Cabin Fever? New rubbers for Delta Queen

Bally Delta Queen

Is it cabin fever, in these confined times, that drove me to re rubber Delta Queen?

Rubbers for Delta Queen

Why do I keep this game? Why do I keep playing Delta Queen? It's one of Bally's weakest pinball offerings of the 70's.

I didn't just re rubber the game... I freshened up the lamps too. Even did the ones under the top arch.
I have to admit it plays way better. As for looking better... it has more lights.

Freshened up Delta Queen

I'm grateful to be holed up at home with no kids, lots of beer and lots of pinball. But it does feel strange not to be able to go visit friends for public health reasons. Gives me lots of time to play and appreciate my games, instead of just repairing them.

Gratuitous shot of the Gameroom

Although I enjoy a bit of work / maintenance too.

Pinball repair vision

Playing bingo too.

3 in green scores 36: I'll take that

There should be a law for pinball repair... sorta like Murphy's Law but applied to pinball repair, it should go like this:
After repairing a pinball machine, and test playing it extensively, problems will reveal themselves once the playfield glass is re-installed.

Eye Candy: Northwestern model 60

Northwestern model 60 with Capersville.
Nice pair :-)
I picked up this bulk vender in a junk shop. It's THE gumball machine I've been looking for... metal body, glass globe, freestanding, with the key.

Now, what kind of bulk candy should I put in it? That's the real question.

Nitwitz I think.

Northwestern Model 60

Bally Sea Island Bingo and beer

Playing my Sea Island Bingo machine and enjoying a beer.
Marzen Rauchbier. Mmmm. Liquid bacon!

Wine and Bally Mystic Gate Bingo

Playing Mystic Gate.
Drinking Wine.
Winning 192 credits on a 3 in yellow.
Messing around with my phone camera.
La dolce vita.
The sweet life.
La grosse vie.

Ballyhoo on top of Capersville

One was made in Janurary 1932. The other in December 1966.

34 years!

Thats how long it took Bally to go from a crude board with nails to an electro-mechanical masterpiece of design and art.

Capersville artwork by Jerry K, Kelley, influenced by the 1965 Jean-Luc Godard film Alphaville

Light Therapy

Basking in the glow of old pinball machines.

Bingo Traffic Jam

Moving the games around in my gameroom resulted in a bingo machine traffic jam.

2017 Ottawa Pinball and Gameroom Show

On September 2nd and 3rd was the 2017 Ottawa Pinball and gameroom show at the Nepean Sportsplex.

Game setup was on Friday the 1st. My contributions to the show were Bally Wizard!, Hokus Pokus and Delta Queen.

Friday Setup

Setting up my games

The show is an occasion for people of all ages to enjoy pinball in all it's forms. For the people from the pinball community, it's another occasion to hang out, chat, and drink beer.

There was around 100 games, some from as early as mid 1960's all the way to new games. All the games at the show were supplied by vendors, operators and the general pinball community.

My favorite game at the show was Williams Fan-Tas-Tic. I had never played it before. It's a lot like Williams Spanish Eyes, but with a bonus, left outlane kick back, right outlane return and a roulette.

Williams Fan-Tas-Tic

There was an IFPA sanctioned O-Town Throwdown Tournament.

Tournament

Tons of fun. Can't wait for next year's show.

Bally Wiggler

LOOKING GOOD!

There's been so much movement in the game room in the past 3 years but this one is a keeper :-)

Working on Bally On Beam

A shot of On Beam with it's guts hanging all out. I love Bally's of that era for their design: top glass frame, sturdy playfield and score motor panel that can prop up and out.

The problem was the outhole not registering. The cause was a switch on the trip bank carry over switch stack. A small switch blade adjustment did the trick.

On Beam Trip bank armature mystery?

When I started working on On Beam. I noticed some of the trip bank armatures looked a bit weird. Some were broken, some were replaced with some strange mystery part that sorta did the job.

More importantly, I noticed that the first armature, on top of being all messed up, was missing a small 90 degree piece of metal that would stop half of the trip bank from resetting when the reset motor was running. Without that small 90 degree piece the game would never work properly.

The other trip armatures were not a problem to replace since I had a bunch of spares from parts machines as they are commonly used in later bingo machines.

The first armature is cactus but the 4th trip has the part I need

Serendipitously, I also noticed that the 4th armature was the wrong kind installed for that trip, but it was the correct armature I was missing for the first trip. The 1st trip required A-261-12. The 4th trip had a A-261-12 but required a A-261-11. So my missing part problem was solved...

A hodgepodge of armatures

From the Bally 1976 parts catalog

This whole story of the A-261-12 in the wrong place got me thinking. How or why was it installed in the wrong place, yet so conveniently...there for me to use it to fix the game?

Maybe it goes back to when the machine was assembled at the Bally factory. Maybe the factory worker assembling the trip bank ran out of A-261-11 and installed a A-261-12 instead.

Maybe that factory worker was really a latent precog. That he subconsciously knew that by installing that part, he would save a lot of grief to one of the future owners of the game that would be stuck with the broken missing part. Maybe the factory worker's precog ability subconsciously guided his hand to the wrong parts tray.

Maybe I got the part in there. That is the future me, reflecting on how I once had this On Beam game but that it never did work properly because of the missing part. But fortunately for the future me, Time Travel technology would be available, allowing the future me to go back in time, get that armature, hastily install the part in the game before I would first acquire the game...

