rather than transmit vibration (as mentioned in the speaker section above). Our best-sounding brass footers all have a three-point top, another unique Mapleshade design feature that is a pioneering advance over conventional cone footers. That three-point contact eliminates the unavoidable reflections and micro-rattles between a flat-topped footer and the imperfectly flat bottom of the component it's supporting. Adding the three points on top yields surprising more punch and detail everywhere—from the deep thunder of the tympani to the silvery treble overtones of the triangles.

Micropoint Heavyfeet & Megafeet

For our brass footers, bigger is better—even under light components. More mass means the footer has audibly lower resonances. For gear with flat metal or plastic bottoms, Micropoint Heavyfeet are our best sounding 2" diameter footers. However, our no-holds-barred best are the 3" Micropoint Megafeet, three and a half times as heavy as Heavyfeet. The Megafeet are significantly better sounding than Heavyfeet, equally so under both heavy and lighter weight components. Highly recommended for any high resolution digital components, hard-bottomed turntables and all fine tube gear.

The Micropoint design grew out of our discovery that the shorter and the better-supported the points are, the smaller the tip resonances and thus the sweeter the treble. So, to take advantage of components with hard and flat bottom surfaces, Pierre designed the Micropoint height to be a 1/64”, about 1/12th the height of our original Triplepoint (which was designed with points 3/16" high to support relatively soft wood surfaces and hard corrugated surfaces)--a radical lowering that greatly reduces tip resonances. Listening confirms the very audible improvements. The blacker backgrounds improve ambience and sustain. Transients, especially bass transients, are cleaner and more powerful. Treble and midrange are sweeter and less smeared, yielding more beautiful harmonic detail.

Triplepoint Heavyfeet & Megafeet

Triplepoint Heavyfeet are our best sounding 2" footers for components with a wood bottom or with a metal bottom with protrusions that exceed the 1/64” height of the Micropoints. Three and a half times as massive as Heavyfeet, the 3" Triplepoint Megafeet are our very best footers for these situations—particularly recommended for wood-bottomed turntables, highly resolving wood cabinet speakers (especially ones with large enclosure panels) and wood-enclosed electronic components. When used together with our Maple Platforms to form a complete Mapleshade Vibration Control System, the results are remarkable indeed.

Installation Tips

1. Footers work best on wood, plywood or MDF surfaces. They still give well worthwhile sonic improvements on concrete, granite or tile. On glass shelves, you will hear the strong high frequency resonance of glass reflected back into the footer, that is, you will hear excessive treble brightness.

2. To use brass footers on glass shelves, you need to use our complete Vibration Control System (i.e. a 2" or 4" maple platform mounted on Isoblocks between the component footer and glass shelf.) The same approach will seriously improve the effectiveness of footers on concrete, granite, tile, and relatively flimsy wood/plywood/MDF shelves.

3. If you use three footers under a component, they do not need height adjustment.

4. For initial placement of unattached footers, always put footers under the most rigid parts of the chassis. For speakers, this means the outer corner or a cabinet edge. For electronics, this means next to the existing factory feet or the case edge. (After your initial trial installation, unscrewing or ungluing the factory feet is a good idea to make more room for properly positioning the footers.)

5. Unattached footers should be set-up in triangular pattern under the component, like it is being mounted on a tripod. Start by putting the first footer under the lightest side of the component (left, right, front or back) close to the edge of the frame and on center. Normally this is the edge furthest away from the transformers or the speaker magnets). The other two footers go under each corner of the opposite heavier side.

6. After mounting, always look under the component to make sure each footer's top surface (or three point top) are not contacting a screw-head, a ridge, or a hole. Double check by lightly rocking the component to make sure there is no 'footer wobble' (wobbling degrades effectiveness). If there is wobble, one of the footers is not seated flat. TIP: gently twist the troublesome footer back and forth about a tenth of a turn to get it to seat flat.

7. If you have trouble getting the footers to sit flat under the component, start by installing them upside down. Especially under gear with irregular bottom plates, it is sometimes easiest to initially mount the component with the footers inverted so they won't tip as you refine and optimize the positioning of each one . Once they are positioned so the weight of the component is distributed equally across all three footers, gentle flip each footer into its correct position one at a time. Start with the footers under the heaviest side. If needed, you can leave one footer inverted with very slight effect on the sound.

8. We recommend final tweaking of footer position by moving each footer an inch or two from its initial position and listening for possible improvement.

9. Under speakers with pre-existing threaded inserts for spikes: make sure the thread-on footer is not seated up against the metal insert instead of up against the actual wood base.

10. If you need to prevent sharp points from marring furniture or floors, use our radiused footers. This will degrade sound far less than using pennies, wood, brass, or lead discs under the point. Any such flat-bottomed “protector” will degrade the footer's performance by at least 50%.

11. For footers used directly on carpet to work, their point must firmly contact the solid floor under the carpet and padding. If necessary, stomp on them, hammer them or first hammer a thick nail through the carpet to allow them to penetrate through to the floor.

12. Footer effectiveness is almost always improved by adding our brass Heavyhats on top of the component. If you're having trouble with footer stability under light components, the Heavyhats will improve both stability and sound quality. Brass weights sound better than weights of lead, iron, bricks, stone or sand; that’s why we offer our Heavyhat brass weights. Weights sound significantly better if supported on three points (like our Micropoint Heavyhats) rather than just resting on their flat bottom surfaces. Increase weight by increments of no more than 3/4 to 1-1/2 pounds. You’ll eventually reach a total weight where just one extra 1/2 pound dramatically dulls the sound; “eventually” may be the second weight.

13. If you are installing four unattached footers (for added stability), check each one to make sure it is bearing full weight. Typically one of the four will be too short and slightly loose due to slight unevenness of the equipment bottom or the mounting surface below; a loose or too-short footer causes seriously audible sonic degradation. Take the loose footer and superglue three small shims evenly spaced around the outer circumference of the footer's top. For shims, use three of the smallest possible brass washers or small brass nuts for thicker shims or tiny squares cut out of the right thickness of brass shim stock. If you haven't added enough height, double up the shims or use thicker ones. Add enough shim height so that the loose footer now feels just as firm against the floor or shelf as the remaining three. Note that the three-small-shim approach sounds much better than using a single big flat washer to fit the footer's central screw.

14. If you are installing four thread-on footers, unscrew the short footer until it is the right height. Insert three little shims into the gap above the loose footer at three equally spaced points around the outside circumference of the footer’s top. As in 11), use as shims three of the smallest possible brass washers or small brass nuts or tiny shim stock squares. Then tighten the footer just enough to lock in the shims. If the shims don't firmly fill the gap, double up on the shims (the stacked shims can be superglued together) and repeat. The shim thickness must fit into the gap tightly enough that the loose footer now feels just as firm against the floor or shelf as the remaining three. For threaded footers, the three-point shimmed footer sounds better than a footer that is simply unscrewed and thus supported only by the threads of the adjusting screw.

15. To at least double the sonic improvement you get with just footers, we strongly recommend upgrading to our complete Vibration Control System by adding one of our Maple Platforms with correcting mounting for the shelf or floor it is mounted to. Users report that our VCS sounds better than $3500 air suspension platforms or $8500 active suspension systems.

Low Heavyfeet V.1 (closeout)

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Low Heavyfeet V.1 (closeout)

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