Loudspeaker Finishes

Welcome to the September 2022 German Physiks newsletter.

Talking with some of our customers recently it became clear that not everyone is aware of the wide range of finishes that we offer on our loudspeakers, so here is a quick refresher with some examples.

Veneer finishes

We offer the 11 veneers shown below as standard. Depending on the particular wood, the veneer is available in satin finish only, high polish finish only or both.

We can supply other veneers, but this may incur extra cost and it may also take extra time to find veneer of a suitable size and quality. We bookmatch the veneers on our cabinets and this may also make finding suitable samples of other veneers more difficult.

The high polish finish is achieved by building up several coats of clear lacquer. Up to 10 coats may be required, depending on the particular wood. This is a time consuming process, as each coat must be allowed to fully harden before it can be hand polished and the next coat applied. It takes longer for the lacquer to harden if there is a high level humidity in the air, so the time taken to finish this process varies with the time of the year. The hardening process has to be allowed to take place naturally, as any attempt to speed this up using heat, risks the lacquer crazing or showing other defects later on.

The time and effort spent on this process is worthwhile however, as it produces a beautifully luxurious finish. An additional advantage of the thick lacquer coating is that it allows small scratches to be polished out.

Wood, being a natural product, there will be differences between the illustrations we show, as well as between different samples of same veneer.

Custom tints
If a customer wants a particular veneer, but with a tint that is significantly different to what we show in our illustrations, we can accommodate this. In this case, we supply the customer with three samples of the same veneer, each stained to a different shade and ask them to choose the one that is the closest match to what they want.

Which veneer for which loudspeaker?
Veneers with large grain patterns work best on cabinets with large panels, such as the walnut veneer on the PQS-402 shown below. Here, the panel size allows the full beauty of the grain to be displayed.

On cabinets that have narrow panels, veneers with closely spaced grain patterns are more effective, such as the macassar ebony on the HRS-130 loudspeakers below. These are part of a shipment due to be shipped to Japan shortly.

Veneers with a less clearly defined grain pattern can also work well on cabinets with narrow panels, like the pappel burl on the Borderland Mk IV below.

Visit the PQS-402 web page

Visit the Borderland Mk IV web page

Visit the HRS-130 web page

Paint finishes

Borderland Mk IV in RAL 7021 black grey satin custom paint finish

We offer satin and high polish paint finishes. The customer can specify the colour of their choice using the international RAL standard sample charts. These are available from Amazon and other vendors. For satin finishes use the RAL K5 Semi Matt chart and for high polish finishes use the RAL K5 Gloss chart. Simply choose the colour you want and when you place your order tell us the RAL number and which chart it came from. Our cabinet maker will do the rest.

RAL K5 charts

High polish polyester is a very attractive and durable finish. We offer two colours: black and white. Black is the most popular finish on all models and looks like a high quality piano black finish. White can be very attractive when used in a room with the appropriate colour scheme. It works best on our models up to the PQS-302.

The carbon fibre finish works well on all models. It is made by laying down several layers of carbon fibre material, coating each one with a clear lacquer. This is has to be done slowly and carefully in order to achieve perfect joins between the panels and to ensure that the fibre pattern is kept straight. Finally several layers of clear lacquer are applied to give a deep high polish finish.

Here it is shown on an appropriately named Carbon Mk IV. This is a Borderland Mk IV in a carbon fibre finish. On the latest production of this model, the parts shown finished in grey Nextel are now finished in high polish black polyester. This gives a sharper look to the overall appearance of the loudspeaker and makes the carbon fibre pattern stand out better.

The reason for having two names for what is basically the same loudspeaker is that many years ago, there were significant technical differences between these models. These were eliminated a few upgrades back, but to avoid creating confusion we decided to keep the names.

Visit the Carbon Mk IV web page