-Yep! We love it! Way better than stock.
-I just redrilled four holes. Ground off the stock studs and mounted the new speakers.
-Just longer screws. I had to push out the old ones.
-Hope this helps!

Paul

Thanks for the detailed response.
I might have access to a printer. I'll be asking a friend about that on the coming days.
What sort of material cost is involved printing these?
I want to know how many beers to offer him. Lol.

Would you have a pic of the plate?

Exact cost will depend on print settings, but for a single mounting plate the slicer puts the total filament at around 75 g. That's for 0.1 mm layer height, 10% infill, and no supports. Assuming $30/kg for filament, that puts the direct materials cost at just over $2. Of course, electricity will add some pennies to that price -- rough guess, 100W for 10 hours of printing is 1 kWh, which is around 10-20 cents depending on where you live -- and there's your friend's time. Double all of that for two plates.

Hopefully your friend can help, but if not many people have a local library that provide 3D printing services, there are also services online (Xometry and Shapeways, for example), and I have read that many UPS shipping stores include 3D printing services. Apparently FedEx has also been threatening to include 3D printing services in its stores (https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/fedex-3d-printing-forward-depots-inventory-repair-supply-chain-127980/), but I know even less about that.

As for photos, sure. Here are some photos of the speaker with an actual test print (not quite the final one, but pretty close), and a screenshot of the plate in PrusaSlicer.

test printtest print with speakertest print with speaker, front sidePrusaSlicer render

Very helpful thank you!

pete_d That's awesome!
Thank you.

I might go ahead and order the speakers, knowing that there is a solution that doesn't involve me hacking at plywood with a jigsaw....

Have you given any thought to the cabinet speaker yet?
I was leaning toward Alpine SWG-844. Although I don't have good reasons why.

I'm looking forward to hearing more about your upgrades and how you end up once finished.

Pretty cool design. Have you mounted it yet? Wondering how easy it is to install the two small screws that go into the display. I suppose a 90 degree screw driver could do it.

I will be connecting an external sub, via DIY adapter to the C5 line-level motherboard connector. I'll just unplug the OEM cabinet speaker.

I thought about just replacing the cabinet speaker, but I already have issues with the speaker rattling the playfield glass too much as it is. I believe I'll get cleaner bass without as much mechanical interference with the external sub (I got the Klipsch that has been frequently recommended here...it's been working hard in my media room until I get around to hooking it up to the pin, and sounds great...a step up from the still-serviceable powered sub I normally use in that room).

My three-step plan:

* Upgrade the backbox speakers. That's in progress, and almost done
* Switch to an external sub.
* Add a separate powered amp.

I'm doing the steps separately partly to just keep myself organized and not tackle too much at once, and also so I can judge for myself incrementally how and whether each step significantly improves the sound.

The second and third steps require the adapter to the C5 connector, which I've already almost finished as well (nice to have fiddly electronic things to work on while waiting for the 3D printer to finish ).

The third step requires figuring out what amp to get, where to mount it, and how to power it. I've settled on splitting out the switched side of the mains power in the backbox, which seems to me the least invasive modification to the machine and likely most reliable (i.e. not drawing power from the pin's own power supply), while still switching the amp on/off with the same switch for the machine. I've got all the parts for that, but haven't started assembling anything yet.

Still undecided about the exact amp. Probably get one of the lower-cost options from Crutchfield, out of customer loyalty and not wanting to think too hard about it. (My purchasing sometimes gets complicated because I've vowed to never buy a single thing from Amazon again, which is where most of the "how to" posts reference components to buy; it's not always simple to find an equivalent elsewhere.)

Basically, I'm just taking all of the incredibly useful information spread through this thread and integrating it into a single DIY project. My result will be very much similar to what lots of people have already done. The main exception (I think) is that rather than buying the various add-on parts, like the mounting plate, C5 adapter, and upgraded amp, I'm looking to fabricate as much of that myself, and buying a non-pinball-specific part (i.e. the amp) instead of going through the pin-specific suppliers.

I don't have anything against the pin-specific suppliers. Indeed, they provide a great service by making this kind of upgrade accessible to a wide range of people, including those who just want to plug stuff in and get it working. But I love the idea of doing as much as I can from scratch. If the Heathkit company were still around, I'd be looking to buy an amp kit from them and just building that myself too instead of getting an off-the-shelf part.

