As far as I can tell there were only 3 panels ever made for the E29 a 2L8B, a 2L12B and a Mahjong Panel. the 2L8B and 2L12B were both available in either red or blue to match the cabinet color (so I guess 5 panels if you want to count the color differences). This cabinet came with a 2L8B.
The Sticks don't actually mount to the panel but rather a sub bracket that's bolted to the top plastic of the panel from the under side. These cabs use Seimitsu LS-32 sticks with separate push on connectors for each switch. Also interesting is that the 2L8B panel used round gates while the 2L12B used square gates.
Note the oversized holes for the joysticks, this is so you can remove the panel and have it clear the ball tops. The buttons snap fit in place just like other modern panels.
It's a good thing too because when I went to disassemble them for cleaning they were pretty cruddy. I had to put one ball top in a vice to break it lose.
also interesting is that the panel uses just 1 dust washer mounted BELOW the panel, and it's over sized. here's a comparison of the oversized E29 dust washers compaired to the new ones from Seimitsu
The previous owner had thrown in a 3rd party 2L14B that is actually pretty crappy. it was bare metal, cheaply made the 7th button was on the bottom row for some reason and was useless for Player 2 because the hole was positioned such that wouldn't clear the metal panel bracket. I covered it in black vinyl and stuck some button plugs in the 7th holes but it was ugly enough that I don't even want to post a picture of it...
Thankfully, the second Egret 29 I picked up came with the 2L12B panel so as soon as I got that home I swapped that panel onto this cab (at least for the time being)
A few interesting things about these panels. First is that they're made of aluminum... so NO RUST! second is that the mounting bolts are actually PRESSED into the panel. rather than square holes for carriage bolts like the Sega panels these have 6 studs permanently pressed into the panel. Another interesting thing was that the 2L8B panel used M3.5 threaded studs while the 2L12B panel used M4 threaded studs. the start/coin panel on both machines used M3.5 (there's actually quite a bit of M3.5 sized bolts on these cabs which is very annoying because you have to special order that shit). That aftermarket 2L14B panel had no studs... no square holes either just circular holes.
For whatever reason the bottom center stud on the 2L12B panel was missing so I took an M4 carriage bolt and pressed it in with my bench vice and a deep 6mm socket
I agonized over the button colors to use. The original colors from the sales flyers and according to the parts manual is white plunger/black housing for the start buttons, black ball tops and red and orange buttons. It also specifically calls out Sanwa buttons. I decided to go with Seimitsu buttons because they have a nice boxy look to Sanwa's gentle curves and i felt it fit the cab better. I kept the black/white themed start buttons but went with all white gameplay buttons and white ball tops. My reasoning is that the control panel area on this cab is really dark due to the blue upper control box So the all white sticks and buttons would help lighten it up. I also left the stick shafts bare because the cab does have some metallic accents in the posts that hold up the header, the bare metal coin slot and the bare metal serial number plate on the front of the cab, so I felt it fit better than any colored post would.
I had originally planned to rebuild the LS-32s but after pricing out the rebuild parts it was only a few bucks less than just buying all new sticks. so that's what I did.
I'm really happy with the end result.
You can also notice here that I've got locks and keys! This cab had NONE but I managed to source a complete set of locks and a single key off of YAJ (the other keys in the photo are for my other cabs). Sadly this auction didn't include the cams for the locks. I was able to use normal oval shaped cams for everything except the monitor locks. At the moment they're just for decoration. So I'm still on the look out for those as well as a spare key. If anyone is interested they're LY-0069 locks.