Crystal Castles repro overlay review

[RayB]

Well, after many months, I have finally gotten around to finishing my Crystal Castles control panel. I first sanded most of it to remove rust then gave several coats of Tremclad Rust paint (satin black) with curing done in the sun.

Today I applied the (repro) overlay from Arcade Renovations and discovered that it has a similar problem to the marquee/speaker overlays. It's common knowledge that these overlays are not as opaque as the originals, and for the marquee, light shines through the blacks making it look a bit greyish.

A similar problem exists for the CP overlay, but for whites. When glued down, the whites show a bit of the black underneath (apparent as slight, blotchy grey). You can get rid of this by rubbing those spots repeatedly, with your finger nails until you're left with a uniform color (but it won't be a pure white like the original panel art should have).

In the end, the difference is negligible, but noticable if closely inspected. If I were to do it again, I would paint the panel white first, and only paint black where it really needs to be black.

Overall though, the machine looks brand new now.

~Ray B.

[SuperGunGuru]

I've thought about getting repo artwork for my Crystal Castles before. I'd heard about the problem with the repro marquee but not with the repro cp. Thanks for the review The artwork on my CC is in good enough shape for now, so no hurry for me in ordering it.

[Wade]

RayB,

    You should have known this, I posted about the same problem with overlays before. It is best to paint the CP white and then just black on the edges.

Wade

[RayB]

RayB,

[Wade]

It was probably nested deep in one of my restoration threads.  I never made a new thread titled "Beware when applying quality CP overlays!"  Maybe I should write a few how-to's.

Wade