Electrocoin Duet Cabs are great for home use

80s Synth Pop

Here is some info for any 90's arcade fans. The Electrocoin Duet was the centrepiece in many arcades and a long time "holy grail" cab for me.




They are quite rare to see come up for sale. I had an alert on ebay for several years before one came up. It seems most people think they are too big and they end up getting scrapped.



However, the seat section comes off halving the depth leaving you with these dimensions:
90cm wide, 180cm tall and 84cm deep.


So still slightly too big to fit through a regular 80cm door....


However, it fits neatly on a small pallet for shipping from UK to Ireland with Transland (around €100):






Once it lands on your door, start by stripping out the monitor, glass and jamma wiring so the cab is light.


You can take out the control panel section with a clamp/spreader. Be gentle with the clamp spreader and a flat head screwdriver to loosen the wood glue and dowels on each side until the control panel pops out:




Jigsaw out a section of the base - it's okay to leave this off as the base of the seat section goes over this cut out section anyway (I cut 15cm in from each side and 25 cm deep):





Now it fits in easily at an angle through the door. Get a corner of the base and control panel in first and then rotate the cab 90 degrees to get the rest of it in:





Once in, it's simply a case of reinstating the jamma wiring, monitor, glass etc. Then put the seat section on and it's ready to use.



It's the perfect height for kids too - the Xenon cab is too high (using that for vertical games only now) but this is perfect!

Optimus Prime

A grail cab for me too. They used to have three of these in the bowling alley in Palmerstown back in the day.

80s Synth Pop

cab inside the house:

Inviere

Cut my Street Fighting teeth on those cabs, love them to bits...pure nostalgia. Optimus will back me on this one!

Inviere

Optimus Prime wrote: »

They used to have three of these in the bowling alley in Palmerstown back in the day.

Can still see them as clear as day.

Champion Edition
Hyper Fighting
Champion Edition.

80s Synth Pop

Inviere wrote: »

Can still see them as clear as day.

Champion Edition
Hyper Fighting
Champion Edition.

This one came with the bootleg "Rainbow Edition"

o1s1n

You bought a duet??? you mad bastard! fair play!

Looks to be in lovely condition, any of them that I saw on site were in bits.

eddhorse

Nice get, and nice disassembly, very ballsy.

Enjoy it, really handy with the seats

TechnoFreek

Savage. I'm been longing for some fresh cab smut

KeRbDoG

Nice - didn't Dr. Quirkey's have a few of these or similar type large sit down cabs?

geotrig

wow ,havent been on in a while and some nice gets happening ! Id say a lot ,if not most arcades must have had a few of these bitd, savoy in limerick had 2 ,sf2 and beside it football champ lol .It was great being able to sit down to play on them then! looks in good condition

o1s1n

Yeah it has to make you wonder did someone back in the day in Electrocoin see the Japanese sitting down at their candy cabs and think 'hmmm, that's not actually a bad idea!'

Bray Bowl had/has three of them. They had them back out again for the whole BYOB bowling when I was there a few years back. Got to have a crack at Metal Slug 3 on one of them

geotrig

Yeah you'd wonder alright, it made playing and waiting to play street fighter less of a chore anyway and must have had some affect on the design .
Although our "other arcade" had these other "sit down" cabs (probably about 92-93ish) that where all the same ,about 30-40 red cabs with seats a bit higher than the duets but still seats ! so we were spoiled a bit. no idea what these cabs were, I don't remember any branding on them.

o1s1n

Oh yeah? that's kinda interesting, were they the usual western woodie types?

I remember seeing a thread over on AO with photos of (I think German?) western designed wood cabs but after the likeness of candy cabs. Strange looking beasts!

80s Synth Pop

KeRbDoG wrote: »

Nice - didn't Dr. Quirkey's have a few of these or similar type large sit down cabs?