Maybe it's a different me. That is, an analogue of myself in a parallel universe. Very similar to this one except that the Time Travel equations and all the other technological details are commonly available. In this parallel universe, time travel tourism is not illegal but strongly frowned upon. Unfortunately for my parallel self, the missing armature is no longer available in his universe. Therefore, it was simpler to go back in time to get the missing part. Maybe this other self from the parallel universe built a time machine to go back in time to the Bally factory in 1969 for a tour of the plant on the day that my On beam was being assembled. Maybe my other self distracted the factory worker at a critical moment, resulting in the wrong armature plate being installed. Unfortunately for my parallel self, he built his time machine from cheap eBay parts. Resulting in a faulty time machine that not only travels through time but also through parallel universes. He ended up in this (my) past timeline, similar enough to his own timeline for him not to notice the shift until he travelled back to his own present where he would find his On Beam still missing the part. Thinking his time altering actions were all in vain.

Eventually the Time police caught up with all these timeline altering shenanigans. To return the equilibrium to the timeline, a Time Police constable installed in my On Beam a faulty A-261-12 armature that broke soon after I got the machine working. 

Fortunately for me in this timeline, Pinball Resource has the part in stock. I ordered a bunch. Apparently, PBR bought a parts inventory from a defunct amusement operator, the armature was part of that inventory lot, but maybe there's a lot more the this story....

Maybe one of my time travelling parallel self stepped on a cockroach in 1969 that wasn't supposed to die. It died only because of the On Beam armature saga. Maybe it resulted in a similar timeline chain reaction as in Ray Bradbury's short story A sound of thunder?

From my photo archives: 2015 Ottawa pinball and gameroom show

Here's a picture of a couple of my games at the 2015 Ottawa Pinball and Gameroom Show. The gone and NOT missed Williams Travel Time and my second Bally Super Wall Street Bingo. I took the picture after shooting a 5 in line diagonal on the second card. It happened by accident, I just chucked the balls. Good times!

Bally Nip-it: Desperation, the mother of invention

Here's a picture of Nip-it with two multimeters and the PF apron removed.

Let me explain a bit.

I'm play testing the game with an intermittent problem and I need to know the exact moment when the Outhole relay and the 2nd ball relay are energized. I obviously can't play the game and look at the relays at the same time. The solution: put a multimeter on each relay set on ACV.

The interplay of these two relays is critical for the proper operation of the game. The Outhole relay,  2nd ball relay and the ball trough switches affect the ball count unit stepping up and the multiball logic of the game.

I'm playing the game and paying close attention to the actuation of the aforementioned relays by way of the meters when a ball drains. All in the hope of catching the bug.

More details in a future more elaborated post.

Bally Nip It update

First Bally nip-it update:

I fabricated a "temporary" plastic that was missing. I hope to eventually find a genuine plastic but in the mean time I have something that looks OK.

Also here's a cool graffiti carved into the cabinet: "ABC Taxi ltd" pretty cool!

New arrival: 1973 Bally Nip it

Picked up a Bally Nip it. The last bally EM with zipper flippers and the last EM multiball. Best known for being featured in Happy Days.

Once I got it home I did something I rarely do anymore. I set it up to play. Usually a game just sits there a few days before I do something with it.

I had good fun playing the game in the middle of the living room. I got a large can of malty libation juice. Soaking in the new purchase that reminded me of my teenage years. Until I noticed that one of the playfield plastics was missing. Damn pinball fever! I was blind to notice the missing part when I went to look over the game at the seller's.

I quickly perused the interwebs. No luck finding nip-it plastics.

New Arrival: Bally Hokus Pokus pinball machine with Laniel Canada ML 1600 Synchroson soundboard

I picked up this Hokus Pokus pinball machine.

A fairly mediocre offering from Bally in 1975. Lame gameplay. Art that looks like it was drawn by a 3rd grader. Making the A-B-C-D is so easy, sometimes you don't even have to use the flippers to get it.

I acquired it for all the wrong reasons. I likes the writing (graffiti) on the head, it has a Laniel Canada ML 1600 Synchroson soundboard "upgrade" and the game was in home use since 1981.

I traded some work and a bit of Geld to a local pinball reseller who recently received it as a trade-in and didn't want anything to do with it.

Being a total EM Bally pinball nut, I had to get this.

Bally Hokus Pokus

Manon and Marc got a Hokus Pokus for X-mas 1981

High Scores

In the late 70's, when the first Solid State hit the Arcades, EM games quickly became obsolete. To try keep the EM's on the road a bit longer to collect a few more quarters, distributors were offering conversion sound boards for EM games. As far as I know, there was only Pintone and here in Canada; the Synchroson ML 1600 by Laniel Canada that were offered.

The Synchroson boards have the serial number written by hand with a felt tip pen. The board shown below is #19. I sorta collect these oddball boards, I have also #9, 12 and 13. I don't know how many boards Laniel Canada sold. So far, I haven't seen a board with a number above 20.

They have a prototype look and feel to them. The traces are very fragile and they sound like rubbish. They have very little value (5 to 20 bucks). Most collectors take them out of their games to replace them with proper chimes.

The board is powered by the 6V lamp circuit. It has 6 inputs, more like triggers, for sound effects. These inputs were hard wired, usually in a very crude way by the operator, to various coils in the game. Each input has two wires that go to both tabs of a relay coil. The sound effect goes as long as the coil is energised, so the operator had to use G relay coils that are briefly energised.

Here is a link to the Montreal Pinball Website that also has a small article on the ML 1600: Bells & Whistles

Laniel Canada Synchroson ML 1600 Board #19

More to come on the actual repairs on the Hokus Pokus.

Cheers!