(Oh. On a whim, I just looked up Heathkit, and it turns out they are still around. Wow! I thought they'd gone under years ago. Guess I'll be browsing their catalog. )

I did mention this in my earlier post, but I understand not everyone wants to read through the longer ones.

The 3D part I designed includes a hole, through which a hex key wrench (allen key) can be inserted. I'm replacing the existing crosspoint/Philips screws with hex-drive screws.

I was hoping to find hex head screws in that size (5-44 4-48). That way, a regular open-end wrench could be used to secure the fastener. I think for this application, one could even 3D print a suitable wrench, since the screw doesn't really need a lot of torque on it.

But none of the usual hardware suppliers have a 5-44 4-48 hex head screw. They do have options for the hex drive screws though.

The through-hole for the hex wrench prints perfectly without supports and doesn't compromise the basic strength of the mount, so given that I was going to be replacing the screws anyway, I think it's a fine solution.

In theory, you could still use the original screws, if you can find a very small screwdriver that would fit through the hole. When I looked (again, at my usual suppliers), I found screwdrivers small enough to fit in terms of diameter, but they are still all too long. The shortest I found was over 4", which is still too long to squeeze into the space inside the speaker hole where it'd need to go. A screwdriver would have to be no longer than 3" to fit.

In terms of trying to do it without the through-hole, I'm not sure even the smallest 90-degree driver would work. The thinnest I've seen still need almost 1/2" of clearance, and there's barely 1/4" between the screw head and the mounting boss.

That said, I did design the part with what I think are sufficiently large gaps around those holes to provide options for a larger wrench or driver to at least be able to rotate around with the screw head, in case other people have an easier time finding specific alternatives than I did.

In between step 1 and 2, will you be running the factory fitted cabinet speaker?
I wonder what that will be like based on the comments from davegauth ...
but once you've got the external sub in place I can imagine it will be good.

Are you seriously getting rattle on stock speakers? Must be a mad volume to get that.
I'm only able to crank it up when the Mrs is out so normally stays on 3 -7 volume. Also, my glass started off super tight and only this week started sliding down under it's own weight.

I've decided against an external Sub but am thinking I will add bluetooth capable amplification later on mostly for the benefit of turning it into a giant BT speaker. This would mean I will take some form of always on power for the amp and manually switch it but thats my step 2.

I might just bite the bullet and try the Alpine sub.

Oh, and regarding the LCD mount screws....
I wonder if there's enough room for an angled bit driver? Maybe not - it looks tight...

Yes, I'll play the game awhile just with the new 5.25" speakers, but the OEM cabinet speaker.

Are you seriously getting rattle on stock speakers? Must be a mad volume to get that.

I guess that depends on what you consider "mad". I generally have the volume at 15 or 20. The game room is reasonably isolated from the rest of the house, and I'm not playing late at night (usually), so it's fine for me. I find that 25 would really be the ideal setting for me, so I can hear the finer details in the music and get a more full experience. Even at 25 though, and certainly beyond, it's starting to get too loud for me to be able to concentrate on the game properly. So it's a bit of a balancing act.

One of the things I'm hoping/expecting is that with the better quality equipment, I can get a similar audio experience at lower volumes.

I'm only able to crank it up when the Mrs is out so normally stays on 3 -7 volume. Also, my glass started off super tight and only this week started sliding down under it's own weight.

My glass has never been that tight. I can occasionally push to up and to the right (where most of the vibration seems to occur), and it'll stay there and the rattling won't be so bad. But it eventually works its way back down and the rattling gets worse.

Ironically, it's not like it rattles all the time anyway. But one of the worst triggers is the song Subdivisions. Serious bass there, and it's such a great song, it's a terrible time for the machine to decide it wants to contribute its bit of "singing along".

I've decided against an external Sub but am thinking I will add bluetooth capable amplification later on mostly for the benefit of turning it into a giant BT speaker. This would mean I will take some form of always on power for the amp and manually switch it but thats my step 2.

Always-on should actually be easier, since there's a service outlet right inside the backbox for that.

