Our
Amish-crafted, solid air-dried Maple Platforms and Component Stands are an integral part of the Mapleshade
Vibration Control System that has transformed the sound of thousands of audiophile systems over the last decades.
How You Mount Your Gear Affects How It Sounds
You can transform its sound by mounting your A/V components on a really good “sink”—that is, on a base that receives and dissipates the component vibration thoroughly without reflecting it back. Our painstaking listening panel R&D tests proved that using maple as a sink material sounds warmer, clearer, punchier and more detailed than granite, slate or glass (all are edgy and bass-killing), hi-tech damped composites (very dead sounding), and myrtle or exotic hardwoods (more colored and less detailed). That is confirmed unequivocally by more than a decade of head-to-head comparisions by skeptical audiophiles.
If you add brass footers under your gear to more efficiently drain vibration down into the maple sink, you will double the good effect.
When used to support soundboards, maple's sonic superiority over all other woods is old news to every violin and piano maker since Stradivarius and Steinway. That is why all great violins use maple sides and backs to support their spruce soundboards—and similarly why all great pianos use a maple case and legs to support their soundboards. These same instrument makers taught us to NEVER use commercial, kiln-dried maple. The kiln's high heat weakens the wood's fibers, thereby deadening sound. Air-dried maple is less colored and closer to the sound of our master tapes than any other sink material—audibly better than harder or softer or denser woods, and notably better than kiln-dried maple or, worse yet, maple butcher blocks (excessively damped by their multitude of glue joints and their kiln-drying).
We Use Hand-Selected Maple Air-Dried For 3 to 6 Years
Because finding air-dried 2" to 4" thick, old-growth maple at ordinary lumber yards is impossible, Pierre turned to a local Amish sawmill in 2001. They find us logs of very special maple indeed: 75 to 100 year old, slow-grown Ambrosia maple that sounds distinctly warmer and clearer than commercial, force-grown Canadian rock maple. These old trees yield wood of gorgeous character: much tighter and more variegated grain, lovely nut-colored contrasts, subtly shimmering curl, birdseye and tiger stripes—and, strikingly, our tests show that variegated maple sounds better than featureless clear maple. After our rough-cut maple air-dries for 3 to 6 years, depending on thickness, our Amish craftsmen meticulously plane, bevel, shape and sand the wood. Ben, with his sons Crist and Uri, take particular pride in how their finishes show off the dramatic character and grain of our hand-selected, old-growth Ambrosia maple.
Finish Options to Suit Any Decor
We exclusively use air-dried Ambrosia maple as the sink for our Vibration Control Systems simply because our other materials or wood-types would degrade sound. However, we offer four handsome finishes to suit a wide range of decors. Our stock Platforms and Component Stands are hand finished with
Clear Satin that beautifully enhances the striking natural grain character of our air-dried maple. We also offer three made-to-order toned finishes:
Natural Cherry,
Deep Rosewood, and
Satin Black.
