Quoted from ray-dude:WPC Speaker Upgrade
Recipe for upgrading the speakers on a WPC pin (ST:TNG)
Shopping list
Backbox
WPC Speaker panel with 5 1/4” speaker cut outs $40
https://virtuapin.net/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=17&products_id=114&zenid=fd9jdjhled6cvdbuq0b0j48nc0
Satin black spray paint for new speaker panel $7
amazon.com link »
Kicker CS Series CSC5 5 1/4” Speakers $77
amazon.com link »
8x #8 7/8” screws to mount backbox speakers to panel $10
amazon.com link »
Speaker Light Kits Deluxe 5 1/4” Type 13 kit $75
http://speakerlightkits.com/Type-13.html
Note: for WPC games, let Doug (DugFreez) know you need the "2 blade US power cable”, not one that normally comes with that kit to connect to a Stern SPIKE 2 game
(Optional) Deluxe Sound activated RGB controller (for Speaker Light Kit) $10
http://speakerlightkits.com/Use-of-Deluxe-Sound-Activated-RGB-Controller.html
3M 467MP Clear Adhesive Transfer Tape to attach speaker panel acrylic to new panel $18
amazon.com link »
Cabinet
JBL Stage 810 800W Max 8" Subwoofer $70
amazon.com link »
8" Subwoofer Speaker Spacers 1/2” Depth Extender Extending Rings $18
amazon.com link »
Power
(optional) Switched triggered power outlet $30
amazon.com link »
Future Goodies
Pinsound PLUS $390
https://www.pinsound.org/shop/en/44-5506-pinsound-plus-pinball-sound-board.html
Dayton Audio 2.1 100W amp $99
amazon.com link »
Speaker cable, connectors, etc.
amazon.com link »
amazon.com link »
(If you would like a very detailed write up on upgrading sound on WPC systems, please see Joseph “Tony” Dziedzic’s OG article from 2005 - http://www.dziedzic.us/wpc_speaker_replacement.html )
Intro
After successfully and very happily upgrading the sound system on my modern pins, it was time to dive in to upgrading the sound on my daughter’s Star Trek: The Next Generation. This involves upgrading the back box and cabinet speakers, adding some speaker lights from Doug @ SpeakerLightKits.com , and in the future, adding a Pinsound to get full orchestrations.
This write up is capturing my shopping list and an outline of what I went through to get the job done. Please refer to the respective manuals and Tony’s very detailed write up from 2005 for details, or drop me a note with questions. If DIY seems like too much, there are commercial options out there as well.
For my Godzilla LE, I had fantastic results with the Kicker CS5’s and JBL 810 sub, which are favorites here on the DIY sound upgrade thread. These are 5 1/4” speakers and 8” woofer respectively, so require modifications to the stock speaker panel and cabinet to work, and need new wiring and amplification to connect to the game.
I’m neither skilled nor motivated to be sawing large holes in my speaker panel or my cabinet, so I used a simpler approach than what Tony highlighted in his guide. Feel free to mix and match to whatever you have comfort with.
Speaker Panel
The stock speaker panel on TNG (and other WPC games) has a 5 1/4” hole and a 4” hole. Rather than sawing out an enlarged hole for the right driver, I purchased a bare WPC 5 1/4” speaker panel from Virtuapin. Price was right ($40) and came predrilled and with t nuts for the mounting hardware. Awesome, one carpentry problem solved.
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Before moving parts from my stock speaker panel over to the new one, first thing I did was make sure all the t nuts were (mostly) flush with the panel (much easier to hammer them in now vs after the panel is populated). I also spray painted both the front and back sides of the panel black, making sure to paint the inside of the speaker openings and DMD opening.
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Next, it was time to disassemble my stock panel and move parts over to the new panel. This includes the back hooks where the speaker panel hangs from the back box, and the glass channel at the top of the panel. These can be purchased new from Pinball Life or Marco if you prefer to not move them over, but I moved mine. I also removed the DMD to make things easier to work on (take pictures before disassembling anything!)