Not sure how well the Bluetooth would work, especially if you want it to work at distance. Lots of people already have trouble with the wifi dongle, much of which is alleviated for those who try using a USB extension cable and moving it outside the backbox. Seems like the backbox and cabinet attenuate the radio signals pretty well, and Bluetooth isn't very far from wifi frequency-wise. It might be affected in a similar way.

Oh, and regarding the LCD mount screws....
I wonder if there's enough room for an angled bit driver? Maybe not - it looks tight...

If you mean a 90-degree driver, yeah...see my reply to @duderegular. There really isn't very much space between the side hole and the speaker mounting boss. It'd have to be a pretty specialized, maybe custom-made tool.

I think that the my mount could be designed a little differently to accommodate a conventional screwdriver. But it'd mean sacrificing some of the structure for the speaker gasket ring and widening the boss, bridging it over a wide slot where you can get a screwdriver in. Even ignoring the structural issues, my other concern would be that that approach would pretty much negate the whole point of having the ring to engage the speaker gasket in the first place, by putting a very large gap between the mounting plate and the speaker.

It's bad enough I've got a couple of 2mm holes for the hex wrench, but I suspect those won't be big enough to be acoustically significant. And easy enough to fill if it did turn out to be a problem (I might just try a comparison with them blocked and unblocked, out of curiosity). But the inches-wide gap one would need for a conventional screwdriver? That seems like that could introduce some problems, assuming there's any point in isolating the front and back of the speaker in the first place.

I guess if I were trying to turn this into an actual business or something, I'd spend the time and do some testing with instrumentation to quantify what's actually going on acoustically. But I'm not, not even close, so that sort of analysis is way beyond my interest.

I have had success using NinjaFlex 1.75mm filament between the cabinet and glass channel to eliminate glass rattle on my games. It's the same idea as the ziptie fix, but after adding car stereo amps to my games I needed something a little bit thicker than the zipties. The glass does fit pretty tight now, and 1.75mm is maybe jut a tad larger than ideal, but it is compressible enough to work. Other TPU filaments I tried were too hard and not compressible enough.

It’s possible this is done on purpose. The cabinet woofer may be out of phase to time align better with the mains. The sound wave path is far longer for the sub than the backbox speakers and so it would make sense that they be out of phase.

I hate to hijack this thread for a little bit, but I’m wanting to do a similar upgrade to my Tron Legacy Pro. I bought a pair of 4” Kickers and replaced the 8 ohm backbox stock speakers and get no sound out of them. The cabinet speaker works fine and the original 4” speakers worked again when I reinstalled them. I wonder if there is something different about the SAM CPU board that doesn’t like the Kickers. Maybe because they are 4 ohm?

Electrically and mechanically, speakers are pretty simple devices. It's hard to see how a functional speaker would just fail to work completely.

The Stern Rush game (the only modern Stern machine I'm familiar with) has a setting for the speaker impedance. You should check to see if your machine has something similar. That said, unless the machine's amp is somehow specifically testing the impedance and refusing to send a signal to the speaker if it's too low, I don't see how the difference impedance would prevent the speaker from working at all.

You might get poorer sound quality with the wrong impedance, and over the long run you might even manage to damage the amplifier if the components aren't designed to handle the current of the 4 ohm speaker. But you ought to at least hear something. Indeed, I've read posts from other people saying that they intentionally set the wrong impedance -- setting to 4 ohm even though they have 8 ohm speakers -- and they prefer the way it sounds that way. Not something I'd do, but at least it demonstrates that an impedance mismatch doesn't disable the speaker entirely.

Though all that said, now that I think about it...if you have tested the new speakers on a different system and verified that the speakers themselves are good, maybe the pin does have some kind of circuitry design to prevent it from driving 4 ohm speakers. I mean, seems to me adding that circuitry would cost more than just building the amp to be able to handle the 4 ohm speakers. But I guess you never know.

You could test that theory by wiring the two speakers in series -- use just one channel for both, attach the positive lead to one speaker, the negative to the other, and then tie the two remaining speaker terminals together -- and see if that works. That should increase the impedance to 8 ohms, and so if it's just an impedance mismatch, you should hear sound out of the pair of speakers with that configuration.

