If you could change one thing for your control panel what would you change?

[shateredsoul]

Just wondering, because I'm designing a cp at the moment, does anyone have anything they wish they would had added? or not added?

[Franco B]

If I could change one thing about the first CP I made it would be to have made a two player panel rather than the four player panel I made.

[TOK]

I actually did this by building a second panel to address the weaknesses of the first.

The changes I made were improving the art to make it blend with the cab, adding a spinner, flush mounting the trackball, consolidating the trackballs buttons into the Player 1 layout (it had 3 or its own initially), adding a thumb button near the stick for Defender (and Neo Geo) and getting all the admin buttons off the panel.

I actually made 3 panels for that same machine. The first was a plywood and marble contact paper horror that I hate to even talk about! 

[javeryh]

I would have NEVER added a third CP to my cocktail cab.  In fact, some time this year I'm either ripping it off completely or getting rid of my cocktail cab altogether.  The button layout is OK I guess.

[Nacimroc]

The bolts holding my joystick down are visible under the artwork! I filed them down but obviously not enough. I also didn't sand it enough before putting my artwork on as the grain is slightly visible.

[brock.sampson]

I would move my spinner farther to the 1p side and cut down on the admin buttons.  I've jammed my fingers a few times on a hard game of golden tee.

[shateredsoul]

Seems like a lot of people would have removed the admin buttons.. so does this mean the keyboard buttons? Like esc? If so, Do you think putting them on the side of the cabinet would have been nicer of just not having them at all?

So how many buttons do you need other than for playing? player 1, player 2, a coin button, side buttons for pinball... so 5 extra holes should be fine right?

This is how the cp i'm looking at comes standard

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=330402984044&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT

What are the smaller holes on there for? Anything you can see that could probably be removed?

I'm probably going to remove the flight stick.  And I wanted to add 5 arcade button holes, maybe on the side or front for the jukebox software (at least for play, pause, next track, previous track, add track).

[Paul Olson]

The only admin buttons I ever have on my modular cp are 1 and 2 player start. I have three buttons underneath the cp that seem to be intuitive for everyone who has played a game on the cab. I have the coin buttons in the corners and  pause button in the middle. Player 2 Start is the shift button which shifts pause to esc. p1 coin shifts to tab, and p2 coin shifts to enter. That is all I have ever needed during normal gameplay; actually I don't think I have ever needed enter. For configuration of the system, I use a wireless keyboard and mouse sitting on the shelf. I have two barstools for the cab, and the buttons underneath have never been accidentally pressed by knees, so I am very happy with it.

[markronz]

Two things, I would move my exit button.  Right now it's directly above my trackball.   When I play golden tee, and I give er a good push, bye bye mame right in the middle of a game.   I originally put it there so that the control panel would be symetrical.   So there's got to be some equality between symetry, and functionality.

Secondly, I have 3 dedicated mouse buttons on mine.   While they are nice for admin work on the computer, they go largely untouched in daily use, and just take up a lot of room.   On my next CP I will be using a DPDT switch.  The switch will be hidden under the control panel.  Flipping the switch will change P1B5 and P1B6 to be the mouse left and right clicks.  So that way I will still have access to the mouse buttons as needed.  It's just handy to use the trackball as a mouse.

[UberCade]

One thing I'm really glad I decided to do is make my control panel modular (the two middle players anyway), because I like to play as many games with their original controls as possible, like two joysticks for each player (Smash TV, Karate Champ), the Star Wars yoke (Star Wars, Return of the Jedi, Stun Runner), steering wheels, the Tron stick and spinner, etc. I designed my panel with swappable pieces so I can just replace one control at a time rather than having to remove and replace the whole control panel top.

If you feel the same way, it's something you should think about. There's no way you can possibly fit EVERY different type of arcade control on one panel, so you'll either need a modular panel or swappable tops. Of course it's not for everybody.

[Kman-Sweden]

My spinner is placed to high up on the CP. Can't use the 7" steering wheel 'cause it hits my admin panel/monitor.
Also have 8 buttons for each player, 6 would have been enough.

[RobotronNut]

the frankenpanel is aging very well.
a few things i'd change if i were starting from scratch today:

(1) i'm still firmly committed to having 2 round-restricted 8-ways and 1 diamond-restricted 4-way. i've been thru many 4-ways, including an original rubber-grommet wico leaf, and my top choice today is a U360 (used as a dedicated 4-way, diamond-restricted). for 8-ways, my modified P360's are absolute perfection, but i suspect you can do just as well nowadays with round-restricted U360's (although i've never tried it myself).

(2) replace the tornado spinner with an apache blackhawk for discs of tron. (i do plan to get around to this one of these years...)

(3) replace my rotary joystick with a second trigger stick, for tank games. i'm not as fond of rotary games as i thought i was when i was designing my panel. tanks games play fine with a trigger stick in the right hand and any 8-way in the left hand, but it's just cooler to have 2 trigger sticks. might consider making one of the trigger sticks analog.

[gatordad]

I would move my spinner farther to the 1p side and cut down on the admin buttons.  I've jammed my fingers a few times on a hard game of golden tee.

Me too........
never place your spinner on top of your trackball, off set it.

[versapak]

I was a strong advocate of angled joysticks for the corner players on a 4 player panel, and when I built my cabinet I tested it out with several people and we all agreed that it worked great.

Never again though. I can't stand it now. I don't know what changed, but now I can't play from those positions without fighting with the angle of the sticks. Also, it is very rare that we have 4 players at the cab, and you can't even use the corner sticks for Smash TV or Total Carnage.

[Nataq]

Replace my omistick by a spinner. The omnistick is a 4-way compatible joystick that some say is very good. I just find that my competition plays nice with old games and I dont use my 4-way at all. A spinner would have been better. I might just replace it later. Problem with spinner is that they are expensive. 10X price of a regular joystick.

[Umpa]

Funny i came across this post. I have been thinking of changing mine. I currently have a double height panel with 4 players on the lower level with a dedicated 4-way jstick and a spinner, track-ball, and flight stick on upper. I'm thinking of keeping the dual height cp just make a 2 player cp with the dedicated 4-way in the middle instead of off-set like it is now. I would also move the Trackball back to have more room to really spin it and not smash my hand