My pack is pretty much a GB1 style pack, but I have a black crank handle on there.
It looks nice, but comparing it to pics of GB1, the knobs on their packs are obviously
grey. Only a true geek (like us) would even know the difference… should I paint the nice,
new, shiny knob grey, or leave it black?
Russ
in my personal opinion either color looks good…do u want to stay accurate and go grey? or do u want to be a little original and stay black? me personally i would stay black just being im not so gun hoe about staying 100% movie accurate with little things like that…then again thats just me
It’s all about what you want really, one can’t pick holes in a Pack based on it’s crank knob, besides you can always argue there has never been a 100% accurate Ghostbusters 84 pack anyhow, as no ones located the correct rainbow cable.
If you like the shiny black one keep it!
It´s like me, i have my legris elbows black, i couldn´t find the grey ones, but when i look at it, they kind of look cool!!!
I like the Grey knobs.
I wouldn’t paint a $20 real crank knob though.. just a resin one.
I like the gray…in contrast to all the other black on the pack but that’s one opinion… 
but agreed with what AJ said..
I’d go with the visual texture of the gray. Will just look nicer I think. The more subtle details on something - the better. That’s why weld lines are important on a pack - they make it look made, not molded, or just something simple - it adds visual heft.
I’m keeping mine shiny black for now. Until I can find some GB1 accurate ribbon cable. Until then its not gonna be 100% anyway. Plus its a real one and I think it’ll look like a resin copy if I spray it 
For me, when I see a gray crank knob on a pack, I immediately look at the ribbon cable. If it’s the GB1 ribbon cable, (which some people make from scratch) I think “Sweet!!!.. a GB1 pack!” But with all the reference photos of screen used GB2 packs, black knobs are going to be more common with fans because it’s seen with the Spectra strip ribbon cable. The cool part - the general public doesn’t discriminate and looks at the whole thing and says “Hey, it’s the Ghostbusters!!!” so basically, you can’t lose. IMO, gray does look better. It stands out against the black.
If memory serves… the crank knobs in GB2 are the gray knobs from GB1 but painted black.
I added a potentiometer to mine as well, so the crank knob actually… cranks. 
It’s kind of cool. Did they even make a cast grey knob (the original knobs, not
counting resin ones)?
Russ
OMG! You made it inaccurate for doing that!
LOL Seriously though. I believe most of the parts for the pack were from radio shack. Though they also said the packs had parts made of resin, so it wouldn’t be totally crazy to think that they may of casted parts like the crank knob to save a few bucks.
From what I remember, when the new packs were built for GB2, I think the prop builders could only get their hands on black crank knobs so rather than paint them gray for the new packs , they left them black. They retrofitted a few GB1 packs to look like the new GB2 packs by painting the gray knobs black and changing the old style ribbon cables to the Specrta strip style.
Not sure if this info is true or not but it seems logical.
When the Reference section is back up, I’ll check the photos. I believe there’s a picture of one of the PH packs with the black paint chipping off of the crank knob.
Yes.
The knobs were originally available in a couple of different colors.
From what I know the common colors were: Black, Grey, & Red