Carpet cover - cat damage
 

We have 6 kitties in the house and I've found that they're not compatible with my carpet-covered amps. Kitty thinks they make the best scratching post ever. Attached is a snap of my poor old Ashdown MAG-C115-300 which still sounds great but now looks uber-tatty.

Refinishing tips, please. (I'm in Spain so will probably need to get materials mail-order.)

Start with 60-grit sandpaper on the cats...

Still better than peeing in the gigbag :(

Been there, cover cabs with a blanket next time

Been there with all the above...

Always cover

I had my old Hartke XL cab recovered in carpit/ ozite by a case/ roadcase manufacturer locally

Will you?

Meeoow!

Just claim it's from the "road worn" series.

Re-cover in Duratex. Scratching or no scratching, you still have to contend with cat hair.

Distract. For whatever reason, my cats are drawn to wicker to sharpen their claws. Laundry hampers, baskets, furniture, etc. Snag some junk stuff off CL (or curbside on garbage day) and strategically place around the household.

Riis

I would refinish it in fresh cat pelts, but barring that idea strip all the carpet off and sand it down. Then cover in duratex. At least that is an easy repair if it is ever dinged, nicked, or scratched.

Recover > get a good water gun and squirt the cat every time it tries to scratch it from now on

I recovered an ozite cab once.....once!

That stuff can be pretty hard to remove cleanly. I used a heat gun to loosen the glue so I could pull it off. Recovering with the new carpet was the easy part. Used 3M spray glue. There's a couple of good videos on YouTube that will show you how to do it.

I seriously doubt covering it in catpelts will work as a deterrent, cat's don't work that way. The only way this will work is by turning all 6 of them into pelt and not letting any new ones into the house.

yeah, and watch your cab get ruined by water damage.
6 cats.....you just have to make sure it is covered.
I cover my cabs in old curtains.
It is one of the various downsides of so many cats

one day............................................... ..........dreaming of less cats......

Well I expect the OP to start with the 6 on hand, but to need a few more to finish the job. No cats = no cat damage.

:hiding:

Duratex vs. TuffCab vs. Watertex vs. Tolex vs....?
 

Just been Googling for DuraTex (paint) - looks nice but probably a North-America-only option. I doubt I could source that in Spain (at any kind of reasonable price).

In the UK looks like TuffCab is kind of equivalent to DuraTex, and it 'only' costs around €35 to get it delivered to Spain - so that ain't gonna happen (over €70 in just for the paint).

Here in Spain there's some paint called Watertex made by Maper in Valencia - might be an / the answer. However, it looks like the minimum order quantity is 20kg which sounds like enough to do about 15 amps (might have near enough 15 guitars in the house, but only 2 amps). Have emailed anyway.

What about vinyl refinishing (like Tolex or clone thereof)? Anybody had kitty damage on that?

There's something called warnex available in Europe, but I've only seen that in large containers too.

You can use vinyl, or even the vinyl stuff used for kitchen table covers. In Spain that comes in designs with food themes your cats will absolutely like.

Hmm, probably dog, budgie, mouse and rabbit themes would also be popular (oh, hang on, we're back to the scratching problem).

I had this happen to a big 1x15 combo amp, I stripped the cab and re-covered it with tolex. The hardest part is removing the old residue from the cab, but it doesn't have to be perfectly clean - tolex is made to hide flaws. I used liquid contact cement, a construction adhesive. I was pleased with how it turned out, it looked very nice.

Thomann sell Warnex in 1kg tins. I shall add some to my shopping basket.

Sometimes I think I should just set up a direct debit agreement with my bank savings account for Thomann...

(By the way, also a huge fan of Yamaha BB (414, 425 and 614F).)

Go with the flow. Wrap it in sisal rope, and be glad they are scratching, not peeing on it. Replace rope as needed.

Of course, one effect of making it deliberately a scratching surface may be that they won't scratch it again - but then they will find something else you don't want them to scratch.

Perhaps if you put any remaining carpet cover from the amp on a board somewhere, they might scratch that?