Changing 4x12 Cab grill cloth, PITA or doable for 1st Timer?

skoora

skoora

Well-known member
I have a EVH 4x12 thinking of selling because I never really use it for micing, just for room sound but would also kind of dig keeping it if visually matched the pinstrip cloth on my Marshall BX cab. I bought it that way, it had been changed from the checker grill. The EVH is technically a good cab so tweaking the look could be cool. Am I kidding myself that I could do it with no experience doing it?
 
Lots of staples.. If you have an air compressor, a cheap harbor freight pnuematic staple gun might be the ticket.. If not, do em all with a regular stapler..
You do the cloth and then again with the piping..
I just did mine all by hand.


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midnightlaundry said:
No, you just start in the middle and then pull each side straight.
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Do you mean a few staples in the center then flip to other side, a few in the middle and back forth keeping tension until done, then start on the other two parallel sides? I found a video where he starts in the corners.
 
I bought an electric stapler just because of 2 cabs and I don't regret it.
It's not difficult, but it's not exactly easy either.The most important thing is to constantly stretch the fabric strongly, before each staple. And stretch in a way that no ripples form. Align the pattern to the edge, stretch and put a staple.
Start in the middle or in the corner, it doesn't matter. I did the entire top edge first, then the bottom. In this way, the fabric can be leveled so that the pattern does not shift. After that, the sides go easily, just follow the pattern. Small mistakes can be easily corrected, remove the staple, tighten accordingly and put a new one.
On the first attempt I managed to make two cabs and a head with perfectly stretched fabric and almost no waviness.

This was the first cab and a head, minor mistakes. Second one was perfect, but I have no pics.

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Cool thread. I recovered the insert of a JCM800 style headshell once to match a cab. It turned out ‘ok’
I’m pretty sure if I had another one to do, I could get it a bit better just from trial & error on the first attempt. But I stipulate, the comparatively small headshell insert is not the same as tackling a 4x12.
I hadn’t thought about an electric or pneumatic stapler - I just used a decent quality furniture/upholstery stapler for my small job. But a power stapler would help a ton with the bigger 4x12 job.
I’m betting it would turn out great and you’d be glad you did it!
 
The head was also not completely simple. The fabric was very stiff and not much flexible, I had enough with it. Mainly stretching, my fingers were bleeding :D. But I was happy with the result. Retolexing was probably more difficult, or better to say time consuming, especially removing old glue and repairing imperfections on the plywood.
 
I did two Mesa traditional straight 4x 12s. it was both doable and a PITA. It took longer than expected but I was mostly happy with the results at the time. Not worth doing if your grill cloth is intact, IMO. Mine had a few tears on it. It will probably not come out as good as a factory job and it might bother you in the long run. I ended up selling both cabs.
 
It’s pretty easy. You need to do one side first then the opposite side while keeping tension on the cloth. Then do the remaining sides. Of course you need to make sure the cloth is square against the baffle.

I’ve changed cloth on at least 5-6 cabinets. I like to use this siding tool to keep tension on the cloth while stapling.

I had one cabinet with three cloths on top of each other. It sounded great.
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Centralizer said:
This is a go video that covers grill cloth changing, changing casters, wiring.

I like his videos. Warning occasional salty language.




I have 2 cabs that I am too lazy to complete.
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Yeah, I watched that one too. There’s nothing physically wrong with the black cloth on the EVH, just figured it would look nice to have two matching cabs on either side. Just realized it’s S&P on my Marshall, not pinstripe. But…..if I sell it, that’s funds towards another guitar.. 🙏🏻

..Ah, 1st world problems. Also would like to try a heritage 30 Celestion and I don’t want to take anything out of my Marshall, so the EVH could be a good option for putting in some different speakers, keeping at least one of the original Celstions it came with.
 
skoora said:
Yeah, I watched that one too. There’s nothing physically wrong with the black cloth on the EVH, just figured it would look nice to have two matching cabs on either side. Just realized it’s S&P on my Marshall, not pinstripe. But…..if I sell it, that’s funds towards another guitar.. 🙏🏻

..Ah, 1st world problems. Also would like to try a heritage 30 Celestion and I don’t want to take anything out of my Marshall, so the EVH could be a good option for putting in some different speakers, keeping at least one of the original Celstions it came with.
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I have the EVH 4X12 with the Celestion EVH speakers. It is a great sounding cab.

Good luck with your project.
 
skoora said:
Yeah, I watched that one too. There’s nothing physically wrong with the black cloth on the EVH, just figured it would look nice to have two matching cabs on either side. Just realized it’s S&P on my Marshall, not pinstripe. But…..if I sell it, that’s funds towards another guitar.. 🙏🏻

..Ah, 1st world problems. Also would like to try a heritage 30 Celestion and I don’t want to take anything out of my Marshall, so the EVH could be a good option for putting in some different speakers, keeping at least one of the original Celstions it came with.
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I redid a EVH half stack a couple of years ago .....

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skoora said:
Yikes..I couldn’t imagine re-doing the tolex on a 4x12 and not fucking it up, especially on corners. But when snakeskin’s involved it’s time to put on the big boy pants….
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Doing a grill cloth isn't too difficult. The bigger pain is pulling out all the staples. Hell it's probably be less time consuming to build a new baffle than pull out all the staples LOL. The video above is pretty much the way I did mine. Take your time and make sure everything stays pulled taut as you staple.

It's not overly difficult to recover a 412 either, no more than doing a headshell. You're just working with a bit larger side panels, but the whole procedure is exactly the same. Big thing is to take your time.

Been a bit since I posted this. Here's what I did to my Randall RM100 and built & covered a matching cab. This was a little more involved since I wanted pattern to face a certain way. That meant I had to do it with 4 panels instead of wrapping it around and had to deal with more seams.

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MadAsAHatter said:
Doing a grill cloth isn't too difficult. The bigger pain is pulling out all the staples. Hell it's probably be less time consuming to build a new baffle than pull out all the staples LOL. The video above is pretty much the way I did mine. Take your time and make sure everything stays pulled taut as you staple.

It's not overly difficult to recover a 412 either, no more than doing a headshell. You're just working with a bit larger side panels, but the whole procedure is exactly the same. Big thing is to take your time.

Been a bit since I posted this. Here's what I did to my Randall RM100 and built & covered a matching cab. This was a little more involved since I wanted pattern to face a certain way. That meant I had to do it with 4 panels instead of wrapping it around and had to deal with more seams.

View attachment 293879
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Yup .... pulling the staples sucks ....period
 
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