Let's have a thread about painting speakers.

[Reli]

1) What kind do you use? Brand and specific color names please.
2) Is it spray or brush?
3) What do you do with the center caps? Do you remove them (if so, how?). Or just tape them off?

Thank you

 

[redbenjoe]

use bottle caps to cover the caps
use lite spray

pictures later

 

[Northerner]

I use acrylic artists paint mixed to the right colour then applied thinly with a wide soft artists brush. No need to mask off the caps and it dries really quick. If you know your colours you can mix any colour you like. Done this to most boxes I own for that fresh look

 

[baddboybill]

I have just painted my speakers with a brush using a very light coat and they turn out great and no sound change. Well except for my Lasonic TRC975 which seems to have deeper bass because I painted them black at first then put a coat of white on for originality.
Here are some I painted before and after pics

 

[Scotty_M]

use bottle caps to cover the caps
use lite spray

pictures later

The man knows. I use aerosol can caps to cover the...caps.

Scotty

 

[superlew]

When I sprayed these crappy Goldwood 4's I used a Duplicolor metallic maroon (some Ford color). I masked the dust caps with the cap from McCormick Montreal Steak seasoning (great on steak, too).
I recently replaced those POS speakers with a 6" pair I yanked from a funky Panny RX-DT610. They sound great, but I haven't sprayed those yet. I'll report back when I do.

 

[Reli]

Thanks guys. So you are using regular acrylics, not latex or anything special?
How about using "flexible" paint they sell for car bumpers?

 

[baddboybill]

I just used enamel when I painted my Lasonic speakers. That was all I had and it was when I first started collecting. It's lasted almost five years as you can see from my last pic of TRC975 I just took a month ago

 

[Fatdog]

If you are going for a light, creme-white color (not a pure white like Lasonic 931 woofers), here is some information on what I use:

Krylon Fusion Satin
2422 Satin Dover White

It's not a pure white. It has just enough pigment in it to give a really, really light creme color. I think it gives a better look than pure white on some boomboxes.

NOTE!!!
Krylon Satin Dover White has several different paint codes - the code you want is 2422.

Just remember...

You only want a very, very light coat of paint.

Also, the cap for Testors decal bonder spray is the perfect diameter to cover the chrome caps on the Rising 20/20 boomboxes.

 

[redbenjoe]

thanks bob -- i like that satin dove white the best

 

[Superduper]

Thanks guys. So you are using regular acrylics, not latex or anything special?
How about using "flexible" paint they sell for car bumpers?

Reli,

Where possible, use spray instead of brush because a thinner, more even coat can be applied in this manner compared to brushing.

Flexible spray paint is not necessary. In fact, I suspect that bumper coating will result in a thicker coating. The speaker cone does not need to be flexilbe to be effective. What is important is the weight of the cone. Heavier cone weight will have tendency to dampen the cones ability to vibrate at the higher hz's so you may lose a little bit on the top end while stiffening the bottom end.

 

[Reli]

Heavier cone weight will have tendency to dampen the cones ability to vibrate at the higher hz's so you may lose a little bit on the top end while stiffening the bottom end.

& probably force the amps to work harder for the same amount of sound :grim:

 

[Superduper]

& probably force the amps to work harder for the same amount of sound :grim:

The electrical impedance will be the same so no extra load on the amps. Potential sound alteration has to do with inertia. A heavier object can't respond as quickly nor slow down as quickly as a light object can. That's why ribbon drivers are so highly regarded... the light weight of the kapton ribbon is virtually weightless so it can respond almost instantaneously with little effort. Because high frequencies, by their very nature, has more cycles/second, this is the reason why high frequency response capability of a driver cone might be diminished if you add mass to the cone. This is also the reason why tweeter cones are so much more delicate than low frequency drivers. Take subwoofers for example.... their cones are super thick because they don't need the cones to move much faster than 300 to 500 hz or so. In fact, stiffening the cones usually will reduce the cones tendency to "fart" thereby beefing up the bottom end. Compare that to the 10k to 20k+ hz that tweeters are expected to reproduce.

So bottom line: it's not a matter of whether or not painting (and thereby adding mass to a cone) will affect high frequency reproduction. Rather, it's a matter of how much will it be affected. And for 2-way drivers, the loss of top end on the woofers might not be noticed if the tweeters are already reproducing those frequencies.

