I would asume that SB will be supporting the RioCar\Empeg's for some time to come (hopefully) so I guess it might not make sense to ask this, But I might as well ask just the same.
Some items I can see wanting to stock up on...
Sled connectors, Buttons, Volume knobs, Face plates, Handles to name a few.

I really want some more buttons so I can create more versions of lighted buttons.

Seeing as the player is now EOL and the chance of anyone else making such an awesome machine is about as good as Microsoft ever using fair buisness practices, I need to figure out how to make my two units last forever.

There are very few faceplates left and the tool to make them is worn out, so I cant see them ever being sold. In the future, hopefully, they will be available from other sources. Cruzths is already selling some exotic wood ones, and is looking into having aluminum ones made.

Sled connectors - I think these are in farnell, can't remember the part number

Buttons, Volume knobs - I think Rob or Hugo mentioned in the past that they have tons of these around. I don't think these will wear out anyway.

Handles - Not sure about these. Would it be possible to get these made in small batches?

Buttons - Not only does the empeg team have tons of them - I guess they are "off the shelf" parts and I think Hugo has even listed the part number on the forum if someone wanted to buy some straight from the manufacturer.

The actual button is a standard component but the button cap isn't.

But then again it's going to be reasonably hard to wear out the button cap...

- Trevor

Hugo?, Rob? Any surplus switch caps (buttons) avaliable???
I'll even make a set or two or the epoxy filled button mods for backlit buttons for you guys if I can get some to work with....

We have thousands of Mk.2 buttons. Email [email protected] and he'll send you some - but give it some time because he's very busy right now.

Rob

Oh yeah, and we'll definitely want some sets of the epoxy-filled buttons in return .

Whoa. Can anyone get some of these buttons? I know nothing about electronics, but I can follow directions and I'm one crafty bastard. Having a pile of buttons to experiment on would be great.

Instead of using Epoxy to fill the buttons have you thought of using that colourless casting resin (I think it's Polyester). I must admit though, that that stuff does smell a bit whereas Epoxy is pretty much odourless. I was just thinking that the casting resin might not suffer with trapped air bubbles quite so much. You could probably dye it too.

edit: On second thoughts, instead of colouring the resin you could print out some small coloured filters to fit inside the buttons. You could use a similar method to my printed screens idea. This would be similar to someone elses (I can't remember who now) suggestion to put small transparent coloured pieces of plastic between the LED & the button to give various colours.

I have experience with resin castings, I could come up with some cool mods if I had some originals to cast from.

Yeah, I wouldn't mind experimenting with a few. Maybe I'll send David an email. I'll give him a little while as Rob said he's busy at the moment.

This brings up something a friend mentioned to me. He noted that the display seems to create quite a bit of ambient light. Although, I'm not absolutely sure of this since I haven't taken the fascia off yet. Maybe somebody can tell me?

Anyways, we were thinking that you could cast the buttons in a glow-in-the-dark plastic. Then, the ambient light from the display would charge up the plastic buttons, and they'd glow after 5-10 minutes.

Something I thought of last night was to use fibre optics to illuminate the buttons from the VFD. Trouble is they'd change brightness with the display.

When ever I've had stuff with that glow in the dark paint/plastic on it's taken quite strong light directly evenly over the whole thing for it to work properly. Otherwise you'll get half the button glowing.

Could be an interesting if it does work though. Nice and cheap and no hacking at the PCB!

- Trevor

I originally suggested the small pieces of coloured plastic. You can also easily cut the small pieces with a hole punch. Coloured plastics should be easily found in crafts shops, hobby shops, sign shops, etc. Transparent mylar, coloured acrylic sheet or other films would work well.

Bruno

The glow-in-the-dark manufacturer mentioned in the other thread said that most GITD stuff is really cheap, but that theirs is much better. They gave charging times and how long it would last for comparison. It sounded really good to me, even after initial thoughts like yours.

Hey, if you guys want to send me a few sets of buttons, I'll try the dremel/epoxy trick and see if I can make them back-lightable.

Since it seems that there's quite a few people interested in doing some hacking with the buttons, maybe we should setup some kind of signup list, so that David doesn't get overrun with emails for buttons.

The signup form could have a place for you to put in your name and address.

Of course, this could be way beyond what you want. In which case, ignore everything I said.

Or perhaps someone can speak up and offer to do the mailing, leaving him with only one person to ship to?

Has anyone tried *BOTH* LEDs and glow in the dark? How about Ultraviolet LEDs (blacklight LEDs) on glow in the dark buttons? You'll get a very intense otherworldly glow.

Calvin

When I wanted to change the display colour of my Neo35 (hhhhhock spit!) I bought some gels, or filters that they use in stage lights. This might also work for experiments on the Empeg.

http://www.datsunworld.com/temp/180Y61.jpg

Will