There are many very fine acrylic paints on the market today that should not be grouped together with latex paints simply because water is a base ingredient. It's very easy to be critical of what's available while being unable to provide an alternative. I've been to over a dozen paint outfits over the past week. Here's what I've found; no Sherwin-Williams store I stopped at (3) did rattle cans and they did not know of any SW store that did it. No auto parts house (3) carries any color close to what I need. Same for Walmart, Lowes, Home Depot, Ace Hardware, and True Value as well as several independent vendors. The auto paint suppliers were no better. The best price I got was $60 to custom mix one color in a single qt can and none of them could put it into a rattle can.

I've stripped the speaker cabinet and primered it. It's all ready to go but right now the rattle cans that guy sells are the only game in town. There have been no viable alternatives posted in response to this thread. If you know of one please share it.

Larry

Too true. The only local auto paint supplier that would do rattle cans wanted 57 bucks startup fee and 16 bucks for the can.

I never realized the auto paint stores were that outrageous. I was figuring 20 bucks would
be reasonable. Guess I'm living in the dark ages

I pay for a standard quart and have it put into how many rattle cans I want until its all used. The additional charge per can varies. For some I just have one can injected and then store the remainder.

Yes, it can be expensive to do just a single speaker or radio but its far from outrageous when you consider......A quart is the smallest size most autobody paint suppliers will mix up...its the limit of the software. Spread the cost over several pieces and its not as jarring to the senses to cheap (frugal) New Englanders like Pete and myself

Water based automotive paints are mandatory out in the land of fruits and nuts and probably some other states by now but they are far from durable as compared to a high quality solvent based paint.

Carl

I ordered a can off Ebay. It came today. Here's a list of ingredients: Acetone, Xylene, Ethylbenzene, Toluene, Ethylene glycol monbutyl ether, Propane, Butane. I don't believe that's water.

When it drys I'll let you know how close a match it is.

Larry

The paint is a very close match but in my case it is slightly lighter than the original finish. Now, is that due to aging of the original finish? I can't say. Paints can vary in shading even back in the day and that could be why. So, basically I'm pleased. What I don't think you can do though, based on my experience here, is use it to touch-up a radio or speaker. It's all or nothing; paint the whole thing. I tried taking photos but it's difficult getting a photo to correctly display the color. This one's the closest.



Larry

I also have a R42 speaker I want to paint.
Do you have a link for the person on ebay selling the match?

I just found someone also but he would not say if it was a good
match for the R42 speaker.

This weekend I was going to take the speaker to LOWES
and have them make me a match. I had pretty good
luck doing this for my NC-300 cabinet.

Ken

I went to LOEWS however the spectrometer could not take a reading
due to the shape of the speaker. One of the reps there spent some
time picking out a color that looks very close. They made me up
a small sample container. This weekend I will paint the speaker.
If it comes out well I will post what the paint was.

Ken

Harbor Freight has a cheap very small air brush kit.
If you have access to a small air compressor or can borrow one for a few hours, it should be much cheaper than having a "rattle-can" created.
You may be able to buy the comprerssor and airbrush kit for what the setup and rattle-can would cost you.
Pat

For what it's worth, I just painted my speaker with Valspar tuxedo tie ar2104.
I used the Preval Sprayer kit. It's an acrylic latex paint. I used a 3:1 mixture of
paint / water. The Preval sprayer works but expect it to clog every so often.
You need the full kit which contains the bottle and sprayer, plus 2 other replacement
sprayers. The full kit is about $5.00 and the replacement sprayer is $3.99

If you go to Lowes ask if they will let you take the sample card for the paint and use
your judgement for the match. I thought it was right on for at least my R42 speaker.

Ken