I got my Japanese New Net City cabs about 6 months apart. Here are the photos of what I was acquiring:
And after lots of work, tear-downs, restoration, retr0brighting, and parts replacement, here's what I have:
From the front:
Now for some fun trivia:
- I stripped these cabinets down to the individual screw to haul them into the room you see them in. I'll need to strip them down again whenever I move them out of there.
- Every component has been thoroughly cleaned with either Magic Erasers, Simple Green, or compressed air, or a careful dusting/brushing in the case of more sensitive components.
- Cigarette tar is disgusting. And it doesn't like to come off.
- This is a before and after of the control panel cavity of the first cabinet:
- I emptied out both control panels and completely replaced them with new Sanwa parts. Went with one New Net City colour scheme (vermillion/dark blue) and one traditional Sega cab colour scheme (green and pink). The balltops are of the original mesh variety.
- The stock speakers were blown in the second cab, so I swapped out the speakers in both cabs with Pioneer's TS-D1002R 4" speakers. I tried a set of their "A" series speakers and wasn't impressed compared to stock. The "D" series, however, literally blown everything away. The sound from this form factor shouldn't be that good, but there it is.
- Yes, those are Taito stools.
- I did not repaint anything, nor did I replace any leg side-art. If there was paint chipped on the base or a cut in a leg sticker, it stayed. I want the cabs clean, but I still want them to reflect that they spent many years in a Japanese arcade. These blemishes don't bother me, especially since in all likelihood I'm going to be the only person in regular proximity to these cabinets who really pays attention to them.
- That said, the blemishes that did bother me were on the monitor frames (dark part). The frames pictured are brand new and just received from Giz10p at the end of last week. The original monitor frames had a variety of scratches, semi-permanent sticker-based discolouration, or outright gouges that Novus wasn't going to solve, and kind of detracted from the look of the cab.
- Something I've talked about before is that there's a bit of 'compression' on the left and right sides of the screen (moreso on the left cab than the right one). This is a phenomenon called "S compression", and unfortunately can't be corrected on the geometry menu for the Toshiba Perfect Flat (although there is a S correction adjustment, it only corrects it vertically, not horizontally). That said, it's something I take less and less notice over time. However, this is something that can presumably be fixed by recapping the chassis, and a full capacitor list for the chassis is available, so that's one of those 'eventually' projects.
- By extension of the above, both monitors are original tri-sync Toshiba Perfect Flats and have their original chassis. The left and right monitors are circa October 2005 and November 2005 respectively.
- En route to me in the near future are some of those new remote PCBs that are being fabbed for Toshiba Perfect Flat monitors. These will replace the monitor remotes with the same form factor, but add additional buttons to access the geometry menu in place of my laughably bad soldering job.
- The coin counter for the cab on the left read over 71000 when I first received it. This cab was likely part of a VS. setup for Tekken 5 at some point (aside from the Tekken 5 monitor bezel sticker, there was also a Namco system PCB adapter inside the cabinet). Hilariously, the second cab read exactly 8000, making me think the game inside it couldn't have been very popular. It did contain a flyer for Irem's "Spartan X" (AKA "Kung-Fu Master") and a quality control sheet for a "New Net City SD".
- I originally had a dark red and an orange light cover. I picked up a second dark red light strip to match the first.
- Does your Naomi/NC/NNC amp have lots of static and crackling sound? Swap out your T12 20W fluorescent bulb with a new one before anything else.
- Fully functional 100 yen coin mechanisms in each cab.
- It has all of the locks corresponding to 5575 keys.
- Yellow bezels? Retr0bright. Here's an artist's conception (first photo is the left cabinet's bezel washed but before retr0brighting, the second photo is the right cabinet's bezel during a UV treatment).
- Those light bulbs I used while retr0brighting are meant for lizards!
- Other parts that were outright replaced include the instruction sheets (brand new), all of the interior control panel cabling (new old stock 1P/2P harnesses, new button 4-6 loom, all original Sega parts), new coin reject buttons, new coin slot covers, new chrome bolts for the control panels, and new metal strips on the instruction panel glass. I also replaced the Tekken 5 monitor bezel sticker on the left cabinet with a new NNC one.
- Any other stickers (serial numbers, Japanese warnings, yen coins, etc.) are original. There's one on the right cabinet's coin door I didn't remove which I may at a later date. Interestingly, the second bezel has a serial number sticker on the top (not visible in the photos) which matches the serial number on the base unit.
- One of those NNC marquees came from Yahoo Japan auctions. The other, luckily, came with the cab.
- Not pictured - 4 of every restrictor gate (octagonal, 2-way, 4-way/8-way, and even toodles circular), enough OSBNs for every button (and joystick hole), a cavalcade of JVS-PACs, and a set of Konami JAMMA/JVS adapters to ensure maximum compatibility for the here and now and into the future.
- Also not pictured: Sega audio/video/JVS splitter boards. There's one in each cabinet, which is good for creating a "VS." setup when both monitors are rotated the same way, or for distributing audio and video for a 4 player game. Also not shown: the wires that connect the cabs together and to stuff sitting outside the cab (consoles, PC, etc.).
- After investing this much time and effort into the cabs, I still need to get my hands on a PCB. Playing games tends to get stuck at the lower end of my priority list, despite all of the above, and the next big thing always calls.
- More than 350 photos were taken between both cabinets of the tear down, cleaning, and reassembly process.
- They make great conversation pieces.
- Here are some bonus closeups of the control panels, because people like control panels:
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