And of course, if you haven't tested the speakers with a different amp, one that you know can handle 4 ohm speakers, you definitely should do that. The chances of you getting two bad speakers seems pretty low, but when troubleshooting, always check everything, even the stuff you think obviously couldn't be a problem.

Okay, phase one is complete. Finished printing my mounting plates, got the Molex connectors on the wiring that came with the speakers, installed everything, hooked it up, and...well, it's a little better, anyway.

Note that phase one is strictly replacing the speakers, and only the backbox speakers, not the cabinet (honestly, the cabinet speaker doesn't really sound all that bad to me, and phase two is to add an external sub anyway). I am still driving the new speakers using the pin's built-in amp, so I wasn't expecting a huge change. Nor did I get one. But it's a promising shift in the right direction.

One thing though: I had read through this entire thread, but of course there's a lot here and I hadn't been taking notes, so...once I got the new speakers in, I naively assumed I should update the audio settings to tell the pin there are 4 ohm speakers installed now instead of 8 ohm. Except that doing that made the speakers sound like crap.

I went back and read all the posts that had the word "ohm" in them, and I see others have had similar experiences (for example, https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/improving-sound-quality-the-diy-route/page/4#post-6776902), and that the advice actually is to just leave the setting on 8 ohms. Which for now I'd already done anyway. But what surprises me is that the comments that discuss the difference, mostly just say something to the effect of "it's not quite as good on 4 ohms than on 8 ohms". For me, that doesn't come close to describing the actual difference; I find the audio on the 4 ohm setting to be completely unlistenable. If I turn the volume all the way up, it starts to fill back in, but the actual sound level at the highest volume setting is still way less than I'd expect. The machine ought to get louder than my ears can take, since even the smaller 4" speakers could accomplish that.

On the 4 ohm speaker setting, the sound level is attenuated so much, I can't even believe anyone would ever consider running the audio system with that setting.

And yet, there was in fact one person swimming upstream, who says the 4 ohm setting "was the ticket": https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/improving-sound-quality-the-diy-route/page/15#post-6924857 Not sure what that's all about. And even the other folks, it sounds like they are experiencing just a relatively minor difference between the two settings, not the complete disaster I'm hearing.

Anyway, like I said...next step, external sub. I already have all the parts, even already assembled the C5-to-RCA jack connector, just need to hook everything up. And after that, looking at a discrete amp to drive everything. Still need to decide which amp to buy for that part of the project. I'm hoping with that, I will see (hear) the full potential of the new Alpines.

What's the current/final thinking on keeping/disconnecting the cabinet speaker when you have an external sub?

The above post seems to be saying "keep the cabinet woofer". Which seems reasonable to me. But I'm pretty sure I also read another post saying that once they got everything set up right, their new 5.25" backbox speakers handled the mid-range just fine, and all they needed beyond that was the external sub.

Thoughts?

Any update on this issue? I couldn't find a follow up message, and it seems to have potential implication for my next upgrade phase. Did you ever find out why you still weren't getting a strong bass signal for the sub even after fixing the original connection problem (i.e. "jiggling at the wires")?

I've been working under the assumption that I can just tap the subwoofer signal from C5 (pin 7) to provide the input for my subwoofer. Is that still a reasonable assumption?

My Halloween came and the sub sounded terrible, pushed the cone and very tight. Got underneath and could see it was touching the grill and cab.
Put a spacer on and now moving some serious air and flexing the glass, tracking down all the rattles is difficult but at least it’s right now.
Will be connecting up to an external sub then turning it right down until zero rattles. Backbox speakers sound great.

School boy error or can’t be bothered? Latter I think as Rick and Morty had the same issue apparently, shame as it’s a half decent sub and deserves freedom to move!

BF928E89-3152-456B-9734-79403E7D4680 (resized).jpeg

I was really hoping you'd hear more of a difference than what you describe.
I've the Alpines on order now and I've tee'd up a friend to print plates for me. Are you likely to tweak the design in any way or are they complete?

Til now I've been running my factory sound as 4ohm to the cabinet and 8ohm to the backbox.
This was because that is how the speakers were labelled (yes I know it's probably more a gain switch), and because the cabinet speaker was distorting.
Recently I fixed some of the distortion by removing a crease in the mesh so I should go back and try the cabinet at 8ohm...

