The cabinet was the last piece I need to acquire everything for building my repro quantum. While I would have loved to get one of Brett's repro cabinets, I couldn't afford it or the shipping (or driving) to get it. However, there is a second way to get the Quantum cabinet, which I haven't seen very many (if any) people do. Brett makes a conversion kit for the cabinet, which has a couple benefits over ordering the entire cabinet.
1. It's cheaper. If I remember correctly, the conversion kit is now $150. Compared to $550 for the entire cabinet, that's a good deal of savings.
2. It can be shipped. Now, yes, the cabinet cab be shipped; but not for $50. It's packaged very well, and reminds me of picking something up at Ikea.
Those were, to me, the two huge benefits of ordering this kit. The total was just under $200 shipped.
Again, this kit was packaged very well. It arrived with no damage to anything, with pieces labeled clearly as to where they go. I talked with Brett a bit on installation, and figured I'd do a write up of my experience with it; in case someone else in considering getting the kit.
I ended up taking my cabinet and kit over to a friends place (Kevin's) to help with the install, since I know he has the ability to do this; and also the tools. Another thing that helped with this install, is Kevin has one of Brett's repro cabinets already; so we were able to place that one in his garage while working on mine. This allowed us to take measurements and double check things as we went. Now, I understand not everything is going to have the opportunity to do that, so that's what I hoping this thread will help with.
The tools we used are:
- 1/2 inch and 1 inch chisel
- Hammer
- Drill with philips head
- Air compressor with staple gun
- Shop vac
- C clamps
- Screws and staples
Total time to complete the conversion: about 2 hours.
If you're interested in seeing all of the pics, they're located here. They show the progress in order as we removed the parts and added the new ones.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/j4pv0lf8w9rfw6d/hg5sUbBPZJ
To start, a comment that Brett made to me: It'll be easier to install the coin door art BEFORE installing it to the cabinet. I don't have the art yet, so we installed the panel to be removable later to put the art on. This is also how Brett's full cabinet works.
Step One - remove unneeded pieces
Since I converted a Space Duel, I had a couple extra pieces. Those are the upper speaker panel and monitor supports. If you're converting a Black Widow or Gravitar, you won't need these; as they already have a single upper speaker and vertical mounted monitor.
We started by working from the top down. The upper speaker was easy enough to remove by just pulling down on it. I believe it only was held in by three staples. We removed the furring strips and brackets on the inside of the marquee area. To be far, I don't think we needed to remove the inner bracket.
Next, we cut the control panel latch piece in half and pulled those out. The monitor shelf is also pretty easy to hammer up on near the sides. Once it's starts to move, it came out very quick. Along the way of removing everything, we used the chisels to clean up any glue or wood stuck on the cabinet.
The next parts were probably the hardest to get out. The monitor/control panel supports needed to come out. They're the large pieces of wood that art screwed, glued and stapled to the sides. We started by using the 1 inch chisel towards the back, hammering down, to get behind the piece. Once it started to come out, we tried to get behind it more and wedge it off. Because there are a ton of staples, it kept flaking apart. We then just used the reverse side of the hammer to pry it off. It eventually came off in a couple large chunks. Trying the same thing on the second side, the entire piece came off in 1 piece; so it could be an easy or difficult thing to remove. I guess we got lucky with the second side.
The last thing that needed to come out was the coin door panel. This had a couple screws to remove, and then we pretty easy to hammer out. Again, we cleaned everything up, removing old glue, nails or anything else that won't allow the new pieces to sit flat.
Step Two - Install new pieces
We basically worked in reverse to install the new pieces. We started with the new coin door panel. Again, since we were able to compare against Kevin's Quantum cabinet, we made sure all of this matched up along the way.
The coin door panel sits flush to the bottom. We found it easiest to clean up a couple old holes in the existing furring strips (since the coin door furring strips do NOT come out) and then lay the cabinet flat on it's back. Kevin got inside the cabinet to drill up into the new door, once it was lined up by me; also with me applying pressure back down. I think we put 10 screws into the new coin panel.
Now, the next couple pieces were easily the most difficult to line up and install. The new side supports go over the new panel latch, but the furring strips for the panel latch attach to the side supports. The panel latch also sits sorta in the middle of the coin door.
We started by putting the panel latch on the floor, sitting the side support on top of it flush to a side, and lining up where the furring strip would go. Once it was in place, we tacked it in. We did this on the second side as well. Then, we held the latch piece in place (it doesn't attach to the coin panel at all) to line up the side support. The upper "finger" of the side supports are level to the vertical furring strip of the glass support. Once the latch piece is held in there, everything sorta "lines up", we could remove the latch piece and tack the side support in place. I know it's not the best description, but it's what I got. We did this on the second side as well.
Now that the side supports were, in; attaching the latch piece to the supports was a matter of a couple staples. Next, we attached the supports and furring strips to the monitor frame, and put it in the cabinet. We held the supports in place with the clamps to tack them in place. It sits at the back of the side supports, and as long as you hold it in place, you can tack it in easily.
The last piece was the upper speaker. We tack the furring strips to the middle of the speaker mounts. They don't really need to be anywhere specific, just flush to the sides. Having them in the middle worked well. We used a straight piece of wood to get the front flush in line with the upper marquee, and also level with the angel of the curve of the cabinet. The distance from the upper marquee support is the height of the marquee, plus another 1/8 inch; to allow some play. It's a lot to get into place and line up, so using clamps on both sides really helps here. Once one side is in place, we tack 2 staples, lined up the second side and tacked it. Once it was in, we added a couple more to secure it down.
That completed the conversion. Overall, it was a lot easier than I thought it'd be; and it looks exactly like the full cabinet Brett does. I'm VERY happy with how it turned out. I went home and installed my coin door and control panel; and everything is looking great so far.
Attached Images
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