The tricky things to move over are the acrylic front of the stock speaker panel, and the speaker grilles with the Star Fleet insignia. Tony’s guide goes into great detail on how to do this without damaging the parts. If you’re not comfortable with doing so, I suspect there are reproductions available to purchase new so you can leave your old panel alone. Take your time, be careful, this is the only tricky and scary part of this upgrade.
While you have the acrylic panel removed, this is the perfect time to clean and polish it, I hit mine with #3 Novus in some tough areas, then #2 Novus for the entire panel, then finally #1 Novus to finish it off.
With the front acrylic removed, time to remove the screws that the DMD is mounted to. You will need to install these on your new panel before you attack the acrylic speaker panel face to your new panel. You can use a hammer to knock these out, but note that these screws do have a threaded portion to keep them from spinning when you tighten the bolts for the DMD. What I did is I wrapped the end of the screws with a cloth, and gently used a set of pliers to grip them and rotate counter clockwise while pushing down on the long part of the screw. This popped the screw right out of the front of the speaker panel until the thread area was clear, then I used a hammer to get them the rest of the way out.
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On the new panel, it was a tight fit to get the DMD mounting screws back in. I used a hammer to get them in right up to the thread near the head of the screw. I then used a bolt and washer to tighten it in the rest of the way (press on the head of the bolt while tightening the bolt against the speaker panel on the other side, and the bolt will thread right into the front side of the panel)
Next, I installed the speaker grilles on the panel. Careful to not damage or bend your panel as you do so. I was able to use several of the original staples, and used a staple gun for the rest. I gently (and carefully!) used a hammer to get the staples as flush with the surface of the grilles as I could (don’t ding the grilles with the hammer!). In the photos you can see my original panel on the bottom and new panel on the top. With the grilles moved, you can see the smaller right speaker, which is the reason I need a new panel to use two 5 1/4” speakers
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Following Tony’s guide, use the 3M tape to mount the speaker panel acrylic to your new panel. Take your time, get it right, and sure all the tape is secure and snug. You most definitely don’t want to have to remove the panel and do this over again.
Finally, reattach the panel hooks, glass channel, the foam around the DMD opening, and the DMD. At this point, you will have a complete panel ready for installing the speaker lights and speakers.
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The installation of the Kicker’s and Type 13 kit is very straight forward. Follow the installation instructions for the Type 13 kit and you’re good to go. Make sure you’re not over tightening the speakers, and to make sure the ground ribbon is reattached on the new panel to all the components where it was attached on the original panel (DMD, speakers, etc)
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Your speaker panel is now ready to be wired into the machine.
Note that the original ST:TNG is a mono game. While waiting on my Pinsound, I wired the sound to the left speaker only (on the Kickers, the wide tab is “+” and the narrow tab is “-“). When the Pinsound arrives, it has stereo output and I’ll wire up both speakers for stereo.
(Many thanks to Eric_Manuel for the inspiration to add the speaker lights and for many other ideas from his Star Trek Experience project…Eric posted a video showing speaker lights in hist machine here )
Advanced Wiring for the Speaker Lit Kits
Also note that the Type 13 kit has its own 5V power supply for the LEDs in the speaker lights. If you’re going to be using the kit with a WPC game, let Doug know that you need a ”2 blade US power cable" to be included with the kit, and not one that normally comes with that kit to connect to a Stern SPIKE 2 game.
Using the regular power cable, you can plug the speaker light kit power supply in to the service outlet, but then it is on even with the machine off.
Rather than have to use the remote that comes with the kit to turn it off and on, or connect the speaker light kit to 5V in the machine (5V is used for the CPU board), I built a power strip (plugged into the service outlet) wired in a relay that turns the power strip on when 12V from the game is active. That way, the game can turn on power from the power strip, and the speaker light kit has the benefit of using its own dedicated power brick, plugged into the switched power strip.
If that sounds scary (and if you’re not sure if it sounds scary or not, probably best to consider it scary), I suggest you pick up a commercial switched outlet:
amazon.com link »
and wire it to an appropriate voltage line on the machine (this commercial unit accepts 3-48VDC, and 12-120VAC as control voltages…basically, when the unit senses a voltage on the control input, it acts like a switch and turns on power to the controlled outlets).
