The P1/P2 re-releases in recent years have a speaker that sounds overly loud and harsh to my ears, especially compared to the vintage versions. Luckily I was able to fix this issue by soldering the speaker to the PCB instead of relying on springs and including a resistor in-line with the speaker.
With this project, I wanted to see if I could swap the insides of a Japanese 2017 re-release with a US 2023 re-release. That way I'd get the softer beeps and slightly different programming of the Japanese version in one of my favorite re-release shells!
The screws are larger in the US version, so the Japanese PCB holes need to be enlarged by carefully sanding them with a needle file. The speakers were bit tricky to remove and put back into place without a little bending of the plastic tabs, but this slight cosmetic damage is only internal.
Overall the swap was a piece of cake. I'm so happy with the results! (I wasn't even planning on keeping the Japanese shell, but the one I got is so cute, and in such good shape, that I might end up doing the speaker upgrade on it so I can run it without burning my ears off.)
