Restoration Time ? Spring and summer thread

[Bods]

Couple of jobs done, got a Subwoofer for free but no Plastic Feet on it which doesn't help when 10" Bass unit is facing downwards, This can replace the Technics ones I had, why they made it with 2x 5 1/2 inch units over one bigger is beyond me as they can't handle bass like all smaller speakers, so I sell those 2 and keep this for now which is a nice chunk of money towards the 11.2 Amp I just bought to upgrade my cinema setup

So how do I make some, holes in bottom of sub were 15mm so need some wood to fit in those, had a short think and decided I'll cut out some wood with hole cutter, hardwood ideally but can't find anything deep enough to lift sub off floor enough so some that came out the loft when I replaced wall with shelving for blurays

This is original ones

Had to cut from both sides as cutters not that deep




So I don't have any type of lathe so it's Pillar Drill time and sand paper, first I need some round wood small enough to fit in drill chuck and more than 15mm so I thought mary obviously doesn't want her tapestry frame rods which are perfect lol





4 pegs to go in feet and fit tight in subwoofer holes





Now can fit feet in drill and sand those down. It's just a quick job so it can be used

 

[Bods]

Does the Job anyway

 

[Bods]

So with all talk with my brother on HiFi stuff and I got looking at Amps again as I'd like 11.2 sound to make use of the Dolby Atmos and DTS-X on quite a few of the Blurays now so I bought a Denon AVC-X6700 which seems pretty good, only this now creates me more work as I need to add 4 more speakers to the system

I used to have all Mission speakers when we first had 5.1 Pro Logic and Dolby Digitial 5.1, The Centre and Surround ones were great so I sold all those in original boxes, Then sold the Cyrus 781 and 782 I had as I'd replaced with much bigger speakers as I like a Full Sound when you have a bit more money spare

The loft is a nice size for the Cinema Setup which is the reason I had it converted, it's not perfect shape though as you can't fit in full size speakers apart from front, I started buying Technics Honeycomb Flat woofer type as I really like the look and picked up some 12" bass ones I put in loft for front speakers so wanted all others matching, shape of loft for side speakers was limiting but these Technics Home/Car ones they did are perfect and I would buy a few sets when ever cheap, the quality of construction is excellent like a lot of Technics but not always the best sounding speakers, but these are only surround speakers and sound great on that

The F30 are the smaller ones which I had 2 pairs of, though 1 pair used as side surround but I have spare set of F40 so swapped them over



Not sure why the builder did the edges of the roof like this but it's kind of handy for the speakers and the shape of the back perfect, this was only pair I've bought that had the original wall brackets so I need to make 8 of them. luckily these still fit the F40 speaker so re drill 2 holes for one bracket as longer and have larger side speakers now

All these can be wired for 4ohm or 8ohm so I used two of the F40 side by side set to 4ohm and wired in series for Center speaker, Tweeter/Midrange can turn around and F40 it changes between Air Suspension/Bass Reflex





So now I have 4 matching F30 speakers for the Height Atmos/DTS-X speakers but no brackets to fit them, also going to need some thumb type bolts like these have. So time to make brackets



Original ones are over 3mm thick which is perfect for the bigger ones but F30 much lighter so this 2.5mm will do nicely, shame I cut a bit out, so had to cut 8th out of the main part, assume these brackets were from Arcade something, much angle grinding later

 

[Bods]

Cut out and bent to same as original



Holes all done



Sandblast them as some areas rusty



4 Coats of Black Paint and there done, now nightmare part, fitting them in loft at 30+ degrees and somehow getting cables to them

 

[69er]

Well not exactly planned as a summer project just an embarrassing long time neglected out of order CD jukebox in the house….

