Fuzzy/velvet vintage speaker grilles?

[Rhodesplyr]

I've worked on ~3 amps from the 50s that have speaker grilles that are basically window-screen or coarse fabric with some sort of fuzzy/furry material applied to it in a pattern.

So, what is this stuff? On at least one of these amps, a lot of it has fallen off, and it has to contribute in some way to the amp's sound by damping the highs and/or loading the speaker slightly.

I'd have no idea how to go about restoring it.

[52 Bill]

...window-screen or coarse fabric with some sort of fuzzy/furry material applied to it in a pattern.

I think that you are talking about electrostatic flocking. Try craftflocking dot com.

[Enzo]

SOunds like flocking to me too.

Model railroaders use an electrostatic flocking tool to make "grass" on the ground of their train layouts even.

It's called the GrassMaster, made by Noch.

[Rhodesplyr]

Wow. This is a process I'd never heard of before, though, as I read about it, it's apparently fairly common and has many applications.

Of course, I'm still not sure how one would go about repairing a flocked speaker grille where much of the original stuff has fallen off, especially where colors and logos are involved. That's way beyond my skill-set.

[Enzo]

Bill's link looks to be full of info, and I bet if you walked into a local HobbyLobby or Michael's store, you could find out something. Or most any craft/hobby store.

If I was looking to recreate a multicolor pattern, I'd cut stencils.


That actually doesn't cound like a bad idea - I can imagine some serious retro looking grillework.

[jrfrond]

So the question is: Is it better to have someone flock for you, or to just flock yourself?

[52 Bill]

The things that I remember seeing were some of those early Valco grilles that were a coarse dark fabric with a white flocked bird design on them. I assumed that the design was silkscreened on the fabric and then flocked.

Of course we all remember the Foxx Fuzz pedals that were flocked in all those cool colors.

If you can get a color of flocking that matches the original, I'd guess that you could touch up any bad areas by hand painting in the lost areas and then flocking it. Enzo's idea of stencils would work just as well for touch ups by cutting a small stencil to fill in a damaged area.