I've got 10 candy cabs and have had them for well over 6 years now, never used a stepdown transformer
It's the PSU inside the cab the drives the requirement.Wouldn't matter if you had 100 candy cabs that never had an issue, if none of them used a Wei Ya for example.
As mentioned above, cheap Wei Ya PSUs can't operate with 120v in, they are wildly unstable if you do.
It won't damage cab electronics, as the Vewlix's other power supplies are internal and unaffected far as I can tell...
But arcade PCBs, they will cook on the 12v line when it spikes up to 15v and drops back down to 8v.
Yea I'm speaking from experience here, I destroyed a MVS 1FZ's audio amp this way.