This may sound stupid to some of you, but here goes.
I have put a pair of 6x9 3-way Pioneer speakers in the rear of my car, but I had to leave off the mesh cover/grill part as space was limited and it would have touched the rear window and vibrated against it. I had intended to place a towel over the speakers, to protect from sun damage and dust and also as an anti-theft device (if someone can't see them they are less likely to smash my window and steal them, as has happened before :P).
So, is it still ok to place a towel over the bare speakers with no mesh/covering ?
Sorry if it sounds stupid.. but I just want to make sure I won't ruin them!
It won't ruin them. A towel isn't going to protect the speaker from much, except maybe a little bit of dust, which the speaker's grill wouldn't protect it from that anyway. The only thing the speaker's grill protects is from you laying stuff on top of the speaker. The towel won't protect it from that. I'd try to cover the whole panel in some form of thin, breathable fabric, some cloth coverings are very thin and still allow sound to move. Many new cars use cloth covering on rear panels over the rear speakers with good results, and it isn't an eye chore like a towel would be. You could find a car (newer Dodge intrepids come to mind) in a junkyard with the color to match your car and just rip out the package tray, take the fabric off it and staple it to yours.
Thanks Jonathan. I just wasn't sure whether or not the towel touching the actual speakers would do them any harm.
The speakers are already raised on plastic spacers (because there are some metal rods that are part of the boot directly under the speaker holes which get in the way of the magnet) so covering them with anything is going to look fairly retarded. It's an old retarded car though so it doesn't matter too much, but I'll keep an eye out for some suitable fabric.