Yet another Juke Cabinet

[kickercompkid_99]

I had some amazing inspiration from everyone else here who had already built  a jukebox cab, so I decided it would be a great addition to my mame/every game ever invented cab.  Well make a long story short today on the way home from work I made a pitstop at the local hardware store and grabbed me a couple sheets of plywood, about 5 hours worth of cutting wood and wiring (in the living room, gotta love a wife that lets you do that!!) now I have a very crude beginning to my jukebox, the worst part is that I had to have sound coming out of it today, so now it works, but its far from complete.  I'm looking for any ideas anyone has lighting, layout, paint job, anything!  Here's the specs on it.  P4 3 gig, 256 DDR RAM, 80 gig hd more to come!, Poor old sony monitor taking one for the team turning purple until I can find a cheap LCD!  Sound wise I have 2 Kenwood 6x9s, 2 Kenwood 5 1/2s, 2 off brand 6 woofers, 2 motorola tweeters up high, and down low we have a circa 1985 Rockford Fosgate 10" subwoofer. All of which is powered by a 500 watt home stereo receiver that I found at goodwill for $5! can't beat that deal with a stick  So far I am into this project a whopping 25 bucks for the wood, and $5 for the receiver,  that's it everything else was either laying around or traded.  Right now I just have the keyboard and mouse so I can listen to music but plan on putting control buttons and all that fancy stuff as soon as I can afford it or come across something strikingly familiar for free. OK enough gabbing here's the pics, let me know what you think, good bad or indifferent.  The design is stolen/borrowed for a couple of other that I have seen.  I tried making plans but didn't like it, so I just made it up as I went. Enjoy!!!   Also I''ll throw in a pic of my mame cab.

[kickercompkid_99]

HMMM, wow I was kinda hoping that someone would at least say that it looks like crap and I should kill myself for ever even attempting to build a jukebox and that my mame cab looked like two pit bulls fighting over a dead baby seal.  Not much has changed on the jukebox other than converting all the songs from my ipod from .m4a to mp3 only took 2 days and nights!  I'm going to go buy some trim for all the edges tomorrow after work and hopefully get it installed shortly thereafter.  I did get my buttons ordered from x-arcade today, I chose to go the cheap way and just use good ole tried and true arcade buttons for it.  I'm still at a loss of any type of  lighting for it however.  I was thinking maybe some cold cathodes strategically placed and some other things so any suggestions would be great!!!  Anyhow as soon as the appearance of it changes I will get some more pics posted.  But in the meantime someone please give me some feedback!

[D5A1AC]

Wow... Do you think you have enough speakers there?! That's a very unique jukebox - I've never seen that design before but on the other hand I don't really look into jukeboxes so much. I would use cold cathodes because of their low power consumption of you plan on lighting it up. I'd offer some advice on a paint job etc.. but I am absolutely hopeless at anything that involves a creative flair. Have you considered making it match your arcade machine? I haven't seen any "matching sets" of systems so far.

I assume you will cover up those speakers eventually? They look like a foot magnet in their current location 

[kickercompkid_99]

Hey thanks for the enough speakers comment, I was going for as much loud as I could fit in one confined space and I seem to have achieved that quite well!  As the speakers sit right now, they are not so much a foot magnet as a 3 year old son, and 2 year old niece magnet, so far I have been able to catch them everytime before they can push the cones of the speakers in on them! Just hope my luck holds out until I figure out how to cover them, I was thinking of doing a grill of some sort out of some like 1/2 inch dowels or something to that effect, but really have no idea right now, I guess I'll just jump into it head first and see what the end result is then if I don't like it just rip it off and try it again.  I was also kind of leaning toward the matching set idea, so that I have someone else who seems to like the idea as well it is settled.  Anyhow the weekend is coming and I'm going to have a lot of creativity built up from working ten hour days for 2 weeks and hopefully I can get cracking on this thing and get some more pics posted! 

 

[Freeplay]

Hey Kicker, I had the same problem with speaker cones.

I fixed it with vermin wire ( about 5mm squares )
I picked it up from Bunnings ( Australia's version of Home Depot)
Was quick, cheap and very effective.



You can check out the finished job here
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=43453.0

[kickercompkid_99]

Awesome idea! I may just have to steal... borrow that one! Thanks for the input!

[arcadefever]

  i really do like the design but it is not a bit to big  i list you can say you have the 2 oposit in music the tiny ipod and your juckeboxe i wish i could ear the sound of this thing when it's done 

[kickercompkid_99]

Actually compared to my mame cab, it's really about 2 feet shorter but about a foot wider than it so all in all it's not actually that big.  After playing with it some more today I decided that I need to get another amplifier for it, all of the speakers are running at about 16 ohms.  The sub hardly moves yet it shakes every wall in my house, so if i had another amplifier I could break them up a lot more and get at least double the sound output from each speaker which would make the thing as a whole one whole heck of a lot louder!! Looks like another trip to the second-hand store and see if I can get another great deal!

