Want better sound out of your Stern pinball machine? Looking to upgrade from the cheap $4 stock speakers? I’ve done the research and this seems to be the best way to go.
Steps toward better sound from your Stern pinball machine:
- Replace the stock 4-inch back box speakers with high quality 5.25-inch speakers.
- Replace the cabinet woofer with a better-quality 8-inch speaker.
- Wire up an external powered subwoofer.
Backbox Speaker Replacement – High to Midrange
The cheap-o stock speakers installed in brand-new pinball machines are crap. These 5.25-inch speakers from Kicker get the best reviews from pinball enthusiasts for matching the type of music found in pinball machines.
Note: To move from 4-inch speakers to 5.25-inch speakers you will need to modify the speaker mounts or purchase some adapters.
Adapters are available from several vendors including Pinball Life (https://www.pinballlife.com/stern-spike-2-speaker-plate-for-525-drivers.html) and Speaker Light Kits (https://www.speakerlightkits.com/5.25-SPIKE-2-Speaker-Plates.html)
If you don’t have space for a 5.25-inch speaker, as with SAM and Spike pinball machines, you can at least upgrade those cheap stock speakers with something better like these Kicker CS Series CSC4 4 Inch Car Audio Speaker with Woofers.
Cabinet Woofer – Midrange
Here is my suggestion for the upgraded cabinet woofer. This $23 Skar Audio FSX8-4 8″ 350 Watt 4 Ohm Pro Audio Midrange Loudspeaker. The cabinet woofer rounds out the mid-range sound that can’t be reproduced by the smaller backbox speakers.
When installing, you’ll notice right away the weight and depth difference between the Skar speakers and the stock ones. The original stock Stern speakers weigh 1 pound 3 ounces. The Skar speaker weighs 4 pounds 5 ounces due to its much larger magnet.
The Skar speaker fits in perfectly using the same original mounting hardware. I removed the plastic “grill” as it tends to rattle against the speaker.
Note: The yellow wire with the black stripe towards the coin door is the “+” or positive terminal. The all-yellow wire towards the back of the machine is the “-” or negative terminal.
Subwoofer – Low End
Subwoofers can provide instant improvement in sound quality as pinball machines are always lacking in the low end of the audio spectrum.
Pinball machines don’t do well at the low end of the audio spectrum and you are missing a lot of “oooomph”, punch, and feeling if you don’t add a subwoofer. I’ve added subwoofers in the past to a few machines by swapping out the cabinet speaker with a subwoofer but it ends up rattling the glass and the cabinet itself is too large and leaking to provide a good subwoofer cabinet.
Subwoofers with L and R line inputs can be shared among two machines. The Polk 10″ inch powered subwoofer is popular among pinball enthusiasts due to its low price. https://www.dogfordstudios.com/tag/subwoofer/
The next step up perhaps is this Klipsch R-12SW 12″ subwoofer.
Connecting the Subwoofer to the Pinball Machine
This $20 connection from Pinsound allows one to tap into the Spike 2 board for line-out sound from CN5.
Connecting a Stern SAM pinball machine to a subwoofer
For older SAM-based Stern pinball machines you can use this $35 connection kit from Pininnovators to connect to a subwoofer.