Yeah, me too. That said, it is better; main thing is not quite so muddled/muffled tones. And I would not be surprised if with a better amp, it gets even better. But it's subtle for now.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but the whole "upgrade the pin audio" thing can be a slippery slope. I've only got three phases planned, but now that I've seen what's going on with the backbox speakers, I'm wondering if it's true that the pin audio board just isn't even sending the mid-range signals to them. Now I'm thinking it would be interesting, after getting the discrete amp set up, to include a small mixer that can take all three line-out inputs and mix them into three or four line level outputs. That way it would be possible to mix the bass/sub channel back into the L & R channels to fill those mid-ranges back in, and to see if the 5.25" speakers can take over for the cabinet speaker once the external sub is hooked up.

On the other hand, why fight it? The cabinet speaker is already there; if it's doing its job handling the mid-range, I guess that's not really a problem, and there's no reason to try to shift the mid-range back to the backbox speakers. Assuming that's what's even going on in the first place. I guess it's just my curiosity getting the better of me.

I've the Alpines on order now and I've tee'd up a friend to print plates for me. Are you likely to tweak the design in any way or are they complete?

I don't have any modifications to the design planned, no. In fact I'm going to try to find some time today to get them uploaded with details about printing and installing. I'll post a link if/when that happens

Well, that's a relief. Thanks for clarifying!

Okay, I uploaded the design. You can see it here (I'll get a copy on Thingiverse eventually): https://www.printables.com/model/313814-mounting-plate-for-525-speakers-in-stern-pinball-m

I put detailed instructions for printing and installing in the description on the model page. Probably more detailed than most people need, but it's the kind of detail I like when I'm looking at someone else's project.

EDIT: here's the Thingiverse link: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5618745

Really well done! I want to add LEDs around the speaker frame so may look into remixing this. Super clean design

Thanks!

Funny you should mention the LEDs. I actually have a version that has space for that:

mounting plate with gap for LEDs

But I haven't uploaded it yet, because I can't figure out whether that's actually all that useful. You could print the whole thing in translucent material, but I'm not sure one would want the whole front face of it translucent. But I don't have a multi-filament printer to play with, so I'm unsure how useful a model where you have to set one particular section as translucent and the rest some other color. And since I don't have a printer that supports that, and have never done it myself, I don't even know how or whether that's something I can specify in the model itself, or if it's something a person does in the slicer.

(Yeah, I guess I could just look it up on the web, but I'm being lazy for now... )

I thought about splitting the model into two pieces that can somehow be reattached to each other later, but that also seems complicated and I think the model I've got so far might require a little extra tweaking to get that to work out.

Do you have any thoughts about any of that?

I am running the Kicker 4"'s (backbox) and Skar 8" Midrange (cab) and Monoprice 8" (or 12" shared with 2 machines) external powered sub and really like the sound in my Godzilla. Same setup with different backbox speakers (Pyle) in my other games. In my opinion the Kickers sound better than the Pyles - thanks to this thread I tried them out.

I'm on the path to replacing the speakers so will look at removing the mesh when I do the cabinet speaker.

Currently I dont go loud enough to cause further interference Most of the time its at vol 3.!

Why not just print the whole thing in translucent and then paint it all black except what you want to stay translucent? It's more work, but it's easier than splitting the print if you don't have a multi-filament printer.

Another option is to redesign it so that you glue the LEDs to the faceplate print and use a diffuser instead. Hell...print a diffusor using the translucent filament and create a groove in the faceplate to hold the diffusor. There are a lot of options. I personally would want lights to go around the entire speaker faceplate to create that flame effect. I know I can just buy it, but I'm a maker that likes to build things myself.

That’s my setup too, I wonder how you set the crossover for the subwoofer. I set mine to the lowest setting (50Hz) but don’t really understand the details. I read to set it 10Hz above the others speakers, and one got it hooked up to both the JBL Stage 810 and the Skar (different machines, using the pinwoofer hub)

Yeah, those are all good ideas. What I was really getting at, in my own oblique and wordy way, is that so far, all I've made is a half-hearted attempt at an LED-friendly version, which is why I didn't bother to upload it yet. Though you're right, a person could just go with that and use paint to black out the parts they don't want translucent.

