Newbie here - Question on Grills (painting) for the R-5800-W & R-5650-W speakers

[tobasco]

Hi everyone - new to this board. Wish I would have found out about it a few months ago!

I purchased a set of R-5800 fronts and R-5650 rears in-wall speakers. After hearing advice from what I'll now call novices, I tried painting the grill of one of them (the R-5650) to match the wall paint color (my wife's preference). In retrospect, I was the dumb one in not realizing what it would do to the fabric backing of the grill. Hence, I now have one grill that is poorly painted (could only put one bad coat on).

In contacting Klipsch, they told me that they no longer make that grill style and they did not have any left in stock (pretty amazing to me since I had just purchased them a month previous) - so I'm pretty much SOL.

Question 1 - would anyone know where I could still get a replacement grill for a R-5650?

Question 2 - would you still suggest it a good idea or not to paint the grills?

Question 3 - if so, recommendations? Step-by-step directions?

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Brad

[SCOOTERDOG]

Man that's a bad place to be. I would see if gilford of main has a fabric that is close to your paint and cover them with their fabric. That may be your best solution.

Good luck

scooter

[satchmo2go]

Man do I feel your pain. I painted 4 inwall and 2 inceiling grills. It is not easy. First let me tell you that on two of my grills, I took out the fabric. The speakers are in a spot that gets decent lighting and I don't see that much of the copper color cone. I do not know what function they serve. Perhaps vibration dampening?

To paint these puppies you need to goto your paint store or home depot/lowes. There is a special spray paint apperatus that they sell. It is like one of those "compressed air guns/spayers" that cleans your electronics, keyboards, etc. On the bottom of the spray gun is either a plasic or glass jar. There is a tube that sucks the paint thru the sprayer. I used two different types. The best one (also the cheapest) had the glass jar that screwed onto the bottom and the spray can looked like a butane refiller (tall and skinny). The other kind the spray can and the plastic container were side by side. It came with 3 differnt nozzels with differnt sizes. The later of the two was much more difficult to use.

Okay, now the hard part. The guy at the paint store said the paint had to be dilluted with water until it was the consistancy of milk. Well, all can say in order for it to cosistanly come thru the sprayer it had to be much thinner than milk.Practice on some cardboard until you get the desired results. Don't be aftaid of going too thin. Another reason to get the cheaper of the two sprayers. You will need at least 2 refill cans for 4 grills.

I took string and metal safety pins to string the grills across my garage door frame and went to town. I took out the grill cloth. It comes out and resticks with a little work.

If you have any more questions pm me. Good luck.

[tobasco]

satchmo -

You're right - it's not fun at all, but I think they would look nice if done right. From the sounds of it, I did the exact same thing you did. I got the small spray unit (I think it was called PreVal for something) - looked like it would work, but found the same as you that I had to dilute it A LOT. But from the sounds of your experience, it looks like I didn't dilute it enough! I was still getting the spurts of paint coming out of the sprayer and not a steady stream that was needed. I did only the one grill to test, but forgot to take the fabric backing off (I could probably just tear it off completely), but because of the intermittent spray pattern, the finish looked bad. But after hearing your advice, I might try it again - when the paint is more like water than milk!

Thanks, Bud!