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We received an open tuning board which are two layers of slotted bamboo boards mounted at 90° of each other equipped with a spirit level in the middle. Three solid bamboo feet attach to the bottom board capped with thin velours. This open tuning board is meant for heat-generating tube or other hot-running gear. Rising warm air drags cooler air through the slotted boards into the amplifier more efficiently than from under gear squatting on a solid surface. The resonance-tuning properties of the board do their bit for an enhanced sound experience.
Another beautiful box hid two different tuning boards that were easily unpacked with the help of the aforementioned ribbon. These non-slotted three-layer boards with three feet are intended for loudspeaker placement and decoupling. From a few smaller boxes we next took out two types of so-called Combi Feet. A 4 x 4 x 2cm three-layer bamboo footer contains a 2cm round aluminum disc with a dimple in its center. These are clearly meant to be used in combination with spiked equipment and come in sets of four. Another type of footers is basically the same but adds separate discs and matching ceramic ball bearings. These footers come in sets of three.
The feast of unpacking was not yet over. At first sight cable lifters or elevators are simple T-shaped contraptions intended to raise cables off the floor. A second glance shows that the cable-carrying vertical piece of three-layered bamboo here is topped with three—the magic number—semi-circular ridges one larger than the others to make the elevator suitable for more than one cable. From the last two packing artworks came a large and small turntable puck. The smaller is just as wide as the taller but to be of roughly the same weight (225 gram versus 260 gram), the smaller carries six stainless steel inserts. With these 41 and 82mm tall pucks not only is the horizontal layering of the bamboo nicely visible but so is the vertical.
During the bamboo sheet production process the bamboo is steamed before being bonded into a sheet. This has the sugars in the bamboo strips caramelise to create a warm brown color. Level Audio uses these color shades playfully when layering their sheets. Most of their goods have a thinner light-colored top and bottom layer sandwiching a darker thicker middle layer.
With all boxes emptied it was time to deploy the new temporary toys. First we concentrated on our analog system. The two LS tuning boards intended for loudspeaker support found a place under the Trafomatic Kaivalya monos. The vented Tuning Board V was commissioned to support the load of the Trafomatic Reference One preamplifier, on its top via Combi tuning feet with ceramic ball bearings a Trafomatic Reference Phono One. Atop the tuning feet without additional discs and bearings the Arcadian Audio Pnoe hornspeakers found a place. As piece de resistance the Tuning Record Puck Grande topped the Feickert Blackbird turntable.
Because of our cable layout we saved the elevators for the digital setup. Placing our gear atop the Level Audio boards and footers was as easy as this equipment was itself. Very large loudspeakers are of course more demanding in hopping atop a board than small ones. The LS boards fit beneath the Kaivalya amps as though custom-made whilst the vented tuning board V exceeded the preamp’s footprint but the slots did not prevent correct placement.
