Speaker Grill Material

[southpaw13]

Where do you find the material used to make speaker grills?  I am looking for a sheet of it....

Thanks,
Southpaw

[teef two]

A lot of people buy those wire waste paper bins and cut the grills out from those. Honestly.

[Ken Layton]

Metal or cloth? If cloth try www.grillcloth.com

If metal use screen door material.

[southpaw13]

I'm looking for something that can be used on the outside of the cab.  More sturdy, similar to a Dragon's Lair speaker grill...

Southpaw

[southpaw13]

This is what I am looking for....any suggestions?

Thanks,
Southpaw

[stratjakt]

Have a look here http://www.mnpctech.com/modsupplies.html, check out the "modders mesh".  It's basically a metal grille-like stuff, I think its aluminum, its easy to bend and form..

[BSR]

The material you're looking for is called ABS (Acrylonitrile-Butadine-Styrene) pastic with a textured hair-cell finish. You should be able to get a quarter sheet for under $10, but without the holes.
I never found a place that offered perforated holes for ABS. The places that do perforated hole plastics usually just use polypropylene or PVC which are not the right type of material. Polypropylene is a clear/translucent material; smooth on both sides.

I did find a place that does metal perforating that would be willing to do a sheet of ABS if I shipped it to them.

In the end, I decided to just drill the holes myself since the piece I needed was fairly small.

[Crazy Cooter]

My local hardware store carries that.

[tivogre]

I used one of the metal mesh trash cans.

I routed a recess in the speaker panel and tacked the mesh down with staples:



Then I "painted" the mesh with 2 part epoxy, bringing it to s smooth surface level with the surrounding wood:



After a final touch up with Bondo to completely smooth it out:



I painted the panel black:



And then covered it with black grill cloth:



This is what you see looking up at the finished speaker panel:



It's extremely acoustically transparent, and protects the speaker cones very well.

Way more detail is on the construction web site:

http://www.ogredog.com/mame_construction_home.htm

...staring around day 13.

[southpaw13]

That's cool, but I wanted to get away from using speaker cloth.  I wanted some type of material that would just screw in and look finished.  I also noticed that material I'm looking for on Atari cabs like kangaroo...

Basically the same stuff as a regular metal speaker grill from a car but in sheet form...

Thanks,
-Southpaw