Repairing cabinet scratches on Ascent i's?

Has anyone tried to repair scratches on the cabinets of Ascents or something from that product era? If so, what did you use? I have a few on the sides from when I moved that would be nice to have fixed if I decide to sell them sometime for maybe some Spires or Ethos. Thanks for the help.

I have not attempted this with my Ascents, however, I did end up contacting Jim Powers a year or two back (still disappointed that ML let him go) about touch up paint, specifically for Ascents.

From what I can recall, there were two different paint colors that were used. ML changed production cabinet colors. I think one color is easier to find touch up paint for. It's a typical spay paint from a hardware store like Krylon or Rustoleum, but don't remember the color.

I'm going by memory here, as my email with Jim was with my work account, which I can not access from home. If you're interested, I can dig up Jim's responses.

I think I remember this being discussed in this forum.

Here are Jim Powers responses to my paint questions. I've also included a photo from Jim where he was trying to show the different paint colors:

I looked in my records and it appears that in the month of February of 2003, we changed paints.


As for the touch up paint, maybe. It depends on the vintage of your Ascents. We used two different types of paint over the Ascent production years. One was a rather flat black finish. The later version was more eggshell or almost semi-gloss.

The flat paint was easier to touch up. We never found a good touch up for the glossier finish. We would have to re-shoot an entire side with that finish.

Attached is a side by side of the two finishes.

If yours are the flatter matte finish, you can try using the following

Wrought Iron Flat Black

From NOW! Paint and color.

Found at most ACE hardware stores.

It was a pretty close match. There is a technique which makes it work.

You will only want to apply the paint in short burst with several minutes of drying time between applications. You will want to spray from an unusually far distance of about 2 feet so that a fog or mist settles on the spot.

You will certainly need to mask everything especially the electrostatic panel. In fact I recommend disassembling the speaker down to the bare cabinet shell. This will minimize risk to the rest of the speaker.

You should experiment on the bottom of the woofer box just to make sure you have the correct color and technique.

That pretty much covers what I know.

Depending on the size sometimes something as simple as a black sharpie can be used to hide a scratch...its not a fix like paint would be but as a quick and dirty band aid it can at least make it less obvious.