Gator Frameworks Elite Series Sidecar maple

All boards of the sidecar rack are made from thick, high quality plywood (not particle board) with a decorative layer with a natural maple look. The decorative outer layer is embossed for a realistic texture. It's still obvious that the boards are not plain wood, of course, because there is no end grain; but the look and feel is quite nice and compares favorably to, say, IKEA furniture.

Assembly is easy and the instructions are easy to follow if you can overlook slight discrepancies between the illustrations and the actual parts. (The instructions show parts with more holes for dowels that are not actually there.)

The holes for connector bolts have white plastic threads; this is a step up from IKEA furniture where the connector bolts are screwed straight into the particle board, causing damage to the board around the hole as the bolt is screwed into the hole. There are no such problems with this rack: the white threaded insets protect the plywood and there is no chance for tear out. There are minor inaccuracies in the boards, which can result in a few barely visible gaps after joining the boards.

The cabinet comes with a door with two soft-closing hinges, a soft-closing drawer that can be mounted at one of two pre-defined heights, a large shelf, and a small shelf for the right compartment. It also comes with 2x3 rack brackets; each bracket is 4 units high. Note that when you install all 3 rails on each side you won't have any space left for the shelf or the drawer.

I'm using this cabinet in my living room with the drawer holding a 12 channel mixer, and one of the 4U rack brackets installed at the very bottom for audio interface, preamps, and power.

My cabinet arrived with two minor problems: the smaller shelf had no cutouts for the holding pins, and the 8 pins to hold the shelf boards in place were not included. These will be sent to me in a few days by Thomann.