Vinyl Cubes

The Vinyl Cubes Story

This is the story of the journey to Vinyl Cubes.

Like most music lovers of my vintage, my first experience with recorded music was the vinyl LP. I ordered my first LP (Teaser and the Firecat by Cat Stevens) through the Eaton’s Trans-Canada sale. That was back in the day when Eaton’s existed and they had a catalogue. The album was delivered to the house. I still remember waiting for the black and maroon delivery truck. I took off the cellophane and gently slipped the disk out of the outer and inner sleeves, and carefully placed it onto my mom and dad’s record changer ensuring I only touched the edges. Yes, they had a record changer that allowed you to stack up six albums. Not the best for the albums, but those were the first “playlists” that we had.

Fun fact, that ridge around the edge of albums was in part to separate stacked albums
so the groves containing the music were not damaged by stacking albums.

That started my love for music. My collection grew to many hundreds and I spent countless hours scouring used record bins in downtown Toronto. I lined up for hours for Boxing Day sales which back then were December 27, because in Toronto-the-Good, stores were not allowed to be open on the 26th.

The 8-track and cassette did rival the LP and had a significant impact on LP sales. You could play a cassette in your car with music you copied off your LP’s – enter the mix-tape. The Sony Walkman introduced in Japan in 1979 made the cassette even more popular, but it still lacked the sound quality of the LP.

The compact disk was believed by many to be the LP killer. During the first year of CD sales, LP sales in the US dropped by 27%. But, by the early 2000’s the vinyl LP began to carve out a new group of devotees.

For me, I began to re-collect many of the LPs I had sadly given away in favour of CDs. I love the process of placing the LP on the turntable and actually listening from beginning to end. No skipping tracks or changing the track order that the artists put considerable thought into creating.

Then my children began to collect LPs. While they have vast MP3 collections and use streaming music services, they love the sound of the LP and enjoy the physical presence of the LP.

So, the collections continued to grow. I wanted to find a way to store these LPs that was both multi-functional and attractive. I spent the first year of my retirement building prototypes of what I now call Vinyl Cubes. I manufactured both pine and cedar Vinyl Cubes from my home and retailed them from a local store in Ottawa (Maker House). Based on feedback from our clients, we have begun manufacturing Vinyl Cubes from locally grown poplar. This is a harder and denser wood that has been found to be more stable and longer lasting.

Vinyl Cubes solve all of your vinyl LP storage problems:

• They are safely stackable. Unlike cardboard boxes or milk crates, Vinyl Cubes interlock, so they can be stacked up to five cubes high.
• The design is flexible. Cubes do not have to be stacked directly on top of each other – the stacking can be easily staggered I to an infinite number of configurations. With the use of top and bottom insert rails, Cubes can be raised off the floor ( this creates better air flow to keep your collection safe from moisture), and top rails create a solid flat surface for your audio equipment.
• The system is infinitely expandable. The Cubes you buy today will fit the Cubes you buy a year from now as you collection continues to grow.
• The interlocking design allows you to slide your LPs in horizontally, or turn the top Cubes 90 degrees so you can easily flip through your collection. Think of those times flipping through albums in the record store.
• Vinyl Cubes are attractive, so your LPs no longer need to be relegated to the basement. You can purchase cubes and finish them yourself with the paint or stain you choose. You can purchase poplar finished with non-toxic Linga stain manufactured in Quebec. This is a grey-brown colour that fits unobtrusively into most settings.   I am also open to staining cubes in the colour of your choice.

 

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Vinyl Cubes is also pleased to be affiliated with Feedbands – an innovative platform for developing new artists and getting them heard on vinyl – and ideally stored in Vinyl Cubes.

Visit Feedbands.com