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Bargain WPC Speaker Upgrade £10 a pair for dual driver Sony xs-gt1328f

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I have been looking to upgrade the speakers in my TZ and Shadow. I read round the subject including this excellent website listed below.

http://www.dziedzic.us/wpc_speaker_selection.html

NOTE - THE VAST MAJORITY OF WPC GAMES NEED 5,25" SPEAKERS, A FEW DON'T. Those that don't are Black Rose, Dr. Dude, Gilligan's Island, Harley Davidson, Party Zone, Funhouse, The Machine: Bride of Pinbot. This website above tells you what size to get if you have one of these.

Based on accepting the following

1. The amplifiers in your pinball are relatively low quality
2. The pinball backbox and cabinet make poor environments for speakers to work effectively

It occurred to me that spending mega money was just throwing good money after bad. I have had pinball pro in my addams family for many years. It is good, but it is so expensive, around £150 by the time you get them from the USA. And I think this cost is disproportionate to the benefit you receive.

In particular the hole cutout for the right speaker in your wpc game and the woofer in the floor of the cabinet are actually smaller than the speakers that pinball pro supply. The woofer is 8" and the hole in the base of an addams family is 5.5" for example. So pinball pro supplies adapters to make these bigger speakers mount on your smaller holes. But this obviously limits what the speakers can do.

In terms of backbox speakers you need to buy 5.25" 4 ohm ones that can handle 25 watts rated power. Getting twin driver speakers makes sense as these will give more range than single driver, single cone, or dual cone ones. It is pointless buying triple driver speakers given the limitations mentioned above. You also must get speakers that do not project too far forwards or backwards. And finally you need speakers that are not too flashy, as you will see this through the backbox speaker mesh
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I think I have found THE PERFECT PAIR. my first pair arrived today, and I have just ordered my second as delivery is free. It made an immediate difference to the left speaker in my game. It is a direct replacement, no carpentry is required, it uses your bolts. To mount in the right you need to relocate screws or ideally cut a bigger hole, which is what I am going to do. Critically they do not project forwards and the design is quite subdued, so they do not look out of place behind your speaker grills. There is a silver bar that you could easily cover up with magic marker pen, but I do not think you need to

They are on eBay being sold by Argos. They are normally about £30. Argos has wrongly described them as 22cm speakers, which may be why they are so heavily discounted. These are 5.25", which is exactly what you want

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sony-XS-G...7?pt=UK_In_Car_Technology&hash=item2345fd35c5
 

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These are similar model to the speakers I put in my Indiana Jones backbox, so I will second your recommendation as the improvement was huge
 
For those that enjoy irony, these days you can have most things bought on ebay delivered to your local store as they all now have an "ebay collection" counter.

However, you can't have things bought from Argos on ebay delivered to an Argos store :confused:
 
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1. The amplifiers in your pinball are relatively low quality
You're telling me! The amplifiers used in old SS Bally's are shocking! Mono TDA2002 amplifier used in the most basic configuration with output fed to the speaker via high-power volume control potentiometer (effectively a 5W rheostat). And the single-cone full-range speaker is mounted at the far end on the bottom of the cabinet facing the floor! There are no speakers in the backbox.

So I had an idea to fit a better amplifier and along with replacing the main speaker in the cabinet (and moving it to the front nearer the player) I thought I'd try squeezing in a pair of these Bose 2" full-range speakers behind the ventilation grill in the "neck" between the cabinet and backbox:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2-pcs-BOS...ll-size-big-power-30W-free-ship-/221655625687
HTB1s2BaGXXXXXatXFXXq6xXFXXX3.jpg

Here's the ventilation grill on the "neck" between cabinet and body. This grill is about 2.25" high. Just about enough space:

farm4.staticflickr.com_3749_10330853524_1223a4df3c_c.jpg

I could then use a 2.1 3-channel car amplifier fed with 12V direct from the power supply to drive the small speakers as full-range and the main cabinet speaker as a sub.
 
Thanks chaps. At a tenner it's worth a punt. :thumbs:
My pleasure ;) And if they do work out you've still got at least £140 to find a big speaker to put in the main cabinet. I bet you could find a really good one and still have at least £100 change. Whilst I'm sure those Pinball Pro and Flipper Fidelity speaker sets are very good quality (and handily pre-selected to fit your chosen pin) they are f***ing expensive. At that price I'd expect the amp too!
 
My pleasure ;) And if they do work out you've still got at least £140 to find a big speaker to put in the main cabinet. I bet you could find a really good one and still have at least £100 change. Whilst I'm sure those Pinball Pro and Flipper Fidelity speaker sets are very good quality (and handily pre-selected to fit your chosen pin) they are f***ing expensive. At that price I'd expect the amp too!


