if i was to paint over the front grill, without taking the speakers out...could the spray paint damage the cone/front of the speakers?
Does your cab have a metal grill or grillcloth? If it has grillcloth, don't paint over the cloth - you'll completely seal the pathway that the sound travels through and destroy the high end to an extent. If its metal, go ahead.
But remove the speakers - either way, paint is going to be getting sprayed through holes onto the speaker cones, and that will, of course, change the tone of them, and probably not in a good way.
You may also want to rethink painting the cab and head instead of recovering them, because usually the wood underneath is ugly as Hell - and with perfect reason - it was meant to have covering
I recovered my silverface Blues Junior with tweed, and It was disgusting under there. First of all, the tolex I tore off left half the mesh backing stuck to the amp, so I had to sand that off... and the wood underneath wasn't much to look at.
Of course, you have to strip and sand the thing either way before recovering OR repainting, so you can judge once its bare - I just wouldn't invest in paint or covering until said stripping has been done, in case it turns out that what's underneath isn't much to look at (in terms of texture, mostly - even after painting the Blues Junior, you would've been able to see lots of ugly knicks and dings that existed in the wood before it was built).
