I don't like them much, but would one of the subs that have a thin column sticking out of the top count as nice looking? It depends on what you need for the PA. My wife put up with a pair of JBL VRX932s in my living room, but complained about the 'wires'.

paulears wrote:
I don't like them much, but would one of the subs that have a thin column sticking out of the top count as nice looking? It depends on what you need for the PA. My wife put up with a pair of JBL VRX932s in my living room, but complained about the 'wires'.

Thanks man!

She hates those lol. I may have to find something pretty and vintage and boot strap the fucker! 

A lot of speakers are made of birch or other plywood, so you could remove the tolex or carpet covering, and sand, stain and shellac the speaker. A lot of old altec jbl and Urie studio monitors are basically pa speakers. Those are popular "mains" from the 80's. They sell for 1500-5k a pair nowadays. They have wooden cabinets.

You could also look into theater speakers for movie theaters. Qsc and jbl both make models starting around 1200$ new. 

Many years ago a friend gave me a non-working Vox AC30 to work on in the hope of turning it into a stereo amp for a pedal steel guitar that he could use at home and also take round to local gigs. He always fed the guitar output through a multiple pedal board and a foot-operated volume control, so didn't need much in the way of EQ or effects in the amp.

The speakers in the AC30 had survived, but the amplifier had blown in a big way. I stripped out the amplifier and replaced it with a cheap stereo transistor 50W power amp brick, each channel driving its own speaker in the cabinet. The stereo effect wasn't great unless you were right on axis, but the overall sound was surprisingly good. It met his spec of not looking out of place in his living room and being reasonably light to carry (a lot less than the 32Kg of the original). He quickly elected to take the Vox logo off it after some less-than-polite comments from Vox aficionados at the gigs he played.

Boswell wrote:
Many years ago a friend gave me a non-working Vox AC30 to work on in the hope of turning it into a stereo amp for a pedal steel guitar that he could use at home and also take round to local gigs. He always fed the guitar output through a multiple pedal board and a foot-operated volume control, so didn't need much in the way of EQ or effects in the amp.

The speakers in the AC30 had survived, but the amplifier had blown in a big way. I stripped out the amplifier and replaced it with a cheap stereo transistor 50W power amp brick, each channel driving its own speaker in the cabinet. The stereo effect wasn't great unless you were right on axis, but the overall sound was surprisingly good. It met his spec of not looking out of place in his living room and being reasonably light to carry (a lot less than the 32Kg of the original). He quickly elected to take the Vox logo off it after some less-than-polite comments from Vox aficionados at the gigs he played.

Cool idea!

I've noticed a trend recently with film projector amps bring converted into guitar amps. Just bought a set of IR for my THU amp sim plugin,and it sounds pretty neat!