I have two of these Archetype stands in cherry now (it's a much lighter cherry than the cherry speakers I thought it would match, unfortunately, but that's neither here nor there). One is this A2/C, and the other is an A3/C. They're quite easy to build, though spinning all the nuts through the all-thread is a bit time-consuming and leveling the shelves can be a pain.Because of the construction, you can buy additional shelves and add them, shelves can go anywhere, etc. It's a clever way to make a flexible system. There's really nothing proprietary going on here, so one could likely to the same sort of thing for cheaper. But the Salamander hardware is high quality, the wood is very nice... I certainly feel that mine are worth what I paid for them.It's worth noting that they aren't super rigid - you can kind of wobble the various shelves around since they're just on big metal rods. This certainly hasn't caused me any problems. My A3 holds a turntable up top, an amplifier in the middle, and records down below; my A2 holds various networking equipment and day-to-day doodads up top, and board games down below. Obviously the taller (and thus wobblier) A3 holds both heavier and more critical things, and to reiterate, I haven't experienced any problems that would make me feel like they _need_ to be more rigid.