These are the two crates that contain the two sides of the rack. This particular rack in gloss black, but there are racks that come in various furniture-grade wood finishes as well as different colors. The album in the picture is there to try to portray the scale of the size of the crates, not because we couldn't find anywhere else to put it. Nor because we always seem to leave them lying around resting against some sort of equipment rack, even unassembled ones.

Let us spend a moment and bow our heads in thanks to all the wonderful people who spent part of their lives inventing power tool equipment. 16 screws per crate need to be removed.

We put all of our screws, except two per crate, into two Ziploc baggies that will go back into the crate, along with packing materials, for safe-keeping. This way we will have them if we ever need them instead of having to make that lame, and stupefying boring, run down to the hardware store looking for the right screws because we lost a bunch of them in all the years between the opening of the crate and the needing of the screws.

We performed the MXR Equipment Rack Assembly Task downstairs where there was both a lot of room and where the rack was going to be initially placed. The rack is somewhat heavy (but not prohibitively so; Neli and I carried ours with relative ease across the room, but going up stairs will require more effort and probably a lot more cussing) and there should be some consideration about where it is going to eventually be placed when assembling it. Not that we won't change our minds - or have them changed for us :-) - sometime in the future, but if you are like me you want to get the assembly done as quick as possible - so it is good not to have too many delicate things in the area whose cosmetic well-being always seems to somehow take a distant second place to the Getting the Equipment Rack Assembled NOW task.

We take a lot of pictures like this so we know what the side should look like if we (Neli does most of the packing, thank goodness) ever have to pack it up again.

The foam ends come off with a little back and forth wiggling - wiggling of the foam, not you, silly. You may have to lift the end up a little.

Now, with the plastic off, we see that there is a soft wrap covering and protecting the very fine finish of the wood or acrylic found on the sides of the equipment rack.

OK, enough with the pictures, we are finally getting to see some of that lovely finish on the MXR. Oooh! Aaaah! I know, I know, it is only a few square inches.

Neli says: This is a layer of gently adhesive Kraft paper that is stuck directly to the perfectly lacquered equipment rack finish. This stuff is great. Leave it on there as long as possible to protect the finish during assembly. I see a big roll of this stuff in our future, protecting lots of other stuff besides equipment racks.

Now we get to see where the spikes on the bottom of the MXR equipment rack will be attached. It was attached so securely at this particular point that we did have to tear it to get it off.

This is as much of the protective paper-life wrapping as we decided to remove - preferring to remove the wrapping on the other (outer) side of the rack at the last possible moment - which was right before inserting components into the rack, if I remember correctly - and the pictures agree with me for once.

The box of rack points contains the spikes for the bottom of the rack. We need to install two of the four now on the unwrapped side of the equipment rack. Why is it that playing with spikes are so much fun? Wonder if it is a 'guy thing'.

Following the instructions in the manual, and with Neli's constant assistance, I was able to figure out that the nut goes on first, and then the washer.

OK, here we are. As you can see, this project does lay waste to a goodly amount of floor space.

They are not that heavy, but the precision with which they were manufactured is second only to a few of the best turntables out there.

The brace fits perfectly in place - and I mean perfectly. All of the screws when in smoothly and could be tightened using only the fingers - which is what we want here anyway - just finger tightness. The hex wrench tool is so you, the reader of this HRS MXR Equipment Rack assembly fiesta can see which screws we are talking about.

Here we demonstrate that the orange-handled tool does not work well with screws when they are close to something else, in this case the side of the rack. That is why there are the other two hex wrench tools. Ah, so. The mist clears. The brain engages.