WTB speaker grill cloth

dbower

dbower

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Anyone know of a source for the fabric covering the center dash speaker, behind the wooden grill face board? Something very close to factory type preferred, of course.

Next question: has anyone successfully removed the remnants of the original cloth and replaced it? TIA

Don
 
I have some that I use and sell for e24 pods. It is the tiniest bit off from the originals but Close. If you feel it may be E9 appropriate,send me your address and I will send you a sample
 
speaker cloth

Here's a report on options for replacing the cloth behind the wood grill on the center dash speaker. At least the options I could find.

First, I could not find any NOS cloth. The cloth was apparently attached to the grill from the factory, but the grill appears to be NLA. Even if it were, this cloth degrades over time and I wouldn't want any that was 40 years old.

Unbeknownst to me, there is a thriving subculture out there of antique radio nuts. Similar in many respects to old coupe nuts. There are several sources for tubes, knobs, wood and grill cloth for restoring old radios. Unfortunately, none of the cloth I could find from these sources was similar to our cloth.

Next option was grill cloth for new speakers -- home, commercial, whatever. Struck out again. Everything was too thick or patterned.

One online source mentioned a crazy idea that wound up being my choice -- women's hosiery, or stockings, or whatever they're called nowadays. After examining many examples (in the store, not installed), I settled on Hanes Alive Full Support Control Top Barely There. Go shopping for these without your sig other at a slow time and the store clerks will go out of their way to help a poor single man with this. The color is very close to the original scraps I could find hidden from exposure/fading, and the weave is pretty close to our cloth. I cut a rectangle from the panty part, which has a slightly different weave from the leg part.

Installation is pretty straightforward. Trickiest part was separating the grill from the wooden backing plate (the cloth is thoughtfully glued between the 2).

Should be good for at least another 20 hp.

Don
 
Hmmm, so you take the center grill to a woman's underwear shop and try textures and sizes? Do you test it for audio quality by singing through it?

I would wear a Groucho Marx mask in case I run into a coworker or my boss there.
 
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Okay, I see I need 'Hanes Alive Full Support Control Top Barely There' tights, but which colour? The web site shows 9 colours. 'South Pacific' looks about right, but 'Nude', 'Town Taupe' and 'Simply Natural' look close too. I need to improve my knowledge in this area.

I'm about to send a note to a friend who is visiting the USA at the moment asking him to bring a set back, so I need to get right colour.

http://www.hanes.com/clothing/women...ull-support-control-top-reinforced-toe-3-pack
 
Sorry, my mistake. More research in this area reveals that 'Barely There' is the colour I need. I'll send the note now. Hope he takes it the right way.
 
I sent a sample of what I have in, in black, to Don Bower. He felt it was a very close match...except he couldn't tell if his were brown or faded black. What I have is balck, one step above sheer and has no patterning in it. If interested I am happy to send a sample to one of the "gurus" who can then pass judgemant and post his thoughts.
 
I should have acknowledged Bert's generosity in sharing a scrap of his fabric. I did some more checking and I'm pretty sure that all E9's came with a chocolate brown fabric ("Barely There" in the hosiery world). Evidence to the contrary welcome.

Don
 
What I ended up using was a chocolate brown felt like material. It does not match the original in texture and it is a little thicker than the original but when in place I can't tell the difference from the original. Then again, my eyes are not all that good.
 
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