And yeah, I agree on both points: I don't see the point in speaker lights unless it's a full perimeter's worth of individually addressable RGBs, so you can get those fun effects, and while you can buy a lot of this stuff, it's more fun to make it DIY (hence this thread).

Finally got to play a whole game through on my Rush pin with the new speakers since I installed them last night. I fiddled a lot with the various audio settings first, but couldn't find any combination of settings that seemed better than just turning the EQ off and centering the fade between backbox and cabinet.

For sure, the speakers are louder (I left the audio at the 8 ohm setting, since the 4 ohm settings reduces the volume way too much), and it is a cleaner sound. It's hard to tease out the difference between just playing the speakers louder at a given volume level, and them having a more precise sound, but I would that they definitely have the latter. It's most noticeable at lower volumes, I think; even the old 4" speakers, if I cranked the volume up they would start to fill in some of the detail that was missing. With the new speakers, I still get the detail at lower perceived volumes (and of course those volumes happen at a lower actual volume setting too than the same perceived volume with the old speakers).

But the most important improvement I noticed so far is that apparently the better speakers have improved my ability to play pinball. I had to take the old metal plate out last week so I could take measurements and work on the 3D printed one, so I haven't played the machine since then. But my first game back was my best ever. First time I beat 2B points (and I cleared that milestone by 500M), and I finally beat the Cygnus X-1: Book I mode for the second time, after having failed a bunch of times. Got three mode high scores (including Book I), along with best time traveler. I fell apart the last couple of balls, but it was still an epic game by my standards.

It's gotta be the speakers! (my apologies to Spike Lee ).

I still have a ways to go in improving my game. Book II still remains out of reach, and even once I finally qualify it I anticipate some difficulties, never mind 2112. I guess that means I'm going to have to go through with the next upgrade phases and make the audio even better.

I'll have to double check when I'm back home at the machines, but I believe I'm closer to 150 Hz on the crossover setting on the external sub.

EDIT: I do have my external subs set at 150 Hz or very close to it.

I hooked them each up to the existing speakers and they definitely work. I talked to another pinsider and the SAM games have something in them that prevents them from working on 4 ohm speakers. I found an old AC/DC thread and it seems I'll need to add an amp to make them work.

If I'm following on the issue with the LCD plate screw access - I don't see any reason that needs screwed into the speaker mount. Why not just design the plate with channels to slide over the screws (screw the LCD just into the metal housing, speaker mount just goes over).

Has anyone designed a spacer ring for the subwoofer in the cabinet, to increase clearance between the woofer and the grid?

I can probably quickly design one though

I think many of us are simply removing the grill/grid/screen piece as it also reduces vibration/noise.

Even with that some of us pushing higher power could use a spacer. I'd be interested in one if someone starts selling them.

On Stern Spike 2 machines, the speaker plates screw to the LCD mount to hold it in place.

You did it again my man! Nice model. I will keep you posted on how well it prints. I'm inclined to print it in PETG.

If you want to print that one, I'll upload it to the pages for the main model. Are you planning to print it entirely in translucent and then paint it? Or do you have a multi-filament printer? Or something else?

EDIT: I went ahead and uploaded the STL for the LED-gap version of the mounting plate.

As awesome1 notes, the OEM design uses the speaker mounting plates to secure the LCD display frame. And the part I designed entirely replaces the existing metal mounting plate, so it needs to accommodate the attachment to the LCD display frame too.

That said, your comment got me thinking: I tend to approach this kind of project by trying to match the original design as closely as possible. My assumption is that that design went through many many person-hours of design effort and testing that I don't have the capability of doing, and so I'm likely to minimize the chance of making a mistake just by following their footsteps.

But maybe there is in fact some way to modify the design so that there's a part that screws onto the LCD frame before installing the speaker mounting plate, and then having the speaker mounting plate attach to that first part somehow, either with fasteners that are more readily accessible somewhere else, or maybe even just a snap/friction fit.