[kickercompkid_99]

Well after this weekend I feel I have progressed ok.  I got my buttons from x-arcade and installed them, not too bad of an ordeal, other than hacking a keyboard but thanks to SalmonKing for making it easy to remap the buttons!  I also remembered that I had a 15" Yamaha PA speaker sitting in the bedroom that I was using for a nightstand so I took out the billion little speakers and remade the front panel to house the huge 15".  Also added my trademark Clayco sign to the front and used some plastic from an old overhead neon light to cover it and then invented a circuit that I could use to make my own color organ which I inset behind the Clayco cut-out so that the sign flashes to the beat of the music (a pain in the --I'm attempting to get by the auto-censor and should be beaten after I re-read the rules-- but definitely worth it!)  Added a couple of 12v light to provide a nice ambient song selecting area, which turned out rather nice except that I don't have them centered and have yet to move them to center, but I will...eventually.  For the most part that is about it for now, as I progress I will post more pics and keep the 2 two who seem the slightest bit interested in it up to date.  Also if anyone wants to know how to make your own color organ for 12v lights the circuit is simple and would cost all the 2-3 dollars to build it's only one channel but it works great! So if any wants it just let me know and I can send a schematic, although really the only reason I built it is because I am cheap and don't have the extra $$ to buy one that is prebuilt.  ENJOY and let me know if you have any other ideas for it, etc.

[kickercompkid_99]

Welp, after a couple of weeks on this thing, I believe that I can say that I am done... for now.  Everything seems to be working great. My only problem with it still is the CRT monitor instead of a LCD, so for the time being I think I can deal with it, but I will be "upgrading" here just as soon as I can find myself an affordable LCD, I'm thinking somewhere between the $20 to free range. The CDs spinning next to the monitor are made from 2 old microwave motors, you know the ones that spin the little glass plate so your food gets cooked on all sides, and I installed a couple of red lights above them so when it's dark it actually looks pretty cool!  I used trim scraps from a home that I am building to make everything look pretty, and a couple of small pieces of plexiglass to cover both the CDs and the monitor, which turned out rather nice I thought. The whole thing was then sprayed with laquer so it all looks nice and shiny. The CP is made from 5 different pieces of paper printed off from my computer, lemme tell ya trying to make the holes for the buttons line up to the numbers was quite the task, special thanks to the pixels to inches converter I found via google!  Then I cut out some fancy arrows for the volume and page buttons and put small pieces of old neon light covers underneath with some small red lights to light em up.  I also had some leftover formica from some countertops (same home building) that I used to cover the front where the monitor and spinning CDs are, and also below that.  I used some "agricultural" wire to cover the front so no small children can kick holes in the speakers or play with it while it's running. (Special thanks to Freeplay for the idea! Worked like a champ and cheap!!)  Attached are pics of the control panel, tops where the CDs spin, and then of course one big finished product.  If anyone has any ideas of anything else to do with it, and/or add to it let me know!  I am always up for a change! Also any feedback would be great too!
ENJOY!

[kickercompkid_99]

Had to do another post so I could put up the final pic!

[arcadefever]

    wowwwww look so diferent now paint ... really  good

[Cameronj]

Looking great! I wasn't soo sure when I saw the initial construction pics, but this one looks really cool now. I bet it looks better in real life too!

[kickercompkid_99]

lol, I wasn't too sure about it shortly after I got started on it either!  There were definitely more than a couple times where I contemplated tearing the whole thing apart and starting over!  But I kept telling myself that in the end it would look good, and god willing it turned out that way for the most part.  I still want to do something more with the front of it where the is just a huge area of wasted space, I'm sure something will come to me sooner or later, but in the meantime thanks for the compliment!

[BuzzFisher]

I just wanna let you know that I think your jukebox is awesome!  I applaud you for making it seem fairly easy!  I've never done anything with speakers/amps/etc. so not too sure about that aspect, but this looks great.  I LOVE the spinning discs...such a small detail but really makes your juke stand out!  Congrats!

-Buzz

[markrvp]

Does the single 15" PA speaker sound better than the other speakers?

[kickercompkid_99]

First off, thanks Buzz I really appreciate that!  And Markrvp, the one single 15" PA speaker sounds amazingly better than all of the little speakers.  The little ones didn't handle the bass too well so in order to have made it sound good, I would have had to make a huge crossover network, and then I wasn't even too sure if that would have done it.  Plus the upside of using the PA speaker is that it has a 1500 watt power limit, right now I'm feeding it close to 500 and with it turned about halfway up, you can't even hear yourself think!  It seems that the louder you turn the speaker up the better it sounds too!  It hits the highs superior and the lows are nice a punchy as well.  Also with the PA I am only using one of the 4 channels of my amplifier, so I do have the option of adding some satellites if I ever feel so inclined to do so, although I doubt I ever will.  Anyhow thanks for the great feedback and if anyone needs anything explained or help with anything, just ask I would be more than happy to help!