Update (finally!):

We had a bit of a heat wave here in Northern California last month, but it has been cooler the past couple of weeks. The fellow who is doing the refinishing reports that it has been cool enough to shoot the laquer on the 'nose' frames. With that done, the grill cloth is being installed on them. He still has a thing or two to touch up before he shoots the main cabinets themselves.

Grill cloth is Newcastle/Acoustone P211. I ordered 6 yards (x 2 yards) directly from Acoustone. There should be plenty for them to work with. We are also going to re-cloth the bass reflex vents, but he has carefully saved the old cloth.

We talked today about the rear of the cabinets, and this is where I would enjoy some opinions from the Altec cognoscenti. (That means US on the forum.) Internally, the factory ran wires from the crossover to a two-terminal barrier strip. If you look back at post #10 in this thread, second photo, you can see it. I guess the intent was that the customer would run the wires under the cabinet and up to the barrier strip.

At some point, my uncle drilled a couple of holes in a back panel of each of the cabinets and installed brass terminals for the speaker wires. We were thinking that maybe we should do something about these terminals since they stick out about an inch. This could potentially lead to accidentally damaging the drywall. Also, they were drilled in different positions on the two cabinets. So there are at least three options:

a.) Leave them alone. It is the way my uncle intended them to be.

b.) Fill in the holes and run the wires under the cabinet. It seems to be the way Altec intended them to be.

c.) Fill in the holes and install a nice pair of vintage (looking?) terminal cups. Lots to choose from around the 'net. Not sure if there were ever any Altec branded ones. Anyone know? Or have good ideas on appropriate ones to use?