New grill cloth day! Blues Jr.

antichef

antichef

pornk rock
I recently got a staple gun (initially to make bass traps - worked out well) and so I decided to swap the grill cloth on my Blues Jr.

IMG_20150805_075541.jpg


I have been trying to make myself like this amp for about 10 years. I did pretty much all the billm mods (including the power supply related ones, but I'm still using EL 84s - maybe I can change that next) swapped the speaker and the reverb tank, and when I exhausted myself with audio mods I switched to cosmetics - e.g. drilled the chassis to use a jewel lamp (with a white LED underneath) etc. I - well - I still don't like it but maybe this sexy new marine themed grill cloth will tip the scales.

The old cloth was both glued and stapled, but all I did was staple this stuff and I didn't stretch it perfectly in the horizontal directions but I think it came out OK.

I played through it and reminded myself why I don't like it, but then I tried a different guitar with low output pickups and it actually sounded decent. Maybe I can accept that limitation and start over with this thing.
 
Looks good.

The striped ones can be a PITA...you don't want it to sag, but if you pull too hard, the lines can go wavy.

Doing piping is another PITA!
I did some gold piping on a cab that had white. I wanted the cab to match the gold piping that was on a head, so they looked like a set.
Took some work and careful stapling...but it worked out in the end.

---------- Update ----------

JDOD said:
Has anyone done a study on how different grills affect the sound?
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The darker colors sound warmer.
 
JDOD said:
Cryptic.

Can you explain how? I have natural cloth grills, synthetic cloth grills and metal grills that you could actually grill bacon on.
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It's been said that the tighter the material, tighter weave, denser, however you wanna describe it....a tighter weave can cut some high end, or sound "warmer". Like with Marshall cabs....people say that they've gotten brighter and brighter throughout the years from the original salt and pepper and Bluesbreaker tight weaves, then to slightly looser checker, to the standard pretty loose weave black shit they put on there now. Mesa cabs are the same. Looser weave grill cloth. Bright cabs. Orange cabs have this pretty tight, dense wicker looking shit and they have a darkness to them. A metal grill cab doesn't "filter" anything at all. I can't stand those cabs, me personally. I'm not sure it matters for recording, but you can hear it in a room.
 
Thanks!

Yeah Miro - piping scares me. I'm also considered redoing this cheap randall cab I have but I would have to deal with piping. How bad was it?

I also have the white versus gold thing going on but I may let that one go.

I guess it makes sense that the cloth could affect high frequency. My most recent cab has the checker cloth (and greenback reissues) and sounds great to me. Of course with me I have to take into account 30 years of hearing damage - might sound awful to someone with functional hearing
 
A heat gun is your friend when stretching grill cloth.

Piping is actually pretty easy as long as the cloth is stretched well and you haven't made a mess of the corners.
 
Greg_L said:
It's been said that the tighter the material, tighter weave, denser, however you wanna describe it....a tighter weave can cut some high end, or sound "warmer". Like with Marshall cabs....people say that they've gotten brighter and brighter throughout the years from the original salt and pepper and Bluesbreaker tight weaves, then to slightly looser checker, to the standard pretty loose weave black shit they put on there now. Mesa cabs are the same. Looser weave grill cloth. Bright cabs. Orange cabs have this pretty tight, dense wicker looking shit and they have a darkness to them. A metal grill cab doesn't "filter" anything at all. I can't stand those cabs, me personally. I'm not sure it matters for recording, but you can hear it in a room.
Click to expand...

Hmmm, I initialy thought that this might be something to do with wavelengths and that higher ones might have a similar wavelength to the spacing of the cloth so somehow interact with it. But your standard 440Hz A has a wavelength of 78cm which is much bigger than the cloth spacing - its more like the width of the cab! A 4th Octave A, so 17th fret on the top E string is still about 10cm.

I've not idea what wavelengths the various high harmonics you get are.
 
JDOD said:
Hmmm, I initialy thought that this might be something to do with wavelengths and that higher ones might have a similar wavelength to the spacing of the cloth so somehow interact with it. But your standard 440Hz A has a wavelength of 78cm which is much bigger than the cloth spacing - its more like the width of the cab! A 4th Octave A, so 17th fret on the top E string is still about 10cm.

I've not idea what wavelengths the various high harmonics you get are.
Click to expand...

Lol. I don't know the how or why. I hear the differences in cabs, but I don't know that it's grill cloth. Like with tubes, there are about a billion other variables more significant than grill cloth.
 
RFR said:
Piping is actually pretty easy....
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If you have the right gun, staples...and you've done it before. :D

It kinda depends where the piping is applied, and if the cab has any kind of molding, or valance etc....at least that was the PITA for me.
I've only swapped piping on one cab, and it was a Bluesbreaker style, with the valance (or whatever cab builders call it)...with the piping on the inside of the cab, rather than around the baffle...plus there was a molding that creates a lip on the other three sides.

That hard part was getting the staple gun in the right position to catch the piping clean, hit the molding clean, and not get any ripple to it as I worked my way around. It was one of those things where a third hand would have helped...but I'm sure the guys that do it every day, it's fairly easy for them...and I wonder if they use a specialized staple gun that lets you get in real tight.

Also....the new gold piping was much stiffer/thicker that the white piping...so I had to push hard/straight with the staple gun to get a clean staple X 200 staples all the way around!!! :p
 
I watched a dude at a local amp company do grill cloth and piping on a 4x12 cab. He had an electronic staple gun and he flew around that thing like it was nothing. He made it look easy. I wasn't fooled though. I'll be ordering triple amounts of everything when I do mine.
 
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