That's right. I used to go into Quirkey's on lunch break in early 00's and they had cabs even bigger than the duet there. Street fighter EX2 - with the kicks and punches wired up in opposite places..... Not quite as big as the megalo Sega cabs though. They had a virtual fighter (4 or 5?) that was in an even bigger megalo type cab.

geotrig wrote: »

Yeah you'd wonder alright, it made playing and waiting to play street fighter less of a chore anyway and must have had some affect on the design .
Although our "other arcade" had these other "sit down" cabs (probably about 92-93ish) that where all the same ,about 30-40 red cabs with seats a bit higher than the duets but still seats ! so we were spoiled a bit. no idea what these cabs were, I don't remember any branding on them.

Did you run an arcade geotrig??

geotrig

haha i wish but no " our other " was just generalizing as in limerick a good few mates worked in them for ages though

duet over megalo due to the screens any day ,although i do love the look of megalo's

o1s1n

Would be interested in seeing a Megalo modded with an LCD and something like a framemeister.

Although the aspect ratio is 4:3 isn't it? So I don't think that would be possible unless you can somehow find a 50 inch LCD!

Would still rather the Duet myself too tbh, 28 inch monitor size in it is perfect.

Jack burton

I'd actually love one of these. Looking to get a nice general cab for the garage.

Did you buy a pinball too?
I see a stern box!

CathalDublin

BrownFinger wrote: »

Did you buy a pinball too?
I see a stern box!

Batman Box:eek:

Jack burton

My money is on that's what it was shipped in

80s Synth Pop

Jack burton wrote: »

My money is on that's what it was shipped in

Yes 100% - That was the cardboard in the packaging.

The ebay sale was only for a buyer that can collect in UK so I used the services of a company in UK that specialises in arcade shipping. Martin was the name I got from a UK arcade forum - I highly recommend him. Could not have been more helpful.
He would have had that cardboard spare from a previous pinball shipment.

Martin collected it from the ebay seller, put in on a pallet (extremely well packaged) and left it in his warehouse for collection by transland for shipping to Ireland.

80s Synth Pop

80s Synth Pop wrote: »

Yes 100% - That was the cardboard in the packaging.

The ebay sale was only for a buyer that can collect in UK so I used the services of a company in UK that specialises in arcade shipping. Martin was the name I got from a UK arcade forum - I highly recommend him. Could not have been more helpful.
He would have had that cardboard spare from a previous pinball shipment.

Martin collected it from the ebay seller, put in on a pallet (extremely well packaged) and left it in his warehouse for collection by transland for shipping to Ireland.

this opens up the market a bit,
I've heard of Martin loads but never knew he had a wherehouse !!!

Jack burton

Me neither, all the pinball lads in the UK swear by Mairtin, meant to be a nice guy and really knows how to handle shipping arcade machines.

Thinking about getting a few pallets over BrownFinger?

Optimus Prime

BrownFinger wrote: »

this opens up the market a bit,
I've heard of Martin loads but never knew he had a wherehouse !!!

That’s a game changer right there haha !

BGOllie

oh wow indeed. !

eddhorse

Martin is the dogs b****x alright

KevW24601

80s Synth Pop wrote: »

cab inside the house:

WOW!

Tramore was littered with cabs like these back in the day. My first memories of Street Fighter 2 were on this exact cabinet, stools and all.

chopperbyrne

Sorry for the necro bump, but would like to try modding one of my arcade sticks to match the feel of using these exact cabinets growing up.

Anyone know what parts are used for the stick and buttons?

o1s1n

Euro sticks aren't they? Some kind of Happ thing?

Just realised how little I know about non Japanese components!

chopperbyrne

The sticks were definitely one molded piece that looked like this: https://www.arcadeworlduk.com/products/Red-Moulded-Arcade-Joystick.html

Gradius

Yeah I know those ones, might be tricky to get them now! Single molded like you say.

Just go the whole hog and get a duet cabinet, treat it as joystick plus extras

Gradius

Not sure if that helps much to identify anything, but the cherry switches are d44x. Joysticks were maybe in-house electrocoin?

80s Synth Pop

Electrocoin sticks came in 3x flavours. The little red, bat top and a sort of hybrid of both.

I've never seen the red ones for sale but the odd time they come up on ebay as "neo geo arcade sticks" for stupid money considering you will get people selling full xenon cabs with the sticks for 200.

You need buttons to go with it. They are leaf buttons and again these are hard to come by. Someone said you can get them in the states.