DIY Ultimate Support Keyboard Stand
Last Update 08-15-2025
About 1992 I added an Ultimate Support System (USS) "A-frame"
keyboard stand to my humble studio. I was never a fan of their
dorky look on the stage but felt they would suffice in the
studio. A few years later I went downstairs to find my
Memorymoog laying on the floor upside down, having fallen from the
top tier of the A-frame. The Memorymoog survived the fall, but
that episode drove me to abandon the A-frame format. The
Achilles Heel of USS stands are their tubular tier bars and the
clamps to secure the bars. With the clamps constructed of
polymer, you cannot tighten them too much or they will split.
That means they will NEVER 100% secure the bars from rotating.
That was precisely how the Memorymoog took a dive. I never
liked support tiers on a single mount for my keyboards because they
"bounced" too much.
So I converted the "A-frame" to an "R frame" (for lack of a better
word). I saw how the posts on the back could double as a
speaker stand for my studio monitors, so they were re-positioned to
a vertical post. I had decided that I wanted my MIDIBoard to
rest on tiers with not one but two mounts (see the detail of the
pictures on the right). A typical USS tier mounts in the
middle - I changed them to mount on the ends. I did have to
drill new holes in the tiers for the new mount locations. The
goal of the new mounting system was a rock steady support for my
MIDIBoard that I could pound like a piano with zero bounce.
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