plastidip Custom painted subwoofer mod

[Enderman]

My copper coloured subwoofer didn't match the rest of my speaker/PC setup, so I decided to plastidip it

 

Typically painting speakers isn't a great idea because they need to move very rapidly, and adding mass to the cone slows it down. However, since this is a subwoofer and not a woofer/midrange/tweeter, the effect is very small due to the cone's already large mass.

A few grams of paint will only increase the cone mass by a few % which isn't going to make an audible difference (at least for this subwoofer). Lowering the tuning frequency by a little is a good thing in my opinion!

 

I certainly wouldn't do this to a studio subwoofer though, since those are precisely tuned and very expensive.

 

So, here are the pics:

 

Before:

 

 

 

 

Next step is to unscrew the driver from the cabinet. It is much easier to mask off just the driver than the entire cabinet, especially since the subwoofer needs to lye flat for painting, and you would need to find some way to prop up the box so the connections and controls on the back don't get damaged.

 

Be careful when removing the subwoofer, it takes a bit of prying around the edges to unstick it, and when its out don't let it fall or you may damage the wires it's connected to.

You can disconnect the wires by pushing the little metal tab with a small screwdriver.

 

 

Here is the driver:

 

After this I masked off the dust cap and rest of the speaker with masking tape and some newspaper. Then I got to painting.

This process is shown better in the video, I didn't take any pics while masking or painting, so if you're interested to see that I will have the full video up on my youtube channel this weekend.

No advertising here, so if you want to see that you will need to go find the link yourself on my profile info.

 

Painted cone:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looks pretty good  some of the overspray on the edges of the dust cap I was able to remove with a small flathead screwdriver by just scratching it off.

 

And here is the final product:

 

 

Success  Finally no more orange coloured subwoofer in my white and black setup!

 

I have tested it and it sounds just like before, no damage done.

 

Let me know if you have any questions, and thanks for reading

[Arty]

beauty 

[IsaacDaGrazin]

nice job!

[Enderman]

2 minutes ago, Arty said:

beauty 

Thanks! and look at those white cables there...spoiler of some future videos/mods im working on  

1 minute ago, IsaacDaGrazin said:

nice job!

Thank you

[Senzelian]

Looks great.
But I would've made it black.

[Enderman]

3 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

Looks great.
But I would've made it black.

Yeah if I wanted black I might have just bought some cheap already black subwoofer driver, finding white ones is really hard.

Hopefully I can actually do a custom subwoofer build within the next year or so, planning for a massive 18" driver  

I calculated everything and need a $1200 USD budget though

[Senzelian]

3 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Yeah if I wanted black I might have just bought some cheap already black subwoofer driver, finding white ones is really hard.

Hopefully I can actually do a custom subwoofer build within the next year or so, planning for a massive 18" driver  

I calculated everything and need a $1200 USD budget though

$1200 for just a subwoofer? 
I would rather throw that money into my PC.

[Swndlr]

Very clean.

[Enderman]

3 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

$1200 for just a subwoofer? 
I would rather throw that money into my PC.

Well compared to the $4000+ USD that buying a studio subwoofer costs, this is actually pretty cheap

Who knows, maybe I could sell it for a profit. You know how some people spend many thousands of PCs? Well there is a large audiophile community that spends thousands of audio equipment too

[pagani123]

very nice job. is there even a slight variation in sound sometimes that can happen?

[Senzelian]

Just now, Enderman said:

Well compared to the $4000+ USD that buying a studio subwoofer costs, this is actually pretty cheap

Who knows, maybe I could sell it for a profit. You know how some people spend many thousands of PCs? Well there is a large audiophile community that spends thousands of audio equipment too

Yeah true, but a PC can do more than just "boom boom"
And then you still need the speakers... What would they cost? Another $2000 each?

[Enderman]

2 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

Yeah true, but a PC can do more than just "boom boom"
And then you still need the speakers... What would they cost? Another $2000 each?

I spent $250 cAD each on my studio monitors

high end ones are about $1k USD each

then there are the ridiculous home theater speakers which just cost hundreds of thousands lol

[Senzelian]

Just now, Enderman said:

I spent $250 cAD each on my studio monitors

high end ones are about $1k USD each

then there are the ridiculous home theater speakers which just cost hundreds of thousands lol

Okay. That's crazy.
I spend not even 100€ for my 2.1 setup and it works really great. Isn't a lot of that high end audiophile stuff just snakeoil?

[Enderman]

4 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

Okay. That's crazy.
I spend not even 100€ for my 2.1 setup and it works really great. Isn't a lot of that high end audiophile stuff just snakeoil?

not all of it, some stuff is actually worth it (from a music creation perspective) such as the $1k studio monitors

 

the $100k+ home theater speakers are just overpriced luxury items like expensive cars

you can only really tell the difference if youve got one of those perfectly designed listening rooms, expensive amps, and huge music files

even then most people wont see a difference, definitely not a $100k difference

 

the $1k power cables are definitely just snakeoil