I upgraded the speakers on NGG yesterday. There’s no need to spend big bucks on an aftermarket pinball speaker set when you can do it yourself.
Changing the lower speaker to a 6.5″ sub woofer and swapping out the left back box speaker with a 5.25″ automotive speaker is easy. The tricky part is changing the right tweeter. Unlike older Bally / Williams games that used a wooden panel and plastic overlay, the later WPC95 games went with a cheap looking generic panel and plastic speaker insert.
The right side speaker hole is too small and the insert must be removed. To replace it and make the new speaker fit, I built an adapter out of 1/2″ MDF panel. It’s a pretty straight forward job. Once the old insert is removed, trace it on the MDF panel and cut it out. Then drill out all the smaller holes that will align it properly in the panel. The speaker hole will be a 5″ hole cut exactly in the middle of the panel. A 5″ hole saw is perfect for the job and makes it look perfect. The final step is to paint it semi-gloss black.
The new adapter plate is mounted with screws and simply mount the speaker directly to it. Rewire the new speakers to be in series instead of parallel and you’re done. I used Soundstorm SSL F252 5.25″ speakers because they were blue and matched the game. They look and sound great!
Here’s a link to Amazon where I bought the speakers. Click Here.
Excellent piece on the NGG speaker conversion. Wondering if you might be able to provide the details regarding how to “Rewire the new speakers to be in series instead of parallel” for those of us who’ve never tackled this yet?
Great site BTW!
Thanks very much,
Neil
Thanks, Neil.
I added a diagram that shows how to wire the speakers in serial. This basically lowers the overall volume of the back box speakers allowing the sub woofer to be louder. My game has a 6.5″ Aiwa 4 ohm sub woofer in the cabinet and the combo sounds great.
Awesome!
Since the DCS platform is such a nice starting point, I take it the improvement in sound is more than enough to not warrant going through the extra trouble of a adding a subwoofer cross-over and backbox volume control like the kits have?
Could you please list the specs of what kind of subwoofer to buy and possibly a link as well?
Thank you very much!
No need for crossovers as DCS does that automatically. A back box volume control is a nice added feature. I found with my upgrade the balance was perfect so it wasn’t needed. The sub woofer I used in this game came from an Aiwa home theater sub box so I don’t have a link. It’s a 6.5″, 4 ohm sub woofer. It has no wattage rating but you’ll want something around 30 watts RMS.