There are two things I heard upon first entering this hobby.
Firstly, one cab is never enough. True enough, when I miraculously found an Atomiswave SD locally I just had to have it. Secondly, this is the hobby where everything breaks. The seller of the cab warned me that there was a monitor issue with some red color bleeding, but it was at a fair price, I had the cash to spare, and I wasn't sure when I'd ever get the chance to buy another candy cab again, so I couldn't resist.
The Atomiswave SD is essentially a re-branded Taito Egret 3. Mine even came with an Egret 3 control panel, which is great as I hate the stock Atomiswave SD control panel due to it's ugly card reader. I got a new ball top and buttons (Taito Hey colors!) and, as it was missing a 100 yen sticker, I bought a NOS Egret 3 sticker to match (not to mention a step down converter too. Stupid, finicky PSU).
These cabs have a bad rep due to the flat tri-rez CRT monitor, which is made of cheap wei-ya parts and is better suited to high rez 31khz games than the low rez 15khz games I enjoy. This is further compounded on my cab due to the red color issues. It's perfectly playable but the red color sometimes bleeds and/or makes the screen appear darker than it should be. I do find it annoying, but can live with it for now. A cap kit or chassis replacement may be in order someday, but my skill/comfort level with monitors isn't even close to attempting that right now.
Anyway, while you can never truly replicate the arcade experience at home, with two cabs blaring I'm that much closer to doing so. I think I've maxed out on cabs for now, unless I can somehow get my hands on a Taito Egret 2 or a Capcom Mini Cute.
