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1974 Cornwall grill cloth replacement


Zinfandel

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While I am currently trying to sell my 1974 Cornwalls (original owner) an option is to replace the grill cloth and refinish the cabinets.

I have never had them apart. Not sure how the grill cloth works. Narrow wood strip nailed to front of cabinet, a dozen screws on the back.

Seems like if I tried to pull off the wood trim it would surely crack.

 

I tried to do a number of searches in the forum but none were on the simplistic level I need! They seem to talk about stretching grill clothe over the "motor board" and even cutting a new one.

Anyways, what is the easiest way to replace the grill cloth?

 

I actually worked in the biggest speaker grill manufacturer in the mid 1980s but they were all injection molded frames with cloth stretched and glued to the frame. Frames had feet that pushed into plastic cups on the speaker face. The way I understand it until the home stereo market exploded in early 1970 wood frames were the only cost effective method to produce low volume grill frames.

The injection molding tooling  cost only made sense when JBL/Pioneer/Sony sold bazzilions of speakers. We shipped over 10,000 or so grills a week

 

 

Thanks

 

 

 

 

 

Cornwall.jpg

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in 1974 the grill cloth was stapled around the motorboard with at least 1000 staples. if you want to replace the grill cloth you have 2 options

#1 - carefully cut the cloth out from the front and make grill boards out of a sheet of masonite from home depot. you will need a router to cut out all the openings.

#2 - remove the back panel and then remove the 17 screws that hold the motorboard in and then remove the 1000 staples and the grill cloth. buy new cloth and re install

lots of work on either option

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So, he front molding does not have the grill cloth under it. Can't really tell.

 

Thanks, for the bad news! You are right, both options are choose your poison.

Doesn't it cause issues to glue (I imagine you glue it) a grill  board onto the original motorboard?

And wouldn't it stick out from the molding due to the extra thickness?

 

And I have not seen an exploded view and am having trouble imagining taking off the back and somehow removing the motorboard with the speakers and all attached to it.

Is there an exploded view some place?

And what is a motorboard, never heard that before.

 

And, how dumb are these questions????

 

 

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these could have started out CD-BR which stands for Cornwall - Decorator - Birch Raw. if the molding is nailed on these were born Decorators which usually came from the factory without grill cloth and someone added the cloth and the molding at a later date

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I see now that while sales slip says November 1974 that is when I ordered them so they could have been made and delivered in 1975. Birch-Raw makes sense, I finished them myself but they came to me with grill cloth. There is notation on the order relating to grill cloth and CD-R , #13 grills

 

Does this mean anything to me as far as replacing grill cloth?

 

 

DSC_0035_zps6b2aaee1.jpg

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