All that said, the through holes aren't really that big of a problem. It took me maybe 60 seconds instead of 10 to secure each screw, and it's a little more "fiddly". And of course I had to buy the hex-drive screws, but I was buying hardware anyway and they don't really cost that much. So "end of the day" I can't say I'm all that motivated to explorer other design options. Happy to see what someone else comes up with though, if they are so inclined. I certainly don't claim that the design I made is the end-all, be-all solution and that there's no way to improve it.

I am switching the factory back box speakers in my acdc premium and I have 4” kickers that are 4ohm speakers coming, and I’ve heard they have to be wired in series in a Sam game. Can anybody confirm this, and if so, can somebody please give me a pic of how all the wiring goes in their game? Thanks in advance

Here’s my current factory setup. Which speaker post is the positive? Im assuming the red/white wire is positive, and the negative terminal is going to that capacitor or do I have it backwards in my guesses?

Second image is diagram I found to run in a series. I assume I can run off negative terminal, through capacitor, and then to positive terminal of the other speaker once I wire the new kickers. Does this sound correct?

38BE2DCF-F695-42B4-995C-C6AF2C4D8230 (resized).jpegA9EFFD2D-5809-42AD-99B8-EE97C27CB0AA (resized).png

Why not split it in two parts ? One for the plate, one for the speaker ring.

Here's a design I made a while ago to adapt JBL Club 4020, it has a groove for a ledstrip. It could be mounted on top of the speaker plate, flat without the spacer

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5318717

Design is provided with Fusion original file, so you can adjust dimension to match your specific speakers. It's currently designed for 4" speaker replacement

20220226_133452_Medium (resized).jpg

If I understood the initial post about this project, a major motivator or requirement was to not have the 5.25" speaker behind a 4" hole.

Well with 3D printing you can accomodate pretty much everything. That said, I'm using 4" speakers on my Premium, which has 4" speakers, the adapter is primarily to add a spacer and adjust for screw hole location

Yes, exactly.

I had some design requirements, one of them being exactly that. I have a Rush Premium machine, so it has a 4" hole, and I don't want to mount the 5.25" speaker behind the 4" hole. This precludes using existing mounting plate with its screws.

Another design requirement has to do with the mounting screws. A stock metal mounting plate has machine-threaded studs welded to the plate, so they are secure without affecting the thickness of the plate. With the 3D printed part, my options are to just make a hole and have the screw head not flush with the front of the plate, or recess the screw into the plate, necessarily creating extra structure behind the plate to accommodate the screw. I very much did not want the screw head visible in front of the plate.

Yet another design requirement was for the speaker to not break the back plane of the mounting plate. This of course is arbitrary; at the very least, I could've put the speaker a bit forward so the tweeter is flush with the front of the plate, and if I reused the clear spacers that adjust for the foam piece I took out, the speaker could mount even a little closer to the back of the plate. But I decided to go with the choice I did, and I'm happy with it.

All that said, I don't think any of those choices precludes the idea of splitting the part in two. I said as much a few posts back when I discussed the design dilemmas surrounding accommodating LEDs. My main concern would be it could be a challenge to secure the speaker ring so you didn't get unwanted vibrations (I think it would at the very least stay in place, so at least that wouldn't be something to worry about).

Mostly though, I just didn't put much effort into the design because I don't personally have any immediate plans to install LEDs, and so it wasn't as high a priority as other tasks on my list (not all of which involve pinball machines, oddly enough ).

Now that I'm thinking about it again though, it seems to me that I could design the speaker ring with an extra rabbet around the bottom, and then widen the hole in the plate just a bit to accommodate the protrusion on the speaker ring that the rabbet makes. I'll bet that would hold all the plastic together plenty securely, and someone who wanted to be belt-and-suspenders about it could just glue the ring in place after printing it, since it only really needs to be separate so that it can be printed in a different material.

As an added bonus, the speaker ring is the main thing that gets in the way of using a regular-length #1 Phillips screwdriver, so by making it a separate part, the plate itself could be installed using the stock screws and a screwdriver, and then the speaker ring can be installed either before or with the speaker itself, with or without glue (I'd probably go without glue, since I'm clumsy enough I'd probably spill some on the machine trying to glue the ring in while the mounting plate was already in place).

Phase two complete!

