My fronts are Mansfield Beech w/ black grilles (changed from Gold) in order to match my new Salamander and the black bezel of my plasma.

What do you think of the rears? These are all in the same room but the eye would never seem them in one shot. Full pics when I get my center grille...

Stay w/ gold and don't match the fronts


or change to black to match?

i am sure the black grills on the fronts have a great flow with the other things to accent them.. but, i think they are some what distrating on the surrounds. so, for my .02 cents, i would go with the gold grills on the QS8's. but, i am no interior decorator, so take it with a grain of salt!

BTW- cool clock.. i love that old retro looking stuff!

bigjohn

i prefer it without the black.

they stick out less

I agree.
I left my Qs with gold, fronts with black.
I think the black draws to much attention.

I agree with the gold consensus.

On a side note - you must have a HUGE dog if it eats off of the mantle, especially if it's still a puppy!

Gold grill are must less noticeable...

Go with the Gold.

WhatFurrer

I leave the gold woofer grills on to keep dust out, and remove the tweeter grills.

Bren R.

I say pink grills... blends with the clock better.

Go for the gold. It looks nicer.

just had to be different, eh?

dont you have a tractor to fix or something??

BTW- i hadnt taken the grills off my 60's in a long while, and i had to yesterday, and i forgot how awesome they look without them. i wish my wife would let me keep 'em off, but there is no way.. plus, i reckon that is a good thing with a new baby fixing to be up and walking around. oh, and the reason i took the grills off... i was cranking some early van halen, and i thought one of the tweeters sounded blown. i got real scared and took the grill off to investigate.. then, once i turned the volume down, i realized the static i was hearing was coming from the baby monitor in our bedroom that had been left on.. whew...

EDIT- no pink. its been done..

bigjohn

Thanks fellas. I thought the same too. The monochrome seems to look a little better.

Personally, I think both look great. I know it's not much help, but you could go either way.

Put me down for the gold grills. I like the monotone too...

I'd get rid of the clock .

"I'd get rid of the clock ."

If you do, be sure and send it to me.
I LOVE IT!

Not that I mean to highjack this thread, well maybe I do.

You got me thinking. I've got factory outlet M22's, a VP100 and QS4's (actual may change it the 8's tomorrow) that won't be sent out for about another week. Cause we have a fair bit of dark oak furniture and mahogony trim, I ordered everything in Boston cherry. But now that I've read this thread it occurs to me that maybe I should change the colour of the surrounds to Mainsfield beech with gold grills. That way they won't stand out on the beige walls.

What do you all think? Will it look goofy with cherry mains and centre with beech surrounds or not. I'm not decor literate so your thoughts would be appreciated.

Paul

If it were me I would stick with what you ordered.
Contrast is sometimes a good thing. Chances are you are'nt always going to have beige walls either.

We got the beech with the gold grilles because they went with our lighter furniture. I we had darker wood on the furniture we would probably have gone with the darker cherry.

Gold grilles seem to blend more smoothly into our setup.

Just my $0.02

ramzing

Paul,

I did the same thing that you are thinking of. I have cherry up front, maple in the rear. the maple are nearly off-white (whatever that means...) I bought white grills for the QS8s and slapped em up on the wall. They are my own little "custom" job. I find that they blend into the walls better than a black or cherry speaker would, and are therefore rated much higher by the wife.

Here's a pic - sorry for the size.

rear full

QS8 single

rear again

fronts (nudity)

Hi Paul,
I've got Boston Cherry as it matched the rest of the furniture in the room. The QS8s look just fine, actually MORE than fine Introducing another colour treatment into the room would have been a mistake for us.

More important IMHO is to hide the wire.

I also prefer the black, it draws less attention and is a better match with everything else I can see in the photo.

hmmm, those white grilles look nice.

Paul, I had a similar issue when I ordered my Salamander rack. I ordered Mansfield Beech because it was similar (not the same) as the floor. The M22's sat on white shelves so the difference between the floor wasn't noticeable.

When I decided to go w/ a Salamander, I went w/ Maple, thinking that I could place the M22's on top of that. Wow, that looked HORRIBLE. 3 slightly different colored wood pieces right on top of each other, it made my eyes go crazy. Hence, the reason for a black salamander and black grilles.

LOVE my clock too. Very retro. Got it at Chiasso and a sale price, something under $30 I think.

Chiasso

It's my poor man's attempt at:

Nelson clocks

Do you know what Heywood Wakefield furniture is?

Strangest thing. Normally, images load from the top down. For some reason, all the images linked in your post loaded from the bottom up for me.

Never heard of Wakefield but it looks pretty cool. Very eames like and retro.

i like the black grills
but then again im not big on having the speakers be stealth. i want to see what i paid for.
also my ht is dedicated so not much waf to deal with. also a lot of the paint/trim combos in my house are contrasting so i guess its what i like.