Williams Upper Deck Pitch & Bat small repair

First post of 2026!

So the other day I wanted to play Upper Deck...

 

I got this game in 2019 and since I've first gotten it working. It's been very reliable.

So I start a game, press the pitch button. The game serves the ball. Press the bat button... nothing happens. 

The bat is dead!?

Re start the game, press the pitch button. The game serves the ball. Press the bat button, the bat works.

Pitch the next ball, bat. all good.

Another pitch, press the bat button. Bat is dead again.

What's happening?

So I open up the game.

I start with the obvious stuff: (I.e. Bullshitting my way through the repair)

Clean the end of stroke switch on the bat unit.

 

Clean the switch points on the Pitch Relay, the Bat Relay and the Bat Button Relay.

 

Close up the game. Try a new game... and the game behaves exactly the same as before.

But I also notice a pattern:

When the bat was inoperative, if I kept pitching balls, after the 3rd strike, an out would register and the bat would work again for a couple of pitches... interesting.

Time to look at some documentation:

I had a PDF copy of Upper Deck's manual but no schematic.

The sequence of operation of the Pitch Unit, Bat Re. Bat Button Re. and Bat Unit coil is clearly explained:

 

I check the Pitch Unit:

 

Everything checks out good but still the bug remains.

I look on IPDB.org for a similar Williams pitch and bat game that might have the schematic.

1971 Williams Action Baseball had the schematic and close enough features so I can use it to aid my troubleshooting.

 

The bat coil is a 110 Volt coil.

It is energized by way of 2 switches on the Bat Relay, then by a switch on the Bat Button Relay. Then through a large variable resistor (for bat power operator adjustment). Then the circuit goes parallel through a 4 Ohm 10W resistor and a Mix unit switch. An finally through a fuse before reaching the coil.

So I start checking:

All the relay malarkey has been checked already. All good.

The variable resistor and the fuse are good. Connections are solid.

 

The Mix Unis is a bit gummed up, it didn't actuate smoothly. So I cleaned it and changed the coil sleeve.

 

Then I check the 4 Ohm 10W resistor and the resistor is bad. Open circuit.

That explains the intermittent failure of the bat. The mixer's role is to vary the power of the bat coil on a pseudo-random basis. By opening and closing the Mix Unit switch parallel to the 4 Ohm resistor, the circuit either goes through both the mixer switch and resistor (making the resistance practically zero) or through the resistor only, in the later case with the blown resistor, the circuit couldn't complete to the coil.

 

 

I didn't have a 4 Ohm resistor on hand so I had to order one. In the meantime I temporarily bodged a 3 Ohm resistor, just to be able to play the game until I fix it properly.

Here's the final repair:

 

I like Upper Deck. It was William's last Electro-mechanical Pitch & Bat game. It has the running man unit, electronic sound AND bells, two rows of targets, pseudo-random curve balls and a cool back box light animation for home runs.

My example is a bit of a rough. The head is missing the neck, the backglass is bad and the cabinet is pretty poor. But it's a keeper. I have fond memories of playing another Upper Deck at a pinball show against someone else. I was in the moment, just enjoying it.   

Holiday Bubbles

 

What do Bubbler Jukeboxes, Hand Boilers, Drinking Birds and Holiday Bubble Lights all have in common?

 

 

 

Answer: They all use the chemical Dichloromethane for effect.

Here's brief explanation of the working principle taken from the Wikipedia page:

"The chemical compound's low boiling point allows the chemical to function in a heat engine that can extract mechanical energy from small temperature differences. An example of a DCM heat engine is the drinking bird. The toy works at room temperature.^[18] It is also used as the fluid in jukebox displays and holiday bubble lights that have a colored bubbling tube above a lamp as a source of heat and a small amount of rock salt to provide thermal mass and a nucleation site for the phase changing solvent."

I just love watching the bubble lights doing their thing and I love the lights and sounds from a bingo machine.

It got me thinking... I should combine both as some absurd ASMR video.

Kinda like the Fireplace channel (the only TV channel I would willingly watch) but with Bubble lights and a bingo machine noises instead. Warm lights, clicks and pops.

It's time for a new holiday tradition!

Miscellaneous November Update

November sucks! It's cold. It rains. It snows.

Daylight is down to nine and a half hours and getting shorter everyday until winter solstice.

It's a difficult time of the year.

I realized I haven't posted anything here in awhile. Things have been a bit slow machine wise.

