Painting cabinets

[Robbie CW]

Just purchased a pair of Klipsch Heresy II's. Got a really good deal on them, all the drivers are in perfect working condition,  I will probably do a recap on them anyway. The grills are perfect with no tears or picks. The cabinets has some minor scratches on them, but no gouges whatsoever,  I'm wanting to paint the cabinet with a fresh coat of black paint as this is their color. Is there any special paint I should use, and will painting the cabinets hurt the performance any at all. Any special things I should do, or consider. Thanks for any info.

[blindman]

Greetings!

 

I own a pair of 1977 Klipschorns that I bought used.

They are the "decorators" model, so they did not have a cabinet on the top to enclose the tweeter and the midrange.

So one of my first projects was to add a "riser" and build a "top hat" enclosure.

 

Then I bought some cans of "ultra flat black" spray paint and went outside and painted them on a day that wasn't too windy.

I did not the paint getting on anything else and I wanted to keep dust, pollen, etc from collecting onto the wet cabinets.

(You might want to use a glossier paint? IDK)

Finally I bought some black Klipsch grill cloth for the top hat and fabricated side panels with grills.

 

Looks pretty good if I say so myself.

 

As long as you don't get any paint on the tweeters, midranges or woofers re-painting your Heresy's won't do them any harm.

[Robbie CW]

I'll give it a try, thank you.

[Iteachstem]

I would suggest the following:

1) Try sanding them down as black speakers are simply ugly compared to nice wood.  Either seal them if you like the natural wood as it is, or stain them with a finish you like and do a matte poly finish.  If the sanding doesn't turn out well for you, go to option #2

 

2) Paint them.  I've used simple Rust-oleum flat back with a roller.  It gives a nice little textured finish.  Then, seal with a matte poly.

 

3) Use a fun textured spray on them and do something different.  I've used the stone spray paint on several refinish projects in the past with decent results.

[wuzzzer]

4 hours ago, Robbie CW said:

Just purchased a pair of Klipsch Heresy II's. Got a really good deal on them, all the drivers are in perfect working condition,  I will probably do a recap on them anyway. The grills are perfect with no tears or picks. The cabinets has some minor scratches on them, but no gouges whatsoever,  I'm wanting to paint the cabinet with a fresh coat of black paint as this is their color. Is there any special paint I should use, and will painting the cabinets hurt the performance any at all. Any special things I should do, or consider. Thanks for any info.

I always find it funny how many people post in this forum section despite the sticky near the top in all caps:

 

https://community.klipsch.com/index.php?/topic/196239-please-read-before-posting-here/

 

[Khornukopia]

16 hours ago, Robbie CW said:

Is there any special paint I should use, and will painting the cabinets hurt the performance any at all.

 

Lacquer spray paint usually works well for this application. First, learn the best techniques and make sure to practice on something else. If you mask off all the parts that should not get painted, the sonic performance will not be affected.

[Khornukopia]

12 hours ago, wuzzzer said:

I always find it funny how many people post in this forum section despite the sticky near the top in all caps:

 

https://community.klipsch.com/index.php?/topic/196239-please-read-before-posting-here/

 

This has been going on for ages. If we can't get an administrator to fix the forum to reduce the chances, maybe the best we can do is to help the newbies with an easy answer.

[CCG]

On 4/7/2024 at 7:34 PM, Iteachstem said:

I would suggest the following:

1) Try sanding them down as black speakers are simply ugly compared to nice wood.  Either seal them if you like the natural wood as it is, or stain them with a finish you like and do a matte poly finish.  If the sanding doesn't turn out well for you, go to option #2

 

2) Paint them.  I've used simple Rust-oleum flat back with a roller.  It gives a nice little textured finish.  Then, seal with a matte poly.

 

3) Use a fun textured spray on them and do something different.  I've used the stone spray paint on several refinish projects in the past with decent results.

 

Thread resurrection.

  There is a project cabinet here and I was going to ask you or someone (c/o @MicroMara) what is the right way to:

1. or s there a way to change color from black to natural color that originally has a textured or grainy finish like what's in the picture.

2. change from originally an 8 inch woofer driver to a 7 inch in the best way I can. I just don't want to use a filler like the one they use for a car that I might crack in long term. I want to maintain that acoustic natural sound as close as can to original.

3. My other driver option is changing the original klipsch 8" poly cone woofer to a paper cone woofer for personal sound preference. I was looking at this driver since the klipsch woofer has a DC resistance of 3.4 ohms.

Dayton Audio RS225P-4A 8" Reference Paper Woofer 4 Ohm

Upon removing and measuring everything to change the woofer, it is not just a drop-in and there will be a lot of modification to install the new 8" woofer due to its incompatibility of the klipsch's non standard woofer cut out.

As I previously mentioned, I can also go down to a 7 inch woofer, in fact  prefer the sound of this more and I found a promising woofer in this size.

Dayton Audio RS180P-4 7" Reference Paper Woofer 4 Ohm

3. Another option question is if the original polypropylene woofer can be recone to a paper or any paper treated cone? In this way, I have the same cut-out and performance or of the original woofer with the difference of a paper cone. Please advise and thank you.

 

 

 

 

 

[Iteachstem]

On 12/1/2024 at 12:47 PM, CCG said:

what is the right way to

You can get a replacement speaker from simply speakers or some other vendor:

 https://reconingspeakers.com/?s=klipsch&post_type=product

https://www.simplyspeakers.com/search.html?k=klipsch

 

Unless you are really attached to these speakers, I would say save your money and put it towards a better speaker.  Your ears will thank you in the long run.

[CCG]

On 12/6/2024 at 4:54 AM, Iteachstem said:

You can get a replacement speaker from simply speakers or some other vendor:

 https://reconingspeakers.com/?s=klipsch&post_type=product

https://www.simplyspeakers.com/search.html?k=klipsch

 

Unless you are really attached to these speakers, I would say save your money and put it towards a better speaker.  Your ears will thank you in the long run.

The reason why I was asking if anyone has successfully recone this speaker to paper because the power rating of the speaker with the cabinet matches my 14 watt 300b amp which is not alot. That is actually very rare find to a near perfect match for an 8 inch speaker I can't afford to buy an audio note which is $14,000.

Anyway just to shorten it out its either I get t reconed or find a matched speaker. 

PS there are alt of speaker that has a 98+ db input sensitivity. But that's not the only area needed to look at f you really want to get the most out of the 300b amp unless someone is okay listening to a loose mid bass and just slap n a subwoofer. This is the part where alot of people repeatedly fail by saying this is it then buy another set of brand new $4,000 speaker system every 12 months just like changing wives...   😊