I'm thinking about using an external powered sub to be honest. They can be picked up for next to nothing on Ebay quite often. The price tag of the PP and FF kits is certainly something that stopped me just rushing into an order for some. Like you say- 140 to spend on more pinball goodies!
Still mulling it over really. But it will be good to try these speakers out and hear the results.
 
I am going to do my cabinet floor speakers within the next few weeks. But to be honest, I am not sure it is worth putting expensive kit in there.

I have been looking at subwoofer prices and nothing stood out as an absolute bargain, like these Sony speakers did.

I am just trying to weigh up whether to cut a larger hole in the floor of the cabinet. My instincts say no. But given the modest 5.5" hole, I am not sure you will ever get decent bass without enlarging the hole. Enlarging the hole means router plus huge mess
 
Tip - Find the local boy racer group and buy a CHEAP bass bin for the boot of the car - one that El Chavo has for sale as they are upgrading to the latest Gizmo....... Voilia - 1 or 2 8/10" speakers on the cheap... (Last one i got cost £20 and that has 2x 10" sub's in :) )
 
...It made an immediate difference to the left speaker in my game. It is a direct replacement, no carpentry is required, it uses your bolts. To mount in the right you need to relocate screws or ideally cut a bigger hole, which is what I am going to do...

Thanks for the heads up - Ordered a couple sets on spec. Quick question though - How come the Right speaker hole needs widening? Are pinball speakers normally different sizes?
 
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The backbox speakers are different sizes in my 3 wpc games.

For some stupid reason Williams Bally put mid range in the left, a high frequency tweeter in the right and a bass speaker in the cabinet floor. All three holes are different sizes. You can just look at them and you see what cheap crap they are.

Plain madness in my opinion. Putting two proper speakers, the same size, playing through the same sized holes will make a significant, immediate improvement

Even if you can't face widening the right hole, it will still make a big difference playing a new speaker through it. The pinball pro speakers don't require the widening if the right hole after all

I am not a sound whizz kid, but I know the pinball pro system well. From what I have seen, I reckon that for £10, you will get about 3/4 of the uplift in sound that you get with £150 on pinball pro. The harder bit is sorting out the bass unit in the cabinet floor, but I will let folk know how I get on when I get round to it
 
Random musing.....

Isn't the 'superior' tda2003 a drop in replacement for the tda2002?
TDA2002 is 8W, TDA2003 is 10W, but yes pin-for-pin the same. '02 no longer made (TTBOMK) whereas '03 is and with higher spec. Also, filthy cheap, usually about £1.80 each and with a few extra components would make an improvement to the cr@ppy amp in old SS Bally's.
 
I've got Pioneer speakers in my TAF and TZ, but these are cheaper! :thumbs:

Bought some for AFM, anyone got tips on how to fit the one to replace the tweeter? Not as straightforward as WPC as there is no wood to screw into.
 
Hi
Thanks for the heads up about these bought two sets myself,just checked my BSD and there is only one speaker the one on the right the one on the left is missing just a piece of 6mm ply over the hole,why would this be apart from the obvious that somebody has took it out to use elsewhere,could there be a more major reason it has been taken out wouldn't like to connect up and do some damage.Anybody have any idea's.

Cheers in advance Brian.
 
Pharo, I don't think there is anything sinister here. Almost certainly a part taken for another machine. The plywood put there to stop backbox lights shining through the empty grill.

This website gives more info on wiring. Note that there is a difference for dcs and pre dcs games. But this site also tells you which the dcs games are !

http://www.dziedzic.us/wpc_speaker_wiring.html
 
Pharo, I don't think there is anything sinister here. Almost certainly a part taken for another machine. The plywood put there to stop backbox lights shining through the empty grill.

This website gives more info on wiring. Note that there is a difference for dcs and pre dcs games. But this site also tells you which the dcs games are !

http://www.dziedzic.us/wpc_speaker_wiring.html
Hi
Looks like BSD is pre dcs the link advises not to change unless you do the cabinet speaker as well and put in a volume control way above my level of expertise so will just have to keep them till I get another dcs game and to think a few months ago I got rid of my DM.

Cheers again Brian
 
"48 sold in the last 24 hours" - i wonder how many of those were from pinheads on here?

looks all very nice but i just don't have the tools, skills or time to do the job. if one of you clever chaps could maybe do a brief video with before and after sound and a sort of step by step guide to the process, that'd be a great resource for this site to host (via youtube) and i'd love to watch it. @Paul maybe that's something we can start doing here, collecting pinball skill videos (like @Matt Adams doing the cabinet decals, for example) as i'm sure there is plenty of subject matter. everything from carpentry to electronics.
 
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