I know you said you are not really looking for a "flexy" rack but they are really quite easy to build and of course, very flexible. Here are a couple photo's of a rack I built for a client's custom install a couple months ago. The shelves are 3/4 prefinished plywood with some mahogany I wrapped the edges with which matches the rest of the wood in the house.

The rods are 3/4" that were spray painted. I did have to go back once it was assembled and touch up the paint. To avoid overspray I sucked up all the overspray with a shop vac placed right on the other side of what I was spraying which worked very well. I also added some pieces on the back to the shelves to facilitate fastening all of the cables down with ties which you can kind of make out in the photos.

I haven't seen cabling that neat since I worked on a wind farm.

What was on the top shelf?

The top shelf is a 20a tripplite surge suppressor. As far as the wiring goes it is very hard to make exposed wiring look neat. I learned how to make stuff look really nice though building industrial control panels. That is until the electrician gets in there and makes a rats nest out of it. Some of the panels on this page I will link to I also built. When I worked for this company it was me and one other guy in the shop who also did very nice work and taught me quite a few tricks.

http://www.aecmaine.com/photogallery.htm

What was the cost for the wood, rods, washers, nuts?

Wow. Fancy! You don't want to see a picture of mine. That's for sure.

Truer words have never been spoken.

The plywood is something like 60 or 80 dollars a sheet... I used one sheet..I am in Hawaii right now and of course you cant buy a stick of gum without getting ripped off here. SO I would expect cheaper anywhere else.

Rods I think were $20 each for 6 footers and I think the other hardware was 30 or 40 dollars at home depot. The mahogany I had as extra trim for windows and doors that I cut up.

So in the end somewhere on the order of $200 but.. alot cheaper than the 700-1000$ prebuilt racks I was looking at, Which I would have gone with but I could not find one the correct dimension to fit in this closet.

Well I am hoping that in 2 weeks I can start to apply some serious thought to this.

You've inspired me to clean up my backside as well. Hmm, that didn't come out right.

/a