Royal Atlantic/Recto Cab face lift!

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Cory

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Jul 13, 2013
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Location
Raleigh, NC
I've owned my RA-100 for about a year now and I just love everything about it. I was bored one day and was looking around on Mesa's custom website and saw that they had some custom RA options - one of which had the Marshall "salt and pepper" (black and cream weave) grill cloth and cream piping. I really like the way it looked so I decided to DIY it and here's the result! Ended up doing my 2x12 recto cab to match it. I included a before and after pic of the RA. Let me know what you think! 8)

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Forgot to mention - I also ordered some cream knobs (from Mesa) that I'm going to swap once they come in.

Took me about 6 hours to do the head (start to finish) - *warning* - if you decide to mod the grill cloth it is a pain - it's stapled to a separate inner piece of wood that's then glued and stapled to another outer piece of wood it took over an hour of slowly prying the two apart just to get to the cloth. There's also about a million staples to remove as well.

The cab was much easier and only took about 2 hours total.

Overall, it wasn't too bad of a project to do - just requires a staple gun (1/4" staples), glue (for the one piece on the head), and lots of patience!
 
It looks f'n awesome! Post some pics when you get the knobs!
 
Lookin' great! Good job Cory

Let's see how the cream knobs sets off that cream piping ..
 
Ok - so, the honeymoon with the cream grill was short lived...I saw a pic of a RA "blacked out" and liked the way that looked better - so being the crazy person I am, I took my RA and cab back apart and installed the Mesa black jute grill cloth and black piping. The cab is now just a standard recto cab in all black, but it looks so good with the blacked out RA face.

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A few lessons learned from the first go around (for anyone who wants to change their grill cloth):

1. you gotta put the Mesa face plate back on before you fully install the grill (on the RA only) - the wood behind the grill is cut out for the face plate to be "sunk in" - I realized I didn't do this correctly with the cream cloth because the face plate should almost be flush with the grill cloth (it was too raised because I had already pulled the cloth tight prior to installing it).
2. You need to use water and a hair dryer to get the cloth "factory tight" - that's right - water and a hair dryer - basically you make sure the cloth is straight across - install the face plate - then pull as tight as you can on the cloth and staple. Now, this will get it pretty tight, but I still noticed it was a little loose - so I googled it and read that "misting" the cloth with water, then hitting it with high heat from a hair dryer will shrink the cloth - boy did it ever! It is nice and tight now - seriously looks like it came custom ordered straight from Mesa!
3. I did the same thing on the cab and it turned out perfect as well. One difference - it's the exact opposite for the face plate on the cab - you want to install it last since it's not sunk in. Installing the face plate last will ensure that the cloth is nice and tight and in place, then just screw in the plate back on.

Hope this helps anyone who wants to take on this kind of project - I can promise you that I won't be doing this again any time soon, haha. Message me if you have any questions - I'd be glad to help out!
 
Just realized how crappy this pic looked...I try to take a few more some time soon and upload them. Also, I had just finished it and my settings were all messed up. I take a pic of my normal settings just to share too!
 
Cor oney said:
I've owned my RA-100 for about a year now and I just love everything about it. I was bored one day and was looking around on Mesa's custom website and saw that they had some custom RA options - one of which had the Marshall "salt and pepper" (black and cream weave) grill cloth and cream piping. I really like the way it looked so I decided to DIY it and here's the result! Ended up doing my 2x12 recto cab to match it. I included a before and after pic of the RA. Let me know what you think! 8)

024_zps9ac46f1a.jpg


023_zpsd7e45e3c.jpg

I like this one much more
 
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