Still hunting for gray Ampeg cloth!

[ahdw]

Original thread. I am still chasing after this type of cloth to re-grille my V4B-RI, 212AV cabinets, and vintage 1973 SVT. There was a local listing the other day of an old blackline stack with original (seller claims, at least) cloth that looks exactly like what I'm going for:

My 212AVs and V4B-RI have a much more pronounced blue color in their cloth and look like this:

I am a bit skeptical that introducing yellow into the mix with a tea/coffee aging process will yield the result I am after. I also find it difficult to believe that there is no source out there with an OEM-weave pattern and more gray/silver than blue/silver, given how many "gray but not yellowed" Ampeg grilles I have seen over the years! Any leads are much appreciated because I have a total mismatch of grille colors on my rig at the moment.

Side note - I was thinking maybe if the search for the gray cloth remains fruitless, I could track down some small samples of the current-production blue sparkle to compare/contrast a few aging methods and ideas before ordering a whole roll. Fliptops hasn't been able to send me a sample square and I hate to keep bugging them, but I can't find any other sources even for the OEM blue stuff.

 

[Mike Caldwell]

Take a look here.........Shop - Acoustone Grille Cloth

 

[ahdw]

Take a look here.........Shop - Acoustone Grille Cloth

That was one of the places I found in my Googling! They have some very attractive options but nothing that comes very close to the weave pattern of Ampeg stuff, unfortunately.

 

[ahdw]

The closest that I have yet found is this Sunn reissue cloth, which is not far off but it is expensive enough that I haven't brought myself to pull the trigger on it before at least trying to age some of the blue sparkle manually.

 

[ahdw]

I reached out to Ampeg directly and they linked me to this doc, which only furthers my confusion. In there it has this entry:

"Silver with Black and Tan" sounds like exactly what I'm looking for, but my V-4B RI and 212AV cabinets are definitely far more blue than silver in appearance. Even weirder, there is this:

So this would seem to imply that the reissue cloth is silver and not blue like the vintage stuff, when my experience has been the opposite - granted, I'm sure a lot of the vintage stuff has aged over time.

I am surprised given the extensive, detail-obsessed community of vintage 'peg-heads like @JimmyM, that there hasn't really been any discussion about this topic that I could find.

 

[Milo Spleen]

Mellotone Speaker Grille Material Black/White/Silver Yard 36" Wide

Mellotone Speaker Grille Material Black/White/Silver Yard 36" WideRestore That Vintage Guitar Amp......or add flair to your custom-built project! This woven OEM speaker grille material is the perfect solution for restoring your old Fender®, Marshall®, Peavey®, plus many other vintage guitar and...

www.parts-express.com

This may be close, but I can't remember Ampeg non-blue grill cloth.

 

[ahdw]

The closest is that Sunn cloth, but honestly I don't think I would be interested in getting "close" without getting all the way there. I think I would sooner consider a different route alotgether - I was eyeing some vintage poly plend speaker cloth like this for some floorstanding speakers I have, and it struck me as a cool outside-the-box candidate. Here's a little AI mockup (not a fan of AI but hey, this is one thing it's decent for):

I'm just a bit worried about its durability - elasticity, stain resistance, propensity to rip - compared to a grill that's designed for a cab and not a home stereo speaker.

 

[6thplanet]

Why not just redo both pieces to match? If you're willing to do a cab grill, doing the amp wouldn't be much more work. Then they'd be perfect

 

[ahdw]

Why not just redo both pieces to match? If you're willing to do a cab grill, doing the amp wouldn't be much more work. Then they'd be perfect

Oh I am definitely doing the amp and both of my 212AV cabs with whatever cloth I choose. Possibly also the vintage SVT head although I like its original cloth quite a bit. My original idea was to find something more aged gray/silver to match the newer gear to the grille that the vintage already has, but it has proved to be almost impossible.

 

[beans-on-toast]

If you remove the amp or speaker cab front panel, you will get a better idea of what it looked like originally. Colors usually don’t fade much when protected.

If you are willing to accept a substitute, you can order a grille cloth sample pack from here. It might help you decide.

Grill Cloth - Samples of all Guitar Grill Cloths | Amplified Parts

Save when ordering this complete packet of grill cloth samples. Due to continual updates to our inventory, this image may not accurately reflect the grill cloth that is currently included in this sample pack.

www.amplifiedparts.com

 

[chris merrill]

Where did you end up with your grill cloth?

 

[bass player 53]

I didn’t see any mention of the Fliptops store, so I’ll just put it out there.

Fliptops Home of Parts for Ampeg Lovers

Edit: I do see now the 1st post made reference, from JimmyM.

 

[ahdw]

I didn’t see any mention of the Fliptops store, so I’ll just put it out there.

Fliptops Home of Parts for Ampeg Lovers

Edit: I do see now the 1st post made reference, from JimmyM.

Yeah, Fliptops is an incredible resource but unfortunately they don’t have anything like what I’m looking for.

They don’t even have the current production blue sparkle at the moment. My game plan was to get a couple sample squares of that (so as not to mess up my existing grills) and try some methods to dye it, probably with coffee and tea. If anyone here has a roll and could cut me a few squares I would be grateful!

The project has kind of been on hold because of these dead ends. Best I can tell, somebody at one point definitely made a more gray version of the cloth with the classic weave pattern - somewhere between the 90s and 2010s - but it is almost certainly out of production now.