So here's a bunch of little things I've been fiddling with lately:

 

Nishijin Circuit Racer in my custom cabinet:

I installed Circuit Racer in my custom pachinko cabinet.

 

 

Also, as can be seen in my original post for the game, It was missing all the aluminum trim on the lower ball tray.

So I found a tray that had the trim I needed.

 

 

I Ginger-carefully removed the trim, and installed it onto Circuit Racer. It really improves the overall look of the game. Especially since this is pretty clean example.

 

Kyoraku Oryusan in the ball lift frame:

 

I installed Oryusan in the ball lift frame.

 

 

Oryusan was what finally motivated me to buy a Silver Orange ball lifter after all these years of wanting one. So, naturally, it was the next game to go onto my test platform I cobbled together in my previous post.

 

These newer pachinko machines with the fever modes are impossible to appreciate, as in really experience the gameplay, without some sort of ball lift system. The machine's prize hopper is too small and the machine quickly runs out of balls as soon as you achieve a fever mode.

BUT I didn't just install the game. I bought two more Orange ball lifts: One that is complete with the proper prize hopper paddle switch and one that had the overflow blocked off.

 

I modified my platform to accommodate the second lifter. As the first lift fills up with played balls, it overflows into the second lifter. Excessive balls overflow into a couple of boxes. That gives the whole setup amazing capacity. I admit that TWO Silver ball lifts is a bit of a Pachinko Nerd Flex but now I can play through a 15R and not run out of prize balls.

 

 

I wired a timer so that when the prize hopper paddle switch closes the first lift will run continuously and the second will run 15 seconds ON, 15 seconds OFF until the prize hopper is filled. That way is prioritizes the first lift so that it empties first.

The one down side of my new system is that I occasionally have to manually empty excess balls if gameplay goes on for too long without a significant win.

 

It's crazy how many balls these newer pachinko machines can gobble up!

New tokens for Satomi Buffalo Arrangeball:

I got some 26mm tokens for the Buffalo Arrangeball. I like 'em.

I want each machine to have it's own token model to make things more complicated.

Bally Miss Universe side art:

 

This is a bit off topic.

 

I recently watched, for the first time, the 2001 movie adaptation of Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

 

I know... I'm about 25 years late.

I thought the titular character totally looks like the side art of the Miss Universe bingo machine.

 

I just had to share it.

🎵Through the dark turns and noise of this wicked little town🎵

Silver Orange Pachinko Ball Lifter Setup

I bought a Silver Orange ball lifter from Yahoo Japan Auction.

I've been waiting a very long time to find a really clean example. These ball lifters have always been relatively expensive and they usually look like they spent some time at the bottom of the ocean. So when I saw this one come up for sale I had to get it and bid accordingly.

Super Clean!

I foolishly thought this would be plug and play, but it rarely is with stuff from YJA. Despite what the auction listing said.

The unit had no low ball level switch, no elevator start prize hopper paddle switch and the wiring was a bit "unconventional ".

No big deal, I can make this work.

I looked trough my stash of micro-switches and found one that would do for the low ball level switch. Even found some JIS screws for it.

 

Then I fabri-cobbled a prize hopper start switch from junk I had around. It's more of a proof of concept really. It just clips to the side of the hopper. Eventually I will make a switch paddle that sits at the bottom of the hopper. But for now this will do. It works-ish.

It's a case of " 60% of the time it works every time "

With the switches done I setup the elevator on the back of the Heiwa, directly on the floor as a kind of test mule. I played the game a bit and quickly found out that the lifter's hopper ball capacity was pretty low and that balls ended up on the floor by way of the overflow, rolling everywhere. So to make the setup functional at all, I had to make some kind of platform to set the game and elevator on with enough room to have a box to catch from the overflow.

I didn't want this to turn into some kind of life ruining project. I wanted to be able to swap games easily. I didn't want to go out for building supplies, so I had to work with what I had at home. AND I'm not a woodworker. I had to work with what tools I had on hand.

This is what I came up with. Some scrap 2x4 lumber, plywood from an old bingo machine backdoor and some old shelving brackets. It even has levelers. For tools I used a circular saw, a miter saw, a jig saw, a hole saw and a a drill. It took longer to build than one can imagine, I had to do a lot of measuring to make it as straight and square as possible with my limited resources. For some reason I had "Some Kind of Stranger" by The Sisters Of Mercy playing in a loop while I built the platform.

It does the job. It's not perfect, but it works.

Playing impressions using a ball elevator:

It's a bit of a zero sum game. True, I can play longer, I don't have to manually refill the prize hopper, the elevator does that for me. BUT as I win more balls, eventually I have to add balls to the lifter hopper. The won balls need to be replaced, sometimes faster than I can play them. So it's not some kind of magical device that allows you to play forever. It's not a closed system.

In my opinion, In the current setup, this kind of elevator is more like a cool artifact from the old pachinko industry days. A collector piece: more form than function. I like it nonetheless.

🎵 And I know the world is cold, but
If you hold on tight to what you find
You might not mind too much 🎵

Small repair on 1940 Gottlieb Score Card Hundred Point Unit

 

A couple weeks back I had visitors at my place... which is a big deal because the last time I had some guests over at my place was in early 2020... a long time ago. I just didn't feel like having anyone over since then.

Anyway, my guests were into the very eclectic and rare games so we were playing 1940 Gottlieb Score Card.

 

 

Gottlieb Score Card is a sequence game. The objective of the game is to light a complete number sequence on one of the four cards to win a massive amount of credits.

I repaired the game back in 2020 but before that it took me a number of years just to find all the missing parts I needed to get the project going. I wrote a couple of posts back then about overview and repairs...

So back to the bug... I kept noticing that once in a while the 100's wouldn't reset all the way back to zero when starting a new game. It would reset to 900 when the reset cycle would complete.

 

I decided to investigate the bug. I had a look at the 100's stepper unit. It's a 30 step continuous stepper. When resetting the game, the unit will step forward to the next zero.  There are three positions on the disc that are a zero. I did a number of resets of the game and observed where the wiper unit stopped. It was always in the same spot that it stopped at 900. The two other zero positions would work properly.  The bug was definitely electrical.

The unit is also responsible for lighting the 100's and giving the impulse to step up the 1000 point unit.

 

I took the wiper disk off so I could have a look. I suspected a broken wire on the back. But, checking with the multi-meter, I had continuity. Then I checked the continuity from the wiper and side and it measured open circuit. So I poked the solder glob on the back of the rivet and found a cold solder. Sneaky.

 

The repair was pretty easy. Using my soldering iron I removed the old glob of solder. Then I cleaned the back of the rivet with a dentist's pick tool and re-soldered the wire with some fresh tin solder and re-assembled the unit.

 

Job done.

Kyoraku Oryusan (1995) pachinko machine

 I bought what could be most annoying pachinko machine ever made:

 Oryusan released by Kyoraku in 1995 according to this Japanese webpage.

 

It's annoying because when it goes into some of the fever modes it starts emitting this very annoying laughter like sound. A game-play video (not mine) can be watched here.

I wanted to dive into the world of modern-ish pachinko machines, but I wasn't interested in digipachi games or more modern games. 1980's games, that are becoming quite collectable now, are either expensive or in very rough condition so I was looking for some early to mid 1990's Hanemono type pachinko machine.

Hanemono type games have a central feature with "wings" or "feathers" that momentarily open once or twice, to let balls in when certain pockets are hit. Then once a ball enters the feature it has to enter a specific pocket the start a fever mode.

When in fever mode, the feature wings open and close almost continuously for a number of rounds for a big payout.

 

The center feature of Oryusan depicts a story, but I lack the context and cultural background to decipher it.

When I saw Oryusan It ticked all the boxes. Hanemono feature with a little animated manikin, 1995, the right aesthetics (the cell art reminds me of waporwave somehow), a distinctive yet annoying sound feature. In a way it's a very ironic purchase.

 

The game arrived by EMS / Canada Post and it was packaged in what looks like bags of marshmallows. However I did not try to eat them.

 

 

 

The game just needed the bottom of the frame re-glued (easily done with some woodworking clamps and carpenter's glue), some glass, a good cleaning and a 24Vac transformer.

 

 

I sourced the transformer locally and cobbled together some power supply setup from stuff I already had in the workshop.

 

One very cool thing about Oryusan is the feature mechanism. So many solenoids them tightly packed together.

Coils, linkage and bell-cranks in a very efficient package for the animation of the wings, manikin head and both arms and small boxes that move up and down.

Game-play impressions:

Oryusan is my first modern-ish pachinko machine with an auto-shooter and the whole experience with the flashing lights, the sounds and the repetitive shooting of the balls is... mind numbing. Very passive. I find the older games more involved game-play wise.

Also when the game is in 15R or even 5R mode the game runs out of payout balls very quickly, so now I have to look into some kind of ball elevator.

More pictures