Many people choose to leave the factory speaker foam behind the honeycomb grill areas on the SPIKE 2 games when installing their Speaker Light Kits. This is also what I would choose to do as long as I was not using an acrylic design that allowed light to shine through the acrylic material. If you are using an acrylic design of that type, it is much better to remove the foam. More details on that can be found where I discuss some ACRYLIC DESIGN MOUNTING TIPS HERE.

I then wondered if the foam, after time, may begin to sag or accidentally get pushed back away from the inside of the grill area. The light frames were designed to support the foam as much as possible around the edges, but only so much could be done as I did not want the light frames to go into the honeycomb area and block the Speaker Light Kit's light. So I started to look for other ways to support the speaker foam if need be.

What I found was Plastic Canvas. It can be mounted behind the speaker foam (between the foam and the speaker light frame) and it keeps the foam up against the honeycomb grill without any worries of it sagging or getting pushed in.

The unexpected benefit of using the Plastic Canvas is that it also brightens up the middle of the foam area by spreading the light from the light frames.

On the top area of this picture there is the Plastic Canvas behind the foam. The bottom area is the foam by itself. It is easy to see that the Plastic Canvas does a nice job of spreading the light and brightening up the dark area in the middle of the foam. The Plastic Canvas can be seen behind the foam when the Speaker Light Kit is on, but I have never heard of anyone seeing it in person and thinking it looked bad or didn't prefer the Plastic Canvas and foam over the foam alone.

Pictures can be a bit deceiving and some colors appear to be affected more than others, but pretty much in any case, you can see the Plastic Canvas brightening things up.

Having said that, I don't think it is always good to use the Plastic Canvas. As stated above, just having the foam behind certain types of the acrylic designs can make them look worse. Having the Plastic Canvas and the foam behind those type of designs makes them look even worse.  It makes the honeycomb grill pattern show up on the see through areas of those designs, which is not a good look.

So if you are not using an acrylic design or it is an acrylic design that does not allow light to shine through its acrylic material, I would recommend using the original speaker foam with the Plastic Canvas behind it if you have a Standard (type 11) light kit.

With the standard light kits the dark area is just a stationary spot in the middle of the foam. With a deluxe light kit and its more elaborate light patterns, it's as if the dark areas in the foam is as much of the light show as the lit areas on many of the light transition patterns. So it's not as beneficial or needed with the deluxe light kits in my opinion, but it can still be used to spread the light better if you would like.

If you are using an acrylic design that allows light to shine through it, you would be better off not using the original speaker foam or the Plastic Canvas behind the speaker grills with either the type 11 or type 12 light kits.

When ordering the Plastic Canvas from me, you will get 2 sheets that are pre-cut with the mounting holes cut in them so they are ready to be dropped in and mounted between the foam and the Speaker Light Kit light frames.