Info
I originally got this from Crazy Frazee, who assured me that it was in great condition.
I arranged to have it shipped to me, and when it arrived, I was disappointed to find
that the marquee was a color photocopy in two pieces, so there was a seam running
right up the middle. The control panel overlay had a gold painted bezel on the curve
to hide the cracking and the drink holders were sloppily spray-painted gold, with
over spray ending up on the t-molding.
I complained, of course, but Crazy Paul explained that he had put a lot of work in
to restoring this beauty and didn't understand why I was unhappy. (Years later, he
lost everything and ripped off a bunch of people by selling stuff and never shipping
it, me included ($30 for a Rescue Raiders PCB)).
I set about restoring the cabinet. I traded a Rolling Thunder PCB + cash for a nice,
new marquee. I bought a NOS control panel overlay and installed it. I took the drink
holders to a brass plating shop to have them plated, but that didn't turn out too
well. I guess they didn't know until after they tried that plating aluminum doesn't
work too well. The finish looks nice and shiny but has a bunch of dark bubbles in
it where the aluminum had pores. Oh, well. It still looks a lot better than it did
before. They did do a very nice job polishing up the foot rail. I also found someone
selling a "NOS" monitor glass. Mine was flaking slightly in the black so
I bought it. When it arrived, however, it was obviously not NOS. It was nicer than
mine and I got it cheap so I didn't complain, but I should have.
A year or so later, I was browsing eBay and came across an auction for an empty Tapper
cabinet. The picture link was broken, but I figured out why and downloaded the picture
to look at in Photoshop. Holy smokes, it's got color side art! The current high bidder
was a friend (David Birchell), so I emailed him asking if he'd seen the picture.
He had not. I showed him and told him I'd do some kind of deal to make sure he could
put together a working cabinet if he let me have the cabinet. He decided to get the
cabinet first and talk about it later. I eventually ended up just buying the cabinet
from him, sticking all my best parts into it and selling the left-overs. In a strange
twist, he later decided he wanted a Tapper after all and bought my empty monochrome-side
art cabinet. =) I couldn't make the 2000 CA Extreme show, but I decided to let the
boys take a bunch of my cabinets anyway. Perhaps that was not such a good idea. When
the cabinets were returned to me, the sides of the Tapper had come unglued and separated,
allowing the marquee to drop out onto the floor of the moving truck and shatter into
millions of tiny pieces. I wept.
They were very apologetic and bought me a new marquee (thanks to Bill Esquival for
selling it). I used wood glue and new screws and put the cabinet back together and
all is good once again.