On Thursday, February 6, 2025 at 05:05:52 AM PST, Jukebox Repairman via Jukebox-list jukebox-list@lists.netlojix.com wrote:

Painting the cab is easier than veneer😀

Duplicating the original spatter paint job does take some practice.  Aaron Heverin,who used to be a member of this mailing list, backwards-engineered the processsome 20 years ago and posted a very useful description of the process which I'llpost below since the archive seems to be down.  Just painting over it with a solidcolor finish will hurt the value.

The most important thing you need to do right off the bat is to replace all the zip cordin the wiring harnesses for the mechanism and cabinet lighting.  It's got natural rubberinsulation which hardens and cracks with age.  Shock hazard, and worse, may causedamage to the machine. ====================== Aaron's document: The toothbrush is a way to go if you were going to cover a small area, but that would take weeks to do a full size cabinet like an AMI F or G. This is the method I use...but remember that it is just as time consuming, and you MUST practice on a scrap sheet of plywood before you do this to your cabinet. Make sure your scrap is painted the same color as your cabinet before you proceed with practicing.

Get yourself a short-bristled wallpaper brush. They are about 12 inches long and the bristles are only about 3/4" or so high. You want a brush that is stiff but will still hold a fair amount of paint...but NOT an amount that will cause huge splatters. You'll also need a plastic trough or pan that's as long as the brush.

An Atoll Coral AMI has two colors of fleck: a light tan, and black. Do the tan first. OH! Before you do any of this, make 100% sure that your cabinet is completely dry from any repainting that you do. When I restore these things, I make sure to give the cabinet at least 4 days to completely dry before I put on fleck. I'll explain why in a minute.

Pour a line of the tan paint into the trough that's about HALF the length of the brush. Dip the brush into the paint and gently swish and push the brush around so that the bristles are good and coated with the paint. You only want half of the brush covered with the tan paint. Shake off any excess paint back into the trough. Now take the brush and wack it down on a sheet of newspaper to remove any thick globs of paint that accumulated on the brush. You DON'T want huge splotches of paint...just small flecks. Big splotches will run and drip and you want to avoid that. You also don't want so much paint on the bristles that you won't be able to control where it goes once you start flecking. BELIEVE ME....you'll see the paint go flying in the next step so very little paint is better than way too much. You just want to get paint on and in the bristles...you don't want to get it pooled up. You may want to have latex gloves on for the next step. After you've removed a good amount of the paint from the brush - and here's where you need to practice to develop your technique and get a feel for what's going to happen - start flecking the paint on by rubbing your index finger - or thumb against the brush - pulling TOWARD your body - directing the splatter onto the cabinet. Work from the outside bristles of the brush back to the middle. You'll be able to tell when there's no more paint left on the bristles and it's time to reload. You'll have to learn how to position the brush, your finger, and your thumb in relation to the lines and curves of the cabinet to achieve a good uniform result. For example, if you shoot the fleck at the rounded corners of the top of the cabinet, and you have the brush almost completely level with the top of the cabinet itself, you're going to get what I call a "zinger." That's a fairly long thin streak of paint that will resemble a comet. While small zingers look cool, LOTS of them look horrible. So practice, practice, PRACTICE!!!

You also want to have a Q-Tip, lightly damp with water, handy while your doing this because if you get a blotch that looks awful, or too big, you can use the Q-Tip to soak up some of the paint, or wipe the blotch away entirely. Remember how I said to make sure your cabinet is completely dry before you put on the fleck? Well, you actually have a small margin for error when doing this step because you'll be able to wipe away any small areas of imperfection in the fleck without removing any of the main cabinet color.

You'll also discover that by the time you get done flecking one side of the cabinet, the previous side you flecked will be almost dry. Let the tan dry for about an hour before you move on to the black, which you'll apply exactly the same way. Only this time, use the OPPOSITE side of the brush - just make sure you wash the brush before you proceed with the black coat.

Here's some tips to consider: 1) Stay at least a foot or more away from the cabinet when you're doing this. If you get too close, you'll accumulate too much fleck in one area. You want the covering to appear random. 2) The harder you flick your fingers and thumb over the brush, the more paint you'll flick off the brush and the results will be bigger flecks - until the brush goes almost completely dry...in which case you'll wind up with very tiny flecks. Watch big splotches because they will drip. Try to get a mixture of both big and little flecks. Too much of the little flecks will drastically alter the overall color of the cabinet. Practice to get a good mix. Be artistic. You are in complete control as to how this will look so take your time. 3) The rails on the back of the cabinet will need to be flecked too, but because they are curved, getting a uniform covering is difficult. Get within 4 inches of the rails with your brush and flick very slowly. You don't want too big of an area with NO fleck on it. 4) The top dome is done separately. Remove it from the cabinet and paint and fleck it by itself. Watch the curves. 5) If you DO get a large splash of paint that looks ugly, you may be able to take a very fine paintbrush and do some artistic manipulation of the splotch so that it looks a bit more pleasing. I've done this many times where I've painted hundreds of splotches by hand simply because I wanted something not as uniform as what was coming off the wallpaper brush. 6) Make sure you get a uniform coat of the tan, before you proceed to the black. You CAN'T go back and redo the tan once you start the black because the color blend will be off. You'll have to paint flecks on top of each other manually if you make a mistake and have to go back and redo any of the tan flecks. 7) Oh...NEVER...NEVER do any of this with an oil base paint. Clean-up is impossible as is correcting any mistakes.

