Speakers slots / cut-outs

[Silas (son of Silas)]

I have reached a decision building my cab that I am struggling to get past. I need to mount my pair of 10cm speakers in my cab, but I'm not too keen on the idea of mounting them with the factory grills. They look just like generic cheapish car speakers (because they are).

I would prefer to mount them behind my MDF with cut outs or slots cut out of the MDF with either a grill or speaker fabric mounted behind the slots. Its been very many years since I saw a real arcade machine so I am struggling to recall any real cabs that used cut outs other than the ubiquitous Donkey Kong.

Does anyone have any pictures or suggestions of styles that I could replicate other than the DK slots? I saw a thread on here recently that I *think* was a Ms. Pacman that appeared to have speaker cut outs but I can't find the thread and I can't find any pictures.

Any suggestions would be most welcome.

[Beretta]

yes speaker cuts was quite a common way of doing it.


the cab im working on is a joust.. which was mono speaker.. someone had already cut holes and mounted stereo speakers in it..

what they did was cover the exposed side with speaker material..

i found that this was quite nice way of doing it, however if this was in a real arcade you could push your fingers though the material and destroy the speakers (if you wanted to be a dick).. but this is'nt going to be in an arcade so that should'nt happen.

other people have used fan grills as speaker grills.. and those dont look half bad either.

but unless you're worried about someone pushing their fingers though the fabric.. which the should'nt do unintentionally then i say go with the speaker fabric it looks quite nice.

[Silas (son of Silas)]

After playing around for a while yesterday I came to the conclusion that my routing skills leave a fair bit to be desired, so I abandoned the idea of slots and de-badged the car speakers, resprayed the grills satin black and cut the holes for them. The screen area of the cab will be black laminate anyway, so they will look OK.

[Michigan Classic Arcade]

After playing around for a while yesterday I came to the conclusion that my routing skills leave a fair bit to be desired, so I abandoned the idea of slots and de-badged the car speakers, resprayed the grills satin black and cut the holes for them. The screen area of the cab will be black laminate anyway, so they will look OK.

Speaker slot making for the Nintendo type cabinets is easy. Once you lay out your holes you drill a hole on each side of your layout. Then you clamp down your piece and take your jig saw with a fine blade and cut out the oval holes. After your done use a fine file to smooth it up and it looks perfect. If your using MDF it's even easier because MDF is so easy to cut compared to plywood. Here are some examples below: