Quadraspire
Quadraspire was established in 1995 by Dutch designer Eddie Spruit in an East London Studio and now has its own manufacturing facility in Bath, England where they design and make high performance HiFi racks. Twenty years ago we set out to develop a Hi Fi rack that would deliver acoustic performance with style. This was achieved by combining solid aluminium columns with specially engineered shelves to create a light and rigid construction that delivers clearer, cleaner musical performance. Since then the Q4 has been sold throughout the world and is still one of our most popular racks.
Pearl Audio has carried and used Quadraspire racks in-store since 2003. In fact Quadraspire was one of our very first product lines, and several of those now 14 year old racks are still in use in our store.
If you look closely at the elder Quadraspire Q4 racks in our store, especially a few of the cherry ones, you may notice or think to yourself: “These have seen better days”. You gotta look real close because we’re a little econo-sneaky: We will put the damaged sides to the back, and also put the rougher looking shelves on the bottom. It's hidden, but it's there: They’ve been whaled upon.
Our rattier looking Quadraspire shelves have good reason for their slight Ratatouille d’mour, and that’s because they’ve been:
- assembled countless times.
- disassembled equally countless times.
- moved around uncountable times.
- stored/moved in our warehouse.
- scraped and dinged by moving 150lb McIntoshus Giganticus moving amplifiers on/off of them.
- skewered by gigantic oversized turntables with spiked feet.
Yet even ratty, they still look good because they have nice, thick real-wood veneer, high quality solid bar aluminum columns, and much like anything of high quality, the little hits and knicks of time give them character and a little history. The versatility is amazing, and the long-term quality much higher than the $2000 enclosed av cabinets our store has made the mistake of buying a few times then literally giving away after 3-4 years due to shop wear.
The versatile beauty of the Quadraspire racks is that you can add to them by just buying another shelf, or even collapse and store flat when not needed. You can also buy columns in different heights. We keep a collection in our store and often re-configure so components are always on height appropriate shelves.
You basically build a Quadraspire by the level. Each level either comes with Feet+Tops or with Columns. The feet come with both spike and flat rubber screw-on ends with optional casters. If you have wood floors you can add QC or QC7 floor protectors. The columns come in 5.5″, 7″, 8.5" 10″ and 12.75″. In general the 7″ is the most versatile. You can of course mix / match as some people like to have a taller shelf space on the bottom for their large amplifier and shorter spacing up higher. This helps keep the rack height a little shorter and discrete. You can buy extra/different column sizes.
Sonically these definitely improve the sound and are an excellent match for Linn, Rega, or anything to do with a turntable. Their newer Evo Q4 series features a routed underside that lighten the rack and lower the vibrations down. The SVT series adds upgraded columns, hidden vibration decoupling brass sleeves and instead of routes, machined horizontal vents that reduce vibration and give better airflow.
Visually Quadraspire racks they are light in visual appearance, meaning they don't dominate or fill a room like normal box type furniture - you can look right through them, and because of the lovely Quadraspire music-box curve, they have a graceful line to them. They are also easy to work around because you can easily reach around the slender aluminum columns to get at the back of a component. We use the optional Quadraspire casters on several of our racks which allow us to move them from room to room, back them up close to walls for space savings, or turn them to get behind them. Lastly, if you have more petite components such as Ayre, Linn or Rega, the Quadraspire Evo Q4 shelving is shallower and narrower than a full on cabinet, freeing up room in your home. Mcintosh amplifiers and receivers need the larger Q4L shelves or better yet the SVT shelves.
Lastly, and this is a big one, the Quadraspire's can handle serious weight per shelf:
- Q4 - 175 lbs/shelf
- QAVM 220 lbs/shelf
- QAVX 615 lbs/shelf
- SVT 264 lbs/shelf
- SV2T 264 lbs/shelf
Pearl Audio displays single, double, and triple-wide Q4 and SVT in single-wide and amplifier stand configurations.
The Quadraspire factory is in Bath, England.
Pearl Audio has been a Quadraspire dealer since 2003.