Grill cloth and Performance?

[jelwood]

Tried to do a search but couldn't find much.

Anyways, quick question. Does having grill cloth over your speakers, as opposed to maybe a steel grill, affect the performance of your cabinet/speakers? Seems to me that cloth would slightly ****** air movement and cause a slightly higher spike in pressure (because not as much air can escape the enclosure) when the speaker(s) pump forwards.

[TheMutt]

My assumption would be that any effect the grill cloth would have would be marginal at best. I could be wrong though as I have never owned a cab with grill cloth.

[jelwood]

I did an A/B test with my cab yesterday, grill cloth vs. no grill cloth. I actually noticed a difference. The cabinet I have is a GK Neo 412, and these speakers can really move some air. I felt a lot more of that without the cloth, obviously, but it also seemed a little bit louder? Gah, maybe it was just a placebo, not sure. But the speakers were definitely moving more air without the cloth there, and that's got to at least count for something.

[Crockettnj]

I have used other cloth materials than the purpose-built acoustically transparent grille cloth materials. For example, thin fleece such as those sold in the fabric section at walmart had a profound impact on the cab- highs were drastically attenuated. Looked neat, and it was a cool, old, muffled, thumpy tone, but not flexible enough for me so I got tired of it.

I have AB'd my (deltalite2510 loaded) peavey's during a lull at rehearsal with and without stock grills on and couldnt notice any different.

I think if you stick with real grille materials you'll be hard pressed to notice any difference unless you are doing a direct A-B side by side. Even then, I'd doubt it.

[Rick Auricchio]

Proper grill cloth is acoustically transparent.

You can, however, get metal grill material with different percentages of open vs. solid sections. There's probably a minor difference among the different open/solid percentages.