Frankly, I found this modification much more gratifying than the larger speakers. The 5.25" speakers definitely improved the sound, and it also gives me the same volume and better detail to the sound at lower volume settings. But the subwoofer was easier and added a lot more dimension to the sound. I've seen posts from people asking about adding a shaker motor. Having seen what the subwoofer does, I think a shaker motor would be pointless. In addition to the benefit to the music, the machine has lots of sound effects with plenty of bass, and the subwoofer gives you a deep shake on those that I think a motor never could.

Certainly if I were choosing between the two, I'd definitely go subwoofer first. I guess if after that a person still wanted to add the shaker motor, I wouldn't fault them for that, but I'm sure that for me personally, I don't need it.

This upgrade was a lot easier than phase one, but more expensive since it involves the subwoofer. As with phase one, I went DIY on the connector as much as possible. The retail option for a connector to pull the line-out signal from C5 on the motherboard isn't very expensive itself, so there's hardly any money to be saved this way. But it's more fun.

Here's what the hookup looks like:

whole board and subwoofer cable
close up of C5 and line-out connector adapter

One thing I do like about this from a practical approach is that it lets me use the standard RCA jacks for the line level signal. The third-party retail option appears to have a 1/8" phono jack for the three channels (one stereo jack for the L+R, and a mono jack for subwoofer). Again, it's not going to break the bank to add an adapter to convert to RCA, but why complicate things when it's easy enough to make up a standard connector.

I didn't take many photos of assembly. There's already a fair amount of discussion of the general concept in a different thread, and that's even referenced by a pinned post on this thread. Suffice to say, the key elements are to combine the negative conductors on the left and right channels before crimping the Molex pin for that ground, and to use pins 1 and 7 on the Molex connector for the subwoofer.

Here's a photo of me soldering the negative conductors from the left and right channels before doing the heat-shrink tubing and crimping:
soldering the negatives
And here's the finished adapter with all three RCA jacks:
completed C5 adapter
As noted in @pinmonk's thread, crimping is a delicate operation because the pins are so small. But it's doable even without Molex's expensive tools. Just take your time, use small-jawed pliers such as needle-nose or electrical pliers, make sure you only ever bend the crimping tabs and not any other part of the connector, and do it one tab at a time, folding it over and crimping it down before doing the other side of the connector.

As with the negative conductors, I put just a dab of solder on the crimped connection too, just to ensure a solid connection. If you do that, make sure you don't overdo it, otherwise the solder will make the connector too big to fit in the housing. If there is solder on the outside of the crimp, it's too much.

With the adapter made up, hooking up the subwoofer is as simple as plugging the adapter onto the C5 connector on the motherboard, and then plugging the subwoofer's cable onto the subwoofer connector on the adapter. I haven't done phase three yet -- adding a discrete amp instead of using the one on the pin's motherboard -- so the left and right channel connectors are left unused for now.

As can be seen in the photos, I took out the topper plug at the top of the backbox and ran the subwoofer cable through that for now. I guess eventually I will probably take a Forstner bit to the bottom of the cabinet and run the cable through that hole.

Here are the parts I used with links to the Digi-key and Monoprice product pages where I got them:
1x Molex 10112073 connector housing
5x Molex 8550129 connector socket (gold-plated)
1x Single-channel RCA cable (this can be any RCA cable as long as it has the female connector on one end...the other end doesn't matter because it'll be cut off)
1x Two-channel RCA cable (again, just need the RCA jacks on one end)

I looked at buying the RCA jacks individually, but it turns out it's way less expensive to just buy a pre-made cable and hack it up. I'm not really a big fan of cutting up perfectly good parts, but in this case it just seemed like the best way to go. If someone knows of a good place to buy the RCA jacks on their own at a reasonable price (say, $0.50 to $1.00 at the most), I'd love to know about it.

To eliminate the need for the hardware going through your plate and into the side of the LCD screen, add to the outside "wall" on your speaker plate that the screws normally run through. Just add an "end cap" that has a wall for the top and bottom of the screen and a wall for the back edge of the screen. You would nut down the speaker plates to the speaker panel on each side as normal and those added "end caps" would hold each side of the LCD screen in place.

So, you would be sandwiching the LCD screen in place between the clear LCD shield that is mounted on the back of the speaker panel and that speaker plate design.