 

[redbenjoe]

thanks --that was a very worthy explanation -
should be a sticky

:super:

 

[AE_Stereo]

The electrical impedance will be the same so no extra load on the amps. Potential sound alteration has to do with inertia. A heavier object can't respond as quickly nor slow down as quickly as a light object can. That's why ribbon drivers are so highly regarded... the light weight of the kapton ribbon is virtually weightless so it can respond almost instantaneously with little effort. Because high frequencies, by their very nature, has more cycles/second, this is the reason why high frequency response capability of a driver cone might be diminished if you add mass to the cone. This is also the reason why tweeter cones are so much more delicate than low frequency drivers. Take subwoofers for example.... their cones are super thick because they don't need the cones to move much faster than 300 to 500 hz or so. In fact, stiffening the cones usually will reduce the cones tendency to "fart" thereby beefing up the bottom end. Compare that to the 10k to 20k+ hz that tweeters are expected to reproduce.

So bottom line: it's not a matter of whether or not painting (and thereby adding mass to a cone) will affect high frequency reproduction. Rather, it's a matter of how much will it be affected. And for 2-way drivers, the loss of top end on the woofers might not be noticed if the tweeters are already reproducing those frequencies.

Just wondering; We are talking about painting speakers which are around 30 years old. Most of these are paper cones too. Paper changes its properties with time, especially with varying climate. The speaker cones in the 80's boxes may not be of the same stiffness and rigidity as they left the factory. As you rightly said, giving a light coat of color would not change the sound quality noticeably, especially with all boxes with a tweeter.

 

[TW5]

I used somthing called Pole Paint
from dollar store black color, it blended right in
and the speaker still looked like paper
still need to do more testing on this.

 

[Superduper]

I have heard of folks coloring the cones with dyes using alcohol as the soluable agent. The alcohol dries fast and has far less tendency than water to raise the grain (of paper cones), yet, evaporates completely when dried so only the coloring agent (dye) remains. In other words, smaller impact on weight of cones.

Also, I did say that the sound quality will be affected when altering the weight of the speaker cone. The amount of change will vary and whether or not the difference is detectable with your ears depends on how sensitive you are. I would not be suprised if you are unable to detect any change except via an A/B side/side test. I should also add that whether or not this results in a negative or positive change in the sound quality would be subjective.

 

[baddboybill]

I have used Black and Red permanent markers to also color speakers. You would think there would be lines or un evenness but it dries one solid color

 

[Beosystem10]

Trying to summon up the bottle to do this to my PC-5's factory drive units, I'm concerned about anything solvent-based as I've already changed the foam surrounds and don't really want to do that again which I would if anything got in about at the foam so has anyone done this and what type of paint did you use? I was thinking of using some very thin distemper (about 30% in water) and applying it with my airbrush but it concerns me that even this may have some form of solvent as the bathroom ceilings that I painted weeks ago still smell of something that certainly isn't water! Then some people on the VR forum suggest using the glue that was supplied with the foam kit - of which I have a full tube left over - and diluting that with water. I know that doesn't melt the foam but it must bond with it at surface, if not radical level or it wouldn't have worked so how safe is that and why would it whiten the cones when it dries clear on the foam surrounds and the cardboard shims that I used it to bond?
Car aerosols these days contain water based paints but they smell as though the solvent would be the same stuff as was used in cellulose and that I know would eat the foam as I've seen what it does to a polystyrene cup from a tea vending machine.
I'd love to get these original cones looking as fresh as the rest of my new favourite toy but would put up with their "parchment" appearance if the only alternative would be wrecking my surrounds and/or softening the paper.

I have plenty of spare, damaged paper coned speaker drive units from various projects so experimenting on paper to find a way to paint those isn't a problem, it's just my fear of melting the foam that's holding me back and there's so much about this on the web, much of that information being posted by people who heard about some distant relative of a neighbour who once sat next to someone in a bar and that person had once tried to do this... You know what it's like, that's why I'm asking on here, I've never seen any other forum populated by as many people who have genuinely done the job and succeeded!

I'm veering toward the magic marker idea as that would be controllable and the solvent would be kept away from the foam by my careful application of it but obviously, that would only work if I went for a darker colour. I was thinking about a blue as that's in keeping with the general livery of JVC stuff but then I look at those once-creamy white cones staring at me like the sad eyes of some devoted old horse and I realise that I have to keep it all factory.

If only I'd thought about this before fitting the new surrounds..

 

[Northerner]

Well I've painted many woofers with a thin coat of artists acrylic and a wide artists brush with no problems...it's never wet enough to cause any issues and dries very quick. If you have a set of colours you can mix them to get a good match to M70 blue for example