painting speakers?

[beachjammer]

Hey guys,
I have an old Mesa Boogie 4x12 that I bought a while back. It's one of the ones with the grate style front, so the speakers are exposed. Anyway, it appears that someone spilled something inside of it because there's crud on a couple of the speakers. It doesn't seem like something that would come off real easily either so cleaning them is out of the question. I'm just wondering if it would hurt to spray them lightly with a can of flat black spray paint. The cab looks mint besides that and I'd like to get it cleaned up if possible. What do you all think?

[MountainDog]

Re: painting speakers?

From what you say, I gather you are asking about painting the actual speaker/driver vs. the cabinet, and I would caution you NOT to paint them for the following reasons:
1) The outer perimeter of a speaker has a flexible accordian shaped surround that needs to remain flexible. If you were to get paint on this area, it would change the properties of the flexibility of the surround (the paint would probably make it harder or less flexible). A change to the flexibility of the surround would lead to a degredation on the performance and sound of the speaker from its original design.
2) Speaker engineers design them to meet specific parameters, one of which is weight of the moving mass, which consists of the cone/dome/coil. If you were to attempt to mask off the surround and get paint only on the cone and the center dust dome, you'd be adding weight to the cone assembly, which will throw off the engineers parameters. You might think paint wouldn't be much, but the cones and domes and even the glue used to assemble are all measured out in grams and must meet certain specs/tolerances.

There is also a caution on cleaning: the cone body and dome need to remain stiff, and depending on what you use to clean them, you could get the paper of the cone/dome wet and soggy, which could leave it soft in those areas, again changing the performance as designed.

All that said, in the annals of rock and roll, people do crazy things to speakers (including purposely putting holes in the cones for 'more distortion'). So if the appearance is really bugging you, a very very light mist of flat black paint (be sure to mask off the accordian surround portion so you don't get paint on that) won't probably change things too much to your ears. (Make sure you paint all four speakers so they all will be alike). FYI, since we are talking of guitar amps, you always have the amps volume/bass/mid/treble knobs to tweak so you could 'adjust' the amp to compensate for any sound changes in the speakers.

And, yes, I work for a speaker company!

[beachjammer]

Re: painting speakers?

Thanks man! This was what I was wanting to know. With all that said I think that I'll leave them alone.

[mm2002]

Re: painting speakers?

For a "non technical" approach to this question........ [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]
a light coat of flat black will not affect the speakers tone at all. Just mist a little on to even up the color. It'll be fine. (and I don't work for a speaker company!)

[Ace]

Re: painting speakers?

Sharpie.

[nor]

Re: painting speakers?

[ QUOTE ]
Sharpie.

[/ QUOTE ]

+1

Sharpie's rule.