Once you are finished with the flecking, you won't believe that the cabinet was the same thing you started out with. Once flecked, the cabinet just JUMPS out at you and screams the 1950s. One of the Atoll Coral AMI Fs I restored wound up in an ice cream parlor. It was wild to see it in action especially once it was completely reassembled and lit up. I can send you pictures if you like. After everything is dry - and I give it 2 days or so...I then spray 6 coats of clear-coat on the entire cabinet.

You'll also notice that by flecking the tan and black on the cabinet in this way, you'll achieve the exact same results that AMI did when they sprayed the colors suspended in lacquer - a slightly bumpy finish. This finish will begin to smooth over the more coat of clear finish you apply.

[ More comments... ] Hi David I actually NEVER did the green, the light blue, or the yellow. When I started working on these things, I had quite a few of them in a warehouse from which to pick and choose to restore. After taking a look at the yellow and green, I made an oath that I would try to keep as far away from those two colors as possible. I actually had a customer come to me wanting the yellow but I played it smart. Before I spent $60 on a single gallon of the paint, I had a small pint made up. I had a local paint shop where colors were matched by the eyes and skill of the proprietor. I removed a piece of wood from the yellow cabinet and had the paint guy match it. It was DEAD on. He even took into consideration how the paint on my sample would have aged over 50 years...so the color he came up with was vibrant!!!

I took this pint and sprayed it on a 5 x 4 piece of plywood that I sanded smooth. I then flecked it grey then black. After finishing it, all I could say was "Hmmmmmmm." I called my customer to look at it and he did the exact same thing...."Hmmmmmm." However, sitting right next to the yellow sample was a nearly finished F-120 that I had painted Firecracker Red. The customer freaked out on that and promptly told me to toss out the yellow.

Here's the rest of the story. I had a bad habit of not writing down the color codes of all of my custom jukebox paints. After doing so many, and always going back to the same paint guy to get the paint, I figured that since HE kept a file on me, he would always know my colors. I could simply call up and say that I need another gallon of Firecracker Red or Atoll Coral and within an hour, there it was. After a while, I DID write down the coral and red colors, but the yellow was lost...because one day, the veterinarian office located right next door to the paint shop decided to build a new complex. In doing so, they started to bulldoze their old building into the ground. Also in doing so, they weakened the wall that was shared with the vet's section of the building and the paint shop. So one day, the entire wall of the shop came crashing in, bringing most of the building down with it. The guy lost everything INCLUDING his files and the treasured notebook of paint formulas for hi s customers.

So now the only colors I have are for the red and coral. Which, by the way, is a heavy duty, furniture grade paint. It's designed to be on surfaces  that will be handled, touched, or bumped into with regularity. It's a Muralo paint and it works very well through a sprayer as long as it's deluted slightly. The fleck colors I had on the yellow cabinet were grey and black.

[ Later addendum: ] Applying the flecking on the Red, and Coral cabinets is a snap because you're flecking with paint. I'm wondering how to do the fleck in glitter - which apparently is original to a few of the AMI F and G cabinets.

JS, I haven't forgotten about your request for the color code for the Firecracker Red. I think I may have put this up on the board before...but I use a furniture grade Muralo paint. I say "furniture grade" because it's specifically made to be used in high-traffic areas...or on things that will get handled a lot. If you head over to http://www.muralo.com/home/ you'll see more information about the paint itself.

I think I put this up on the board before, but I DIDN'T go to Home Depot or Lowes to get my first can of Firecracker Red for an F I was restoring. I went to one of the few remaining paint stores in my area where the guy behind the counter was a color expert, and relied on his skill and knowledge of his tinting colors rather than with a computer. I had a small piece of the wood from the lower door frame that wasn't damaged by years of neglect and filth. I brought this piece to the paint guy and he studied it for several hours before he called me back and said he had a pretty good match...taking into consideration the age of the sample and how it may have looked when the paint was first applied back in 1954. He showed me half a dozen samples of what he came up with....and it wasn't samples painted on a small piece of paper with his thumb. He actually painted on a large piece of finished plywood, and we were able to come up with a dead-on match. He also worked with me on coming up with a formula to mix the paint with a "thinner" to allow it to be applied with a sprayer. Try THAT at Home Depot!

He did the same thing when I needed the Atoll Coral color.

So I have the formulas for both the Red and the Coral...but only for Muralo paint. But keep in mind that the base coat is only one part of finishing off the entire cabinet. There's the flecking and clear coat as well.

On Thursday, February 6, 2025 at 05:05:52 AM PST, Jukebox Repairman via Jukebox-list jukebox-list@lists.netlojix.com wrote:

Painting the cab is easier than veneer😀

Several hours ago I replied to this, including Aaron Heverin's notes on painting thecabinet, but it's held up awaiting moderator approval because of the size.  But,I'll reiterate my warning (just in case you don't know) to make sure you start byreplacing all the zip-cord wiring in the lighting and mechanism wiring harnessesbecause the insulation is natural rubber which gets brittle and breaks off.

On Thursday, February 6, 2025 at 11:47:45 AM PST, joeymcd via Jukebox-list jukebox-list@lists.netlojix.com wrote:

Any know what happened to Aaron Heverin?  I used to be in touch> with him.> I tried a couple emails I had for him but no responses. He had great > knowledge on the AMI F and G models.

I haven't heard from him in years.  He was a good guy.  Rebuilt the amp for my G-200.

Yes indeed. AMI's of that era always get a silicon bridge rectifier (and fuses) and lamp cord wire. The zip cord going to the mech appears to be soft and supple but I'll replace that anyway. Someone replaced the power cord on the amp but I haven't looked inside the rusty amp yet to see if anything was done. They used brown cord, I may have to make it black. I always have a roll of black and a roll of brown. I just ordered 250' rolls of each a couple months ago.