Poor Man's Isolation Padding?

[cwileyriser]

Any thoughts from the techie types here on using anti-fatigue mats as isolation/vibration pads? E.g., under bass and guitar amps. Like this:
http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=p ... 87-0516836

Those look like they might be too stiff to compress enough to work well. But Lowe's and other places also sell more spongy neoprene anti-fatigue mat material by the foot that's pretty cheap.

Then there is the EVA foam matt stuff like this: http://www.softtiles.com/ I'm thinking that this stuff might really work, and it's only $1.20 a square foot. My kids have some of these (alphabet tiles) kind of things and they seem to have about the right amount of sponginess and resiliency. It seems that you could play around with the amount of surface area being compressed to get the right amount of compression to be effective for reducing transmission through a floor - e.g., if the stuff is harder, then maybe frame a small MDF platform with 2x4's and put the foam only on the 2x4's. If the stuff is softer, glue the mat directly on the whole back side of a piece of MDF and put the amp on the MDF so that the weight is distributed across the entire surface area of the MDF piece.

And if you don't care about them being alphabet tiles, you can probably get the stuff really cheap. I think my wife got the ones for my kids for $12 for the 26 tiles.

Any thoughts?

[drumsound]

YOu might consider those and then lay a piece of plywood on top of it.

[digitaldrummer]

I bought a set of like 6 or 8 tiles (excersize mats!) for <$20 at Wallyworld that are very similar to the softiles. I put them under my drum kit hoping to isolate the stands frm the floor a bit. DO NOT DO THIS. Oh my god they sounded horrible. They are fairly dense, coated, and therefore somewhat reflective and I believe this was causing me to have phasing issues--everything sounded horribly thin. So if you were considering this, forget it.

haven't tried it under an amp though. for < $20/set, you can't go wrong, and if it sucks, you can always return to your local Wallyworld no questions.

Mike