That's not a bad idea, not the direction I want to go, though. i don't necessarily need to hide the fact that it's a cab, just make it nice enough to fit in with living room furniture. If I actually do it I'll probably just put the controls so you're reaching under the glass to play.
Now that I think about it, though, if you want to extend your false panel idea a bit... rather than having it pull down like that, have it rotate the controls out on a horizontal axis.