I'm going to refurbish a set of CX 50 in aluminium. I have resprayed both black and white cabinets with good result, but what do I do with the aluminium cabinets. Can I remove scratches by sanding or are the cabinets anodized so sanding is impossible?

Has anybody got some good advice on this subject?

/riis

Hi riis - I have not tried this yet - but I have some to do.  In trying to 'polish out' some scratches on some that I bought off ebay (Excellent condition I seemed to have polished through the original finish so I assume that the finished surface is eithet spray on or exlonated - I suspect the former.  Let me know how you get on!

Peter

I always thought they were anodised... I had marks to a pair of black ones and there was nothing I could do.

jldmelb:

I always thought they were anodised... I had marks to a pair of black ones and there was nothing I could do.

I have resprayed a set of black CX 100. The result was IMHO fine. I used Plasti Kote Super Spray Satin Black which is very similar to the original colour and gloss. Of course you have to cover some of the surface to match the original.

/riis

Not many beoexperts on the Beovox CX in aluminium .

/riis

The surface is eloxated aluminum.
You can achieve a decent surface by spraying a suitable alu/silver color, car-paint springs to mind,
but you will never be able to recreate the original directional hair-line eloxation that B&O put on it.
Don't sand or grind it, it will only produce large dark areas, it will not remove scratches.

Martin

I remember one (or perhaps two) members repolishing aluminum CX's... they looked very good, but nothing like the original.

Wish I remembered the thread or the author(s). It was anyway a lot of work and you'll obviously lose the stripes. Unless they look very bad or have already been destroyed by sanding attempts, I'd leave them alone...

I did repolish alu CX's.

They do have a sort of protective coating on it,

Depending on how much work you want to invest in order to refinish them you can either

-just use metal polish .... and just keep polishing. The protective coating will come off. the stripes will stay.

- If they are in too bad a shape (like mine were with big scrapes and deep scratches) you can really sand them down with ever increasing higher grade (finer) sanding paper and finishing them to the desired shine with polishing compound. 
You'll loose the stripes on the side, but several layers of mat varnish and masking tape was all that's needed to put them back on. 

The foto shows a before and after 

I'm confused! The speaker on the left has it's stripes on the side...

Anyway, it looks beautiful!

Dave:

I'm confused! The speaker on the left has it's stripes on the side...

Anyway, it looks beautiful!

The stripes where put back on with slightly tinted matt varnish... They look great in combo with my 90ies beosystem 7000 

Well done, i have never heard CX100's but this photo makes me appreciate them, beautiful. Well done, must have been very hard work

Dave:

Well done, i have never heard CX100's but this photo makes me appreciate them, beautiful. Well done, must have been very hard work

Well yes and no....

Industrial belt sanders in metal work shop  (making stainless steel restaurant equipment).... 1 coarse, 1 fine, 1 extra fine gritt (don't ask me what grit they were) will take out the scrapes and most of the defects and you'll end up with kind of a raw 'brushed metal' kind of finish.

After that they where hand polished with sort of brushy buffers with polishing compound, finished with cloth buffers for a shine finish.
They managed very well to match my beomaster 7000. 

Took one person just about 2 hours to do.

After that they were sprayed with a protective coating (kind of shellac I suppose) and I did put the lines back on myself (masking tape and brush..)

The CX100 are perfect as secondary speakers... Mine no longer have the original crossover in them and frankly sound better for it.
I use 5 of them as my surround sound system and have added a cona.

Looks great Ollie

Cooldude your speakers look great. I shall definitely try to do the same with mine.

Thanks

/riis

Wow they do look great. I have a set of CX50 with my Beocenter 8500. I may get a similar thing done.

I think they look better than the originals. Would look great with a BC9500 or Beosystem 4500 with all that polished alu :)

Brushed aluminium CX speakers have a protective lacquer which can sometimes look pretty ropey. I have improved the appearance on these by simply removing the original lacquer with Fairy Power Spray (it is brilliant for this) & recoating with spray-on stuff from a car parts supplier. The good thing about Fairy Power Spray is that it doesn't remove any of the lettering. This obviously won't do the job if the scratches are deep.

Chris.

What kind of product is Fairy Power Spray? I'm not sure I can get it in Denmark, but maybe I can find a similar product.

Speaking about the lettering - has abybody found a way to replace the lettering. I would like to change the grey colour of a pair of CX 100's into black or white, but I will only do this if I find a way to replace the lettering.

/riis

I guess Letraset transfer letters might be your answer there, but it will be very difficult to get that much small text to align so that it looks proper.

I did leave the front as-is on mine, only cleaned it up a bit, so the letters are still there.
Wouldn't loose any sleep over it if they were gone, though.... they're hardly noticeable.