Anyone who has ever looked up the price of vintage audio equipment can't help but have noticed that compared to modern equipment most of it is pretty expensive. This is large because of good engineering costs. By engineering what I mean is making things the old-fashioned way out of metal and analog components with moving parts and tight tolerances. Digital products are expensive to develop because you need clever people but are largely cheap to manufacture.

There are many areas of audio production that can be satisfactorily reproduced using digital techniques but once you've got your equipment in your studio you still need to put it on something and when it comes to stands it really is a case of you get what you pay for.

In this article, I'm going to highlight a few common mistakes people make when choosing stands and metalwork for their studios. I'll give examples of both good and less good choices. A lot of my examples happen to be from K&M. This is because I've used their products a lot in the past but other manufacturers are available who make equally good products.

Speaker Stands

Great monitoring is only great if the speaker is in the right place relative to your ears. Unfortunately, the majority of speaker stands are created for domestic listening and are too short for studio use. A cheap stand is definitely better than no stand at all but wobbly stands are all too common. Considering how expensive a quality pair of monitors can be it's not wise to put them on an inadequate stand. Your monitors falling to the floor is only one of the considerations. Good quality monitor stands physically isolate the monitor from the room and the monitor doesn't move, an important consideration considering drivers moving is what generates the sound in the first place and if the monitor isn't held firmly in place by the stand it is on, that is a potential source of distortion.

Monitor stands suitable for studio use are available very cheaply but cheap stands will probably be replaced in time so following my personal purchase policy of “buy once and keep”, buying a high-quality stand capable of safely supporting high-quality monitors is advisable. Like all stands, they are inherently future-proof. I've never seen a stand rendered useless by an operating system upgrade or power supply failure. An excellent choice is Ultimate Support stands. I bought a pair and still use them for my B pair in spite of my having moved to a sit/stand desk using short tabletop stands for my main pair so that they move with the desk from the sitting to standing positions. Alternatively, if you are in the USA Sound Anchors have an excellent reputation.

Keyboard Stands

X type keyboard stands are extremely common. the double braced variety are very sturdy and more than capable of supporting and 88 note keyboard controller. However I consider X type keyboard stands to usually be a mistake, I'd always recommend a table style keyboard stand for my main keyboard controller for a couple of reasons.

The first reason is because if you're playing sitting down, which the overwhelming majority of keyboard players would choose to do, with an X type keyboard stand, you can't get your knees under the keyboard meaning that your position relative to the keyboard is restricted. Being comfortable at the keyboard is of course important, I’d always recommend a double braced stand if you’re using an X stand as the single braced variety wobble in use, but a double braced stand forces your knees even further out from under the keyboard that a single braced stand would.

A table style stand allows your knees as far under the keyboard as necessary but that isn't the only reason I recommend one. If you play using a sustain pedal, and the majority of people do, you'll know that sustain pedals tend to wander as you play. Maybe they shouldn't but they do. If you start to lose your sustain pedal and it drifts away from you, if you're playing at an X stand they can be difficult to retrieve with your foot because the stand can get in the way. This isn't a problem with the table style stand.

Most table style stands have individually adjustable legs. If your floor is even slightly uneven an X style stand will wobble. This can be adjusted out when using a table style stand.

Lastly table style stands are incredibly useful for putting things on other than keyboards. Something that can't be said of an X stand.

An excellent example of a table style stand is this one from Trojan.

Microphone Stands

Every recording studio needs mic stands but all too often I find studios have too many of the wrong sort and not enough variety. Specifically I'm talking about too many standard boom microphone stands which I find to be the least useful stands in a studio but for some reason they tend to be the most common - the default stand.

Anyone who has ever used a tall boom stand to position drum overheads will know that they don't really go tall enough and they're not really sturdy enough to support anything other than the lightest of small diaphragm condensers. If you want to support a large diaphragm mic or any kind of ribbon, you will probably find your stands aren't up to the job. There are lots of useful workarounds. Counter weights on the back of the boom are a much better solution than overtightening the stands which ultimately will ruin them. Weights on tripod bases to prevent stands overbalancing are a common sight but are also a clear sign that your stands aren't up to the job. If you record drums regularly buy a pair of dedicated overhead stands. I own a pair of Coles 4038s and I have never regretted spending as much as a decent microphone on a good quality pair of dedicated overhead stands. in my case a pair of Latch Lake micKing 1100s.

But extra tall stands aren’t the microphone stands which come to mind when I think of which microphone stand is lacking in most of the project studios I've visited. That would be short boom stands. Nearly everything apart from vocals can be best covered using a short stand. If you've ever seen a tall boom stand in front of a guitar amplifier holding a 57 10 inches off the floor you'll know what I mean. Most of a drum kit, guitar amplifiers, acoustic instruments played by seated musicians, in fact the majority of instruments in a band recording can be covered using a short boom stand.

Anglepoise Mic Stand

Not necessarily a studio staple, but these stands, much favoured by radio presenters and podcasters, are unbelievably useful for ad hoc recording. I have my Beyer m201 dynamic permanently set up in mine but it is perfectly capable of supporting moderately heavy large diaphragm condensers. If I want to make a quick recording, if the m201 isn’t suitable it is the work of a moment to pop in a small diaphragm condenser and more acoustic guitar recordings than I care to mention have been captured this way just because it is so quick.

A word of caution if you are considering using one of the stands with external springs. Those springs make a very effective spring reverb and if you hit the table to which the arm is attached you will hear not only a bump, but a “doinnngg” if you are using it with a standard mic clip. I use a Rycote InVision shockmount with mine and never have any issues.

Music Stands

It surprises me how often I don’t see music stands in studios. Even if you don’t record the kind of music or musicians who use notation, you can put more than music on a music stand. Lyrics, iPads, scripts. All of these things can be accommodated by a good music stand. However a good music stand doesn’t mean the kind of spindly stand you took to school for your clarinet lesson. A sturdy stand is called for but importantly many of the more heavy duty stands available aren’t well suited to studio use because they have a solid sheet of metal for holding music. This big, flay surface forms a very effective sound reflector facing the back of the mic so if you can’t find a model with a wire grill, a carpet tile or similar makes a useful sound absorber to place on the stand.

Thread Adapters

Mic stands are useful for supporting things other than microphones and considering how much video production goes on in studios, a set of thread adapters allowing mic stands to be used to mount video cameras, phones and LED light panels is incredibly convenient.

During a typical recording session space is at a premium and I can think of few things less welcome in a tight, tracking space than a camera tripod. They just take up too much floor space. Of course a camera person might well need to use their fluid head tripod for ‘proper’ cameras but for small fixed cameras and lightweight LED panels a boom stand is more than adequate. Get some thread adapters. They are so worth it.

Drinks/Headphone Holders

One of the reasons the ubiquitous DT100 features in our headphones article where we asked what the team used is because they are tough and spares are readily available. No one said they were comfortable or sounded good, just tough and fixable. This highlights the fact that studio headphones have a hard life. In my experience this is very often because they get left on the floor and trodden on. Having a cheap, dedicated attachment giving a suitable place for headphones to be hung when not in use will pay for itself after a single avoided repair.

Then there is the dreaded drink spillage. Considering the potential damage a single spilled drink can cause in a studio, a mic stand mounted holder must be a good idea. Even if you only allow water bottles in your studio (and if you get 100% compliance with that well done - I’ve never managed it).

So there we have some ideas about how your stand choice can save you time and money. What would your top recommendation be when it comes to metalwork?