Adam Hall 87556 19" 1HE Pull-Out Rails

This is one though pull-out tray! As soon as I picked it up I could feel the weight, it's built like a tank - this tray will last a lifetime.

The tray is made from black powder coated, 1.6mm steel and the rails themselves are of very good quality and very well made. The rails also lock in place, quite firmly. The tray won't move without a strong forward tug, which is obviously a good thing.

I've fitted it inside my Gator GR-6S shallow 6U rack case (compact 14.25" rack depth), which has a rackable depth (to rear lid) of 368mm. You can alter the rail length (see pictures) by undoing a few bolts, then you overlap the two strips of metal to shorten the rails and refit. With a bit of jiggery-pokery I got the tray to fit. It sticks out a bit at the back and a little bit at the front, but the lids fit without any problems. The usable tray surface is 412mm wide and 380mm deep and being able to pull the tray out is really handy.

You can use sticky Velcro to keep things in place if you want; I've Velcro'd my NI KA6 audio interface to it and it doesn't move at all. I still have space to store leads and other bits and pieces, you can also Velcro plastic boxes and the like. I've fitted it to the bottom of my case to lower the centre of gravity, because above it is a Kemper Profiler rack amp and a Behringer BTR2000 rack tuner which don't weigh that much, so it's more stable with the tray at the bottom. I also like it because I can feed my leads through the front of the rack unit, instead of taking the back lid off all the time; you can't do that with a drawer unit. I'm really happy with my set-up now, it keeps everything nice and compact and fuss free.

This tray will stand up to life on the road or in your studio with ease, and it's a great price, I highly recommended it.

This is one of the first pieces that I installed on my rack and I have to say that mounting it was a bit of a nightmare for me. It needs to attach both at the back rails and the front rails, and it's really hard to get it to the right size! At first, it wasn't entirely clear that I could change the depth of the drawer to match my rack, and it took a few tries to get it there. Eventually I got it into place, but it doesn't feel perfect and there is a bit of resistance in the sliding.

Maybe you just need some decent skill to mount it, and I am not that great

Putting the finishing touches to my new studio setup I discovered that my plan to use my laptop on top of my 19" rack was a problem, and this sliding rack shelf solved that problem right away. I carefully measured the height of my laptop to ensure that, when closed, it would slide into a 1U space without problems, and bought this unit almost immediately.

Fitting it can be tricky, since it has rack ears at the front and back of the unit that need to be adjusted to fit. My rack is deep and I needed to remove the rear ears and refit them to a further set of bolt-fittings on the sliding section for extra depth. There are two Philips-head bolts each side to adjust, and sometimes they can be hidden behind the sliding section which needs to be moved to a suitable position for them to be loosened and tightened. The reach required is easy to assess, although it is easier in an empty rack. Mine is full and it was easy enough to measure the necessary distance between the front and rear pairs of rack ears. Getting the fully-adjusted shelf into a full rack is also tricky, the runners are barely flexible enough to allow free passage through the inside of the rack. This unit is better fitted into an empty rack since it can be tilted sideways and then leveled out to be attached front and back.

In use it is excellent, free moving and very stable for my laptop.

The available shelf size (about 42Wx33Dcm) is fine for laptops to be used and stored, but 17" and probably also 15" laptops will need to be used from either side of the drawer rather than facing the rack since they are a tight fit onto the shelf unless they are put in sideways (remember that connectors also tend to go into ports on each side rather than at the rear of a laptop, so space needs to be allowed for cabling). My laptop is 3.33cm high and can be stored inside the rack without any problems. Cables to interfaces etc can be fed out of the back of the unit, but only small interfaces could be kept on the shelf along with a laptop (perhaps the Emu 2x2).

Of course the unit could be used for other purposes, allowing smaller non-rack effects units to be racked, used to store cables or even interface units that are nicer hidden from sight. If, unlike me, you can use your laptop on top of your rack, the shelf can still hide all the PC-related clutter to give you a sleek work surface!