Played live with the rack last night. Here is my review-type thing.
The bad:
Because of the layout of everything in the case. it's really front heavy. So while carrying it by the handles, it has to also be held to make sure it doesn't tip forward and become more unwieldy. It also weighs a ton. My bandmate picked up a 10Ux4U "Road Runner" case (the Guitar Center knockoff of Road Ready), which is made of wood, had a power amp in it (and a power conditioner and a Monomachine and an MS2000), and that felt lighter and more manageable. Don't be fooled by the plastic!
The neutral:
We have three angled rack over front rack "mixer" racks. One is my setup, one is my bandmate's setup and one is the mixer. We take up an entire 6' table in just rack gear (the table is too big to have either of our trunk lids close, so a shorter table is needed for "legal" reasons ... but we couldn't fit our gear on a shorter table). That doesn't even include keyboards, mic stands or guitar stands. So, from what I've personally seen and what I've read, we're gonna have too much gear for a standard "just shove the DJ in the corner" kinda setup. We're using more room than when we had everything out on the table, but, it takes almost no time to setup and there is no rat's nest of cables.
The good:
Obviously, setup was insanely quick. Open up the back, feed a few cables out each side's cable ports and plug them in. Done. Other than stands, a keyboard and a mic, it was all "in the box." Once we decided to pack up, we had everything back in our cars in about 15 minutes. We fit all three racks (and some stands and other random things) in my Focus hatchback. Put the 6' table and pa speakers in my bandmate's focus hatchback. Two small cars and good to go!
The fantastic:
The SKB rack is sturdy as all hell! I was leaning on it pretty heavily during both sets (more so on the second set, as I was rather tired). It always felt sturdy (and I'm not a small guy). The 10U over 6U was the perfect height! Not too tall and to make my arms tired and not too short as to have me bent over all show. I'm 6' and the table the rack was on is about 3' and I had no problems, but, my bandmate is 6'3" and has several inches shorter rack and had no problems. So, I guess as long as the gear is at least a foot above the table height, good to go.
The staggered Elektrons:
I had zero problem with this setup. I had all the access I needed to the knobs on the Analog Four, with was butted up next to the front side of the Octatrack. The OT didn't feel strange being about an inch above the A4. Really easy to use setup like that.
If anyone has any questions, I'll answer them. Seriously, I recommend a case like the. It's one of the best non-instrument music gear purchases I've ever made.
