Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners PAINTING mdf and spraying grills

Hi All. I'm getting an pair of in-cabinet speakers! The fronts will be exposed, and I plan to paint.

Q 1: Anyone have any advice on painting the MDF? Will a water-based latex paint make the MDF fibers swell? Maybe I could use a spray automotive high build primer, and then top coat it will foam rolled-on interior latex?

Do anyone have good results using a foam roller, or should I think about somehow spraying them? I'd rather avoid spraying latex.

Also, I'm assuming there's no real way around removing all the drivers before painting, right?

Q 2: Although I may just go with a black grill, my wife may wish to have to painted/matching grill. I assume this can't be applied with a roller and I need to find the closest color spray paint, right? Any material conflicts to be aware of? - I think most spray paints have some pretty aggressive carriers and I want to make sure the grill don't get eaten away!

Thanks in advance!
Scott

I think your best bet is to talk to Axiom on this. We talked about painting grills on our last conference call, but I honestly don't remember what they said.

I think you'll be ok painting the MDF as long as you seal it with a good quality primer first. Primer is quick drying so it's not going to swell the MDF. The smoothness of the desired finish would be the limiting factor on the final coat, imo. Obviously a spray finish will give you the smoothest result and also you can lay down very thin coats, but a roller can give you nice results too, just don't put down too much paint in one shot(maybe use a shorter pile roller). I think it would make for a better and easier paint job if you could remove all the drivers beforehand, just being carefull not to get drips of paint into the mounting flange area.

Using a roller on the grills probably isn't adviseable due to the amount of paint it puts down. I haven't seen these paintable grills before, what are they made of? anyhow, there are plenty of waterbased spray paints available out there, so they should be fine. Good Luck.

I have painted MDF before and spraying does give the best finish when applied nicely but a foam roller is a very close second.

Spray painting the grilles apparently works very well. Just don't overdo it so it gums up the cloth.

I used the Zinser(the red can) shellac based primer on my mdf lighted columns, bar, end tables, and wainscoting. It works really well and you can actually sand the primer coat to get a good smooth base for the finish coat. Clean up is a bitch though. You need to use ammonia for clean up. Wear nitrile gloves to prevent you from getting it on your hands. Line your paint pan with aluminum foil to make cleaning your pan easier. The foam roller will work great for a finish coat too. As far as the grills go, ask Axiom.

hmmm. This isn't making me too comfortable.
I get the sense that the grill painting is sort of unproven, and I'm not too keen to remove all the drivers of a brand new pair of $1K speakers.

I'm pretty confident in my painting abilities, but it will still be a painted finish. I'd hate to proudly pull off the grills to show off the speakers and hear, "cool - so these are home builts!"

I've e-mailed in and asked if just the front panel can be wrapped in black vinyl, and use a black grill. It would be one piece, no seams, so it should be a piece of cake for the Axiom guys... I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

If you take your time, I'm sure you could do a fine job painting the baffles. The key would be carefully taping and papering off the drivers and grill peg holes. If you prepare everything properly you should be fine and also you'll be able to paint them the exact colour you like.

The trouble with the grill painting being "unproven" is mainly due to the fact that these in-cabinets are relatively new, as well as the fact that, imo, the majority of people are still buying the regular speakers vs the in-cab's so there's not too many out there who've done this so far. Axiom could provide the details on painting the grills, I'm sure.

You're idea about having Axiom wrap the baffle is good too! see what they say.

Actually, on our last call, Ian was saying that painting the grills worked quite well.

It ends up my wife wants all black anyway (she must be hiding a little bit of audiofile techie!) - so the simulated wood grain would be IDEAL anyway; awesome looking, matching my subwoofers, and easier than painting.

Every time I see gene from audioholics.com do a speaker review, he's always pulling apart the speakers, with driver's hanging this way and that. I always think better him than me!

Now, I'm envisioning doing the same thing, BUT with rolers, and cans of paint surrounding my m60! Geez, working with my son on his pine wood derby car last night was enough to start making me sweat!

So, I still have my finger's crossed!

waiting, waiting, waiting... need info from axiom so I can place my order!

(sorry - but don't tell me you all have't been in my shoes!)

hmmm.. if I do have to paint, maybe an antiqued crackle finish, or the behr's venesion plaster, or maybe gold leaf?

I've always thought a carbon fibre lay on the baffle would look awesome to the e-lev-enth degree.

These are interesting, not my cup of tea but interesting nonetheless. I presume he removed the Axiom grill cloth from the frame and installed another cloth material over the grill framework ... I dunno.

Would go well with some Hendrix music, no doubt!

For sure!

I think the tie-dyed grills would have looked better with black speaker cabinets.

Or bright red ... yea, the red.

Speaking of compromised centre speaker placement, btw...!

You can readily tell that the cat prefers the original covers.

hi guys/gals - order placed... ends up that all the vinyl finishes ARE in fact available on the in-cabinet designs, no problem.

For those of you who don't know - I am installing these as in-wall speakers. Of course, they are 16" deep and will stick out into another room, through the wall, by a foot.

Luckly that's a storage room for me.

My wife gets a living room without floorstanding speakers in the walkway from this room to her kitchen. She's also getting some storage selving build on the opposite wall between the rear ends of the in-cabinet M60.

Most importantly, I get a virtually uncompomised speaker - i.e. full cabinet enclosure, that I've been wanting.

I'll document the process and post photos in a few weeks for those interested.

Looking forward to reading about your endevours, good luck with the work

Scott: If you Google MDF you will find that Campbell Finishing products has a detailed "how to" pamphlet on properly finishing MDF. For quickies: No latex to prime (water/MDF=b.a.d.). A tinted shellac based product is required. Then, you can go cuckoo with any waterbased or oilbased topcoats you'd like.

A foam roller (6") will give a pretty smooth result. You can spray, 'cause you can remove the drivers yourself. Be sure not to get any overspary inside the cabinet. And no, you can't paint fabric w/o making it a solid surface (by filling in all the spaces in the fabrics weave).

Really, dude, Axiom makes soooooo many finish choices. Unless you are or go to a professional finisher, you may well be unhappy with the results.

Good luck.

Bob, you are far to helpfull for a first time poster,

Welcome, aboard!

I think he needs to loosen up ... that was much too wise of a first post.

Welcome Bob!

Well, Bob's first post was to name the bracket in a contest that had already ended three weeks earlier.... so really, he's running one for two.

That puts him at about average for the forum, where Chris and JohnK are at the top of helpful posts and I'm on the other end of the spectrum.

Adrian, RickF: Thanks for the welcome. Mark: Thanks for "keeping score."

Just FYI: The vehicle for shellac is alcohol (denatured) which works better than ammonia,'cause it's what was used to dissolve the shellac flakes in order to make it.

Hi Bob,

I used the Zinsser shellac based primer (the red can) for much of my HT mdf furniture and wainscoting (about 20 4x8 sheets). The manufacturer recommends ammonia for clean up. Is that so people don't accidentally light themselves on fire with alcohol?

CatBrat's Avatar is an actual example of a cartoon man using alcohol to clean up after using shellac....

So, Mark, I'm guessing you clean up alkyd primers with Dove for oily complexion? Solvent wussie.

I'm an absolvent wussie.




It's been years since my last confession.

I prefer Absolut. Wussies or otherwise.

I have a bunch of in-wall Axiom speakers which I have painted.

The MDF can be painted with your wall paint and it looks great.

I used spray paint from Home Depot to paint the steel black grills. Worked very well.

They turned out much better than I expected.