You got me.

No matter how you cut it, building racks makes a mess. I'd rather make that mess at the shop and not in the clients home. You want to make that mess and cart boxes all around the world, then be my guest. Oh wait, you probably leave all the boxes at the clients house anyway.

Glad to see this topic, I'll have to forward it to my boss.
We have always assembled on-site. I fought hard for months to move assembly in-house with all the pro's and con's listed before me. I would agree that the ONLY benefit to on-site assembly is so the customer gets to witness the build process. We're slowly getting there but many times we are still waiting on a a few parts to complete the rack so it gets shipped to the house anyway so the customer can see that we're actually doing something.
An additional benefit to me is that I can work on the rack even into the evening hours at the shop to complete the wiring in a day or so rather than possibly a week on site.

I've seen that before and it looks like a neat product but it scares the hell out of me. What if you lose control of the object you are carrying? You would essentially have no way to get out of the way, would you?

I didn't list that but the flexibility of having all the racks in the shop is great. We've had as few as 0 (rare) and as many as 14 (also rare, a personal best) racks going at any given time so its great to be able to work as time allows and parts show up.

It's much easier for me to let a guy to leave early to coach his kid's soccer game knowing he can come early to make up time later. If somebody *wants* overtime, we can work something out.

I'm guessing the guys that like to build on-site may be doing more systems that don't require days & days of programming?

I bought it after I watched 2 normal looking humans *scamper* up and down a ramp & stairs with a refrigerator at a CEDIA demo.

I loved it, but the guys used it a few times & bailed.

This is a fun discussion, the type that makes this a great place to visit. I'm going to play devils advocate here. I'll number my questions to make them easier to answer.

1. For those that pre-rack all your systems in the shop, what does that mean *exactly* :-)? That could mean quite a few different things. Please expound a little.

2. A good percentage of wires cannot be connected except in the field (all the speaker wires coming from each room, etc.). So what exactly are you connecting? Just the components within the rack itself?

3. We rarely have just one rack. What do you do when you have 2, 3, 4 or more racks with components that all get interconnected? How do you prerack those and then take them to the job-site? You'd have to completely unwire them anyway, correct?

4. What Middle Atlantic racks are you using to prerack? I've seen severak mentions of Axcess racks. Is that what you are usually using?

The only time I have ever seen anything almost get out of control was because someones hands or fingers got to a point that they couldn't hold on anymore. With the moving straps all of the weight is carried on your shoulders and legs, you would be amazed how effortless it is for two guys to carry a big TV, and I mean an old Sony 60inch, with one of these, you still have issues if you need to make a tight corner on a stairway though.

Thanks, we'll have to try one.

Pre racking means installing the gear in the rack, wiring it, testing all the connections using front panel controls or native remotes, programming the system and testing the programming as far as possible without having the system in the house.


Usually, yes.


Your jobs are bigger than mine. :-)


AXS, Slim series and MRKs, typically. Depends on where its going.

This almost never ends well...


I got your expoundation right here - We want to finish all mechanical mounting & try to make a system fully function before it leaves our door.


Everything in the rack & we'll mock up temp wires to test the projector and it's programming. We don't worry about testing every remote speaker, but we do temp wire the touchpanel(s).


OK Mr Smartypants Wall-O-Racks guy:)...
Most of our itsy-bitsy little theater systems will fit in single 44u rack. If we have a 2nd or 3rd rack that means AV distribution with big ol matrix PVID or Extron switchers and lots of amps. We may keep video distribution to one rack, audio to another, mount all hardware & wire the internals totally but we don't temp *all* the outgoing wires to test.


Mostly MRK/ERK's flushed into walls and cased like a 6'8" door. Occasional AXS or SR series.

We also do boardroom/presentation/classroom systems in manufactured podiums. Definitely want to build these in-house - their schedules are way too tight - usually need to be in & out in a day or two.

Wow, nice list Barry!!

I pre-racked the last job I did, which was about 2 hrs. door-to-door. I would do it again for a project that far away.

I don't worry about it much anymore, but it was a toss up whether or not to build on site for projects close to our homes.

One of the major advantages seems to be the ability to test and troubleshoot compatibility issues between the components and the control system and fine tune the interface without having to show the early versions and confuse the clients.

That said, I never had access to high end boxes and service from any of the SIX cable services in the areas where we operated (Comcast, RCN, Time Warner, Insight, Charter, and Heartland Communications), or either of the painful DSS satellite companies' equipment.

And cable and sat equipment always represented the components that were behind the issues I faced!!!

Off site, unless I don't have the time. It's much more pleasurable to work in a shop environment where you have immediate access to all of your regular stuff plus extras that you would never consider bringing to a job. I probably spend more time prep'ing for a job then actual install time. With the exception of prewire, I always try to minimise my time on the job site.

But if your t&m, then that's a different situation.

Absolutely agreed.


Agreed (if we had a shop)


Touche' ejfiii.


I knew I would love this forum. You guys/gals are all OK.
It's nice when posters come back to stand up and take one on the chin or swing back without gettin all atomic and goin ballistic and sh*t.

EXCELLENT TOPIC fluid-druid

Thanks... I didn't expect it to take off.... I sort of assumed that I would get a bunch a people saying , "Well, duh... you HAVE TO DO IT ______ way!"


I have to agree that it makes a mess. Once I get started, I find it difficult to keep tidying up, as I work. I just want to get into it, and start making connections.

At my shop, I'm the only one currently building racks in the store (and until recently, the only one trying to sell them as well).... so I always feel the "eyes at my back"...

They tease me, and its all in fun... but I still feel that unless you build a lot of racks, and I'm talking fairly complicated systems with control, surround, and multiroom with audio and video dist (for example), you can't appreciate the amount of thought and work that goes in to it.

Personally, I don't care if my customer knows every detail that goes in to the process... as long as the system surpasses their expectations. And, selling racks for me isn't necessarily about $$ or even saving time... its more about delivering a tight, nice looking product that works great, has good ventilation and will last long, and is relatively easy to service if need be.

As a very busy smaller company, with a long history and a great deal of retail traffic as well as custom, its very difficult at times. I'd love to focus more. If I could do only 10-15 very nice systems per year (as many of you do) it would be great to have the proper time to spend on each one... for lots of racking, testing and documentation.

However, our store supports 9 guys, and 4 of us are at "owner" salaries. The rest of the guys are pretty well paid as well... but 95% of the custom is installed/supervised by the 4 of us... and between us we probably finish 40-70 projects in a year. Obviously many of the projects are smaller relatively, but even those are starting to get more involved. I think the hardest, but likely most rewarding, transition to make is from the "We'll help everyone" mentality, to the "We do systems THIS WAY... and if not, then we don't do them" concept.

F-D, even small one room systems can benefit from an SR style rack. And SR racks can certainly benefit from being pre-built in the store. We have a 3x6 plastic Homer Depot table for just this purpose. We have two partially completed 30 space SRX racks on it now.

Mitch, no reason to go balistic when you know the other guy is wrong. LOL!