Painting a speaker - GIF

Painting a speaker.

<video controls autoplay loop> <source src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/hmt-forum/painting_speaker_membrane.mp4" type="video/mp4"> Your browser does not support the video tag. </video>


Previously:

https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...383#post181491
https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...055#post195178
https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...541#post193178
https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...808#post202205

I have quite a few speakers and none of them are painted. That would definitely change the tone...

Looks like rubber paint to seal the cone against water ingress/beer splashes (I worked in the night club sound and lighting game years ago), we did the same to Bose 101's facing the sea on a bar wall, extended the life from ~18 months to ~5 years. Most speakers only change response slightly due to the extra weight to move, though many speakers are now made with plastic cones for such use, I see polished Aluminium cones are now popular for high power systems where paper, even rubber painted, cannot cope with the high power large movements required.

I'm not completely certain what that coating is, but speaker manufacturers often use a black coating like that to stiffen a paper cone, which makes it more responsive and less affected by changes in humidity. Many older radios used coated speakers to allow one large speaker to produce both high and low frequencies. Today, you'll find coated speakers in high performance and/or high amplitude systems.