Being lazy our sound leisure Tudor console CD juke packed up about 5 years ago and my mojo for mpu repairs was faded after my triple bypass heart op so this was a non urgent back burner “must sort it one day??? “

It remained that way till today, the wife kept saying the space could be used better? Get it fixed or stick it in the driveway ready to tip!! Ouch ! She began to shift junk off it’s waist level shelf ( handy for the odd photo, foreign coins , pack of cards & a tray of scented candles) getting stuffed with other unused crap.

So I gave in to pressure I took it apart and to save a longer repair summary it’s now another repair off my long list of jobs to do!

Wall box was fine proven by shorting the tx rx wires , selections updated on the display but no comms… no response of l e d lights at the mpu … during ‘scan’ testing the stop trip etc. the player and magazine spun up a disc but didn’t play or even behave as expected..the decoder identified the number of tracks on that cd BUT obviously the mpu was at fault.

It’s more complicated by being a series3 wbox on a series 2 playing unit so older technology , (they do mix n match) but less common so any spares much harder to find…. However with a bit of trial actions it’s running again,

Fortunately I do have a few spare parts in the workshop but not an mpu, from our juke box days. So it has a future now !

On plugging everything back together and 5 years since I read any titles to chose I randomly for simple test selected CD123 track 1 and when Rolling Stones ‘street fighting man’ rang out it brought a tear into my eyes !!!

“I AM STILL AN ENGINEER” wife impressed so I followed it up with one of her favourites a Bay City Rollers track .. ‘keep on dancing’ …. She loves me again ( as always really! ) and the juke box got a reprieve from the breakers!

Happy …. A wet thundery day well spent

Save us watching so much daytime tv crud! It’s on freeplay so music will blast out once again … many old classics !! XX

 

[Bods]

I've just about finished fitting and wiring up my extra 4 height surround sound speakers for Dolby Atmos/DTS-X Blurays. luckily it's not as warm as it was but still been 28c in the loft the last week, not exactly hard graft drilling and cutting out holes in plasterboard to get the cables in but trying to feed the wires through behind plasterboard can be challenging, I have 2 big plastic pipes I put in the middle of roof each side to feed cables to projector but didn't plan for more speakers but managed to get cables down roof or along center to the pipes so that's another job done apart from added some speaker terminals plates if I can find some cheaper than £50 for 5, it's so expensive for stuff now

just spent hours taking 2 of the speakers apart to straighten the dented in speaker grills to find out I can't get it off the speaker to do it, not sure if supposed to be stuck to the woofer but they are and won't move, clean the polished alloy ring around woofer, clean and polish the plastic tweeter grill, they have metal type finish and they get tarnished/corrosion and amazingly the finish is good enough you can polish it back to a shine with metal polish, I've done same on some Panasonic Ghetto Blasters with all the controls as they are always dull

Next job is sort all the crap thats all in my way so I can actually sit down again and watch some movies up there, need to sort loads of things out to sell like all the previous Amps sat there

 

[Flyback2021]

Well not exactly planned as a summer project just an embarrassing long time neglected out of order CD jukebox in the house….

Being lazy our sound leisure Tudor console CD juke packed up about 5 years ago and my mojo for mpu repairs was faded after my triple bypass heart op so this was a non urgent back burner “must sort it one day??? “

It remained that way till today, the wife kept saying the space could be used better? Get it fixed or stick it in the driveway ready to tip!! Ouch ! She began to shift junk off it’s waist level shelf ( handy for the odd photo, foreign coins , pack of cards & a tray of scented candles) getting stuffed with other unused crap.

So I gave in to pressure I took it apart and to save a longer repair summary it’s now another repair off my long list of jobs to do!

Wall box was fine proven by shorting the tx rx wires selections updated on the display but no comms… the player and magazine spun up a disc but didn’t play or even behave as expected.. the mpu was at fault.

It’s more complicated by being a series3 wbox on a series 2 playing unit so older technology , (they do mix n match) but less common so any spares much harder to find…. However with a bit of trial actions it’s running again,

On plugging everything back together and 5 years since I read any titles to chose I randomly for simple test selected CD123 track 1 and when Rolling Stones ‘street fighting man’ rang out it brought a tear into my eyes !!!

