Been hunting for a donor Defender cabinet for the better part of a year and finally landed one. Found it through a guy on the UK arcade collectors forum who was clearing out a lock-up in Sheffield – three cabinets in there, two were far gone (water damage, the classic), but the Defender was rough cosmetically and structurally sound, which is the combination you actually want. Cosmetic stuff you can fix. Rot in the cabinet sides, not so much.
Drove up on a Saturday with the estate car seats down and a mate to help lift, because these things are an absolute pig to move solo – the monitor chassis alone is like carrying a dead body wrapped in a duvet. Paid £180 for it after a bit of back and forth, which honestly felt like a steal until I got it home and found the harness had been “modified” by someone at some point in the last 40 years. Translation: hacked about with a Stanley knife and electrical tape.
Current state: cabinet’s stripped down to bare wood, control panel is off being re-drilled (previous owner fitted a bat-top joystick where the original stick should be, wrong hole pattern entirely), and the monitor’s gone off to a chap who does CRT rebuilds because I am not confident enough yet to mess with a chassis that can apparently still kill you a week after it’s unplugged.
Next job is sourcing a replacement harness rather than trying to repair what’s there – not worth the risk of chasing intermittent faults through 40-year-old wire nests. Will post progress as it happens.
180 quid for a solid cabinet is a great price these days. Where about was the lock-up, Sheffield way has been picked pretty clean when I’ve looked.
Was a bit further out than central Sheffield, guy was clearing his dad’s old lock-up. Worth keeping an eye on the forum classifieds, that’s where I found it.