I bought this product for my X32 Rack, specifically because it has rack rails at the back as well as the front. I don't think my intended use for a rack of this type is unique. All I wanted to do was mount the 3U mixer at the top, and two Millennium 8 channel splitters (1U) underneath. A 1U blanking panel and that's the front mounted stuff finished. Fine so far.
At the back I wanted to fit a 1U Millenium output patch bay at the bottom so that I can hook up to a FOH mixer with a couple of 8 way looms when needed. Above that a 1U patch panel at the with a pair of powercon sockets, the AES50, Ultranet, Ethernet, and USB ports plus a couple of XLR outs bought to the back of the rack (so that I don't have to fish around inside the rack to plug stuff in). At the top of the rack I wanted to fit a 1U power conditioner/distributor. Then I wanted to fit a 3U ventilated blanking panel in the middle to cover all the mess inside (hooking the splitters up to both the mixer and the output patch with 32 XLR patch leads works well in terms of function, but gets messy fast, no matter how neat you try to be)....but I can't do it. Why? Because the rack rails at the back of this rack only have 6 captive nuts on each side, so you are limited to just 3 items or panels. The only way round this is to mount the lighter 1U untis and blanking plates with a single mounting screw on each side (on a diagonal). This works but it's not ideal, it just looks sloppy - and you would be in trouble if you wanted (as I considered) to fill that 3 U space with 4 IEM transmitters and a UHF Combiner. You can't fit more captive nuts yourself because the rack rails are riveted in place and you'd have to drill them out and re-rivet them, and that should just not be necessary in any case. Come on Thomann, can you tell I'm irritated? How much do captive nuts cost when bought in the quantity your factories get them? a couple of cents each? It should be down to the customer to decide how much stuff they put in the rear of these units, not to be limited because you've cheaped out.