“I AM STILL AN ENGINEER” wife impressed so I followed it up with one of her favourites a Bay City Rollers track .. ‘keep on dancing’ …. She loves me again ( as always really! ) and the juke box got a reprieve from the breakers!

Happy …. A wet thundery day well spent

Save us watching so much daytime tv crud! It’s on freeplay so music will blast out once again … many old classics !! XX

Fantastic job @69er you got the music and the girls heart today !
Awesome stuff !

 

[Flyback2021]

I decided to prioritise this for the morning. NOS Nintendo playchoice 10 overlay for super de luxe (Brent Leisure ).
Had this for 5 years loosely rolled in a tube and completely forgotten about. I was surprised there was a strong adhesion still after decades since printed. There was however a brittleness to it which made me nervous particularly on the metal folds so used a light bit of heat and did in stages. Love the offsetting of the ink .

 

[Geoarch]

NOS stickers are always something special. Great job.

 

[Flyback2021]

Todays morning job is to clean up this mega-tech panel as although in good condition and overlay original it just needs some TLC eg sticky buttons and grime.
I picked this spare panel up very reasonably so wanted to do a new overlay and controls. Removed the already ripped overlay , took it back to metal and removed a lot of rust then red oxide primer and 3 Sprays.
Replacement mega-tech brought from arcade art shop looks absolutely Top draw ! Awesome work Olly

Repro overlay applied

 

[Ace`]

My Mario Bros restoration is finally done, or pretty much anyway just a couple of minor issues. I need a harness for player 2 and there's a component that needs replacing on the 20EZ chassis but that's about it.

Sadly this is the only before picture I could find.







Apparently I didn't do a good enough job of cleaning the bezel but you can see I managed to buff out all the scratches. I did some touch ups to the missing black paint areas too but I need to put a bit of semi gloss clear coat over it as the matt finish from the acrylic paint really stands out.

 

[Flyback2021]

My Mario Bros restoration is finally done, or pretty much anyway just a couple of minor issues. I need a harness for player 2 and there's a component that needs replacing on the 20EZ chassis but that's about it.

Sadly this is the only before picture I could find.

View attachment 42982

View attachment 42994

View attachment 42995

Apparently I didn't do a good enough job of cleaning the bezel but you can see I managed to buff out all the scratches. I did some touch ups to the missing black paint areas too but I need to put a bit of semi gloss clear coat over it as the matt finish from the acrylic paint really stands out.

Looking Great !

 

[Flyback2021]

Nintendo themed morning here also - this overlay was on borrowed time and already had some air pockets so prioritized this to do before unusable.
Panel is from a Brent leisure single screen playchoice 10
Heavy duty laminate on top which is a blessing as tough as hell once down but can get brittle on the folded metal. Not pleasant applying as a fair amount to line up plus as they have been screen printed the alignment is not that consistent between one and another.

Think I may need to find more cone switches as looking short currently 🤦‍♂️

 

[Bods]

Sold a NOS Overlay for one years back, not sure if it was that type, also had the gun holster for Nintendo one which took me ages to sell

somewhere I have 2 or 3 of those type switches, didn't realise you could have Cone tops on them though

 

[Flyback2021]

Sold a NOS Overlay for one years back, not sure if it was that type, also had the gun holster for Nintendo one which took me ages to sell

somewhere I have 2 or 3 of those type switches, didn't realise you could have Cone tops on them though

I have only ever come across this type on pc10 panels . Not sure if Atari volcanos buttons are the same or similar?

US playchoice use a black and red cone button.
Hoping they turn up as would ideally like to use these

 

[Bods]

You could use Atari type ones but it's always nice to have originals. I'll have a look for them, no cone tops I know that, no idea where they came from as never had any cabs like that but probably bodged in some cab i had