For my homebrew version, I used a 12V controlled relay for my switched outlet, so I used a 12V line from the machine (I use J114-2 on the Power Driver Board, but if you review the schematics, there are 12V lines available to tap into in multiple places). The relay uses a minimum amount of current, so you don’t need to be worried about overwhelming the power circuit on your machine (in the case of ST:TNG, the cannon motors and optos are on the 12V line, so it can be finicky).
Now when you turn on your machine, the relay in the power strip kicks in and you have switched power that you can plug your speaker lights (and other mods, like toppers, etc) into. As a bonus, if you have a bunch of other mods or a DIY topper that needs power, you can now plug them into same switched outlet, and not overload the power supply board in your pin.
Cabinet speaker
My ST:TNG has a smaller woofer inside the cabinet, mounted to a raised area with a smaller hole in the bottom of the cabinet. In Tony’s guide, he walks through the process of drilling out the hole in the bottom of the cabinet so that it is big enough for a 8” woofer. I’m not that brave (and honestly, I try to restrict my uber hifi audiophile crazy to my main music set up, not my pins).
For me, my strategy is to remove the stock subwoofer, pry off the raised platform area to reduce the height (so my new 8” JBL woofer doesn’t run into the underside of my playfield), and use a spacer ring to leave space between the new 8” driver and the cabinet. The idea here is to not have the moving cone on the driver touch the cabinet (it will buzz and sound horrible). Things will sound better with a 8” hole, but again, that is a future optimization for me, that I may never actually get to.
Once you remove the original woofer, you can see the raised area the speaker is mounted on, and the smaller hole that WPC are built with. The raised area is glued and stapled to the cabinet. I removed it by gently using a pry bar from the inside of the opening, then gently prying up. Glue was old enough on my cabinet that it easily separated from the main cabinet.
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After a quick vacuum (and finding some long lost nuts and washers) time to test fit the JBL subwoofer. Note that the JBL is *significantly* larger than the original WPC subwoofer. It is important to test fit and make sure that when the playfield is lowered there aren’t any mechs that are touching the woofer (I had good clearance with my ST:TNG)
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To give the 8” woofer room to move, I used a 1/2” tall 8” woofer spacer. When positioned, the driver is not centered with the smaller hole. In the grad scheme of things, would it be better to have an 8” hole and the driver centered on it? Absolutely. Am I happier doing no carpentry and being OK with off centered mounting? Absolutely^2
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Note that I do not use a speaker grille for the subs in my home machines. I also did not put in a cross over or equalization, since I plan to eventually have these when I put in a Pinsound or potentially a Dayton Audio amp.
So how does it sound?
Definitely an improvement over the stock speakers, even when driven by the stock sound board and amp with no equalization. That being said, these speakers can sounds a LOT better with better amplification, and equalization to blend them together. For better or worse, the built in WPC amp is never going to rock, but with better amplification, these speakers can definitely go there.
My plan is to get a Pinsound board (which has a built in amp and equalization) and that should take it up several notches, esp. with the higher quality stereo orchestrations that are available for ST:TNG. When that gets here, I’ll properly wire up the speakers separately in a 2.1 configuration (speaker cable from the Pinsound to each speaker driver).
Based on what I hear, I may get a Dayton Audio DTA-2.1BT2 100W amp (amazon.com link »). I had fantastic results with this in my Godzilla with the Kickers and JBL sub (wow!). Before going there though, I’d like to hear what the Pinsound is able to do on its own.
NOTE: If you do get the Dayton Audio amp, remember to plug it into the service outlet (not the switched outlet). When this amp loses power, it requires the power button to be physically pressed to turn the amp on. In my Godzilla, I leave the amp on all the time, plugged into the service outlet.
As far as the speaker light kit in TNG, when I sent a video clip to my daughter (it is her game, I’m juicing it up while she’s at college), the mic drop response was “SO DOPE”. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
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