Painting A Cabinet

[TimTheSloth]

Hey guys. I'm thinking of painting the front of my bass cabinet with who knows what (when I get it). Does anyone have any experience doing this and can recommend a type of paint? I imagine using the wrong kind of paint could screw the sound. Anyone have any thoughts, tips, comments or ideas? Is this a dumb/unreasonable idea? Thanks guys.

[unclej]

well, it's certainly not a dumb question..hell, you might start a trend..but my question is what are you going to paint? most cabs come covered in tolex or tweed or something like that..as far as the paint screwing up the sound that's doubtful..why don't you tell us what you're planning on getting and maybe we can come up with some suggestions.

[TimTheSloth]

OK I actually have the cabinet now so I know a little more about what I'm talking about. It's an early 80s Ampeg 8x10 bass cabinet. (it is actually probably still on eBay for a few more days http://cgi1.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?...item=7345086523 check out that price!) It's huge and heavy, it has thick wood all around (the newer cabs have thinner wood). I see a ton of these cabinets out there so I'm trying to stand out (I happen to be pretty into art and design so it fits in pretty well).

What I'm thinking about doing is painting the outside of the cabinet an "off white". I'm not really too worried about this part, the cab looks like a bulldozer could hit it and it would come out OK.

I want to paint a design of some sort on the screen. I have no idea what I want on there yet, but I would probably want to paint the whole screen white first (to match the outside of the cab). The design itself would probably be something simple and clean maybe something like what I did for the pickguard of my tele (http://thunderballz.com/images/guitarweb2.gif). I'm thinking acrylic would probably be the best way to go but I'm a little worried about paint clogging up the small holes in the screen and negatively affecting the sound (which is first priority).

Any thoughts or ideas?