Looking at the 11a... finish options

Peter Soderberg said:

yes. we invested plenty of time and expense in going to a second powder coater (colors used in our black one contaminated the black), the chrome was very touchy if there was the slightest blemish and was very costly(local chrome guy had to build a special tank due to length) and at the end of the day, i believe we sold less than 5 sets. the new frames are are a textured surface, not a smooth one so finishes are not possible.
as to the cabinet paints, they are car paints put on top of a multilayer primer so are pretty rugged and thick enough that scratches can be polished out if not too deep. it is thicker than the standard black gloss.

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Totally agree with the chrome frames being a pain to produce a good end result. The special tank, polishing before plating and then the plating process is multi step - just has a lot of ways to fail. Also I do like the new frames that have a texture apparently in the casting not the paint. I think because its in the casting the texture is probably more controlled and robust where paint most likely would not be. Either way the texture is very uniform. Its a very nice tweak in that finger prints are not seen and as you get closer to the speaker the textured look is a nice look in my opinion - far away it just looks black in a dimmer room. As far as the painting I saw it up close during my visit to the plant. The paint area is well monitored and quality mined to the extreme. They keep track of rejects and are very aware that the customer must get a top notch beautiful finish.