Crafty
August 17th, 2007I own a pair of ESS Heil amt-1 speakers.
You heard me right.
Back in the early 70’s my speakers represented the pinnacle of audio technology. Thirty-five years ago, long-haired Audio Dorks stood around classy showrooms and salivated over the bell-like clarity of my “Air Motion Transformer” tweeter technology.

Three years ago, Kaveri and I were given these cool speakers from a friend of ours—originally a hand-me-down from his audiophile dad. We were thrilled.
And so we treated them very poorly—allowing our frisky cats to use the speakers as scratching posts and tear the thick material that covers them to shreds. And pretty soon the speakers looked like shit.
So about 2 weeks ago, I decided to recover them with this cool fabric I bought at Mood, the fabric store made famous by reality television.
Now the speakers look like this:

I am crafty.


August 18th, 2007 at 12:55 am
you are a master craftsman.
maybe the cats are audiophiles, expressing their appreciation of our superior speakers in the sensuous, tactile manner we know as scratching.
August 19th, 2007 at 12:41 am
Wow. My folks still have a pair of these in the basement. I don’t think they work anymore. But I listened to plenty of LPs on ‘em when they did work.
Nice job refurbishing them!
-Terry
August 28th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
Those are bea-utiful. Why are speakers always covered with black fabric anyway?
November 17th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
Greetings, What you did looks great. I have held these beloved speakers in very high esteem for 30 years and a couple of years ago, finally found a nice pair nearby me inLos Angeles. While not cat scratched, the grille cloths show all of their 30′s years age and the faded hopsack looks like hell now. Am aftraid to molest my speakers out of fear I can make them look worse. Like among the pairs I saw for sale that had really bad D.I.Y. attempts at recovering the grilles. They sagged like they needed a L and somebody made a XXL and just foolish. Can you please sahre any of your tips and may I assume you recovered the original frames instead of making your own new one’s? Once you hear these speakers, all else sounds like crap by comparo. So I want mine looking as good as yours now. Thanks, Pete