Almost Tournament Time!

It’s been something I’ve been looking forward to for a long time – hosting a pinball tournament!  The trick to running a tournament is to have reliable games.  While at the Open Studios back in November we had people in and playing the games, when you’re going to run a tournament, everything needs to be working properly on all of the games.

Today was a day where I buried myself in the studio to deal with several not-so-obvious, but important problems on several of the games.

I spent over an hour  working on Mata Hari today – it was having issues with the score displays.  The displays were showing “junk” instead of numbers, so I started with the J2 connector plug on the MPU board.  All of these connections tell the five different displays what numbers to show.  After working, on the connectors, all but one of the displays were behaving – the player 4 display seemed to still be having issues.  I found another Bally display in my parts collection and it worked perfectly.  The former Player 4 display will need to be rebuilt.

After working on Mata Hari, I spent some time on Jungle King.  Jungle King needs a flipper rebuild to make the flippers work better, but they’ll work as-is for the time being.  The issues I wanted to deal with were a target that wasn’t working, and the hundreds score reel which was not advancing properly.

I dealt with the score reel first.  The problem was most apparent when the player scored 500 points.  The unit is supposed to advance one step each time the coil inside is pulsed – so when a 500 point target is hit, a relay pulls in inside the game which activates the score motor and pulses the hundreds relay five times – and hundreds relay pulses the score reel coil.  The five pulses were happening as they should, but sometimes the reel would only advance four times, and other times it would advance six.  There is an EOS switch on the score reel which controls the hundreds relay – it helps to hold the relay in until the score reel coil has fully pulled in (when the coil releases, the reel advances).  On the score reel, the EOS switch was broken.  This is not always a problem, as you can try to make other adjustments in the game to compensate for the broken switch, but I had a spare, so in it went!

Lastly, I spent some time on Eight Ball.  I had to replace a stand-up target on the playfield and replace some light bulbs which were burnt out.  Eight Ball was out of commission for about a month as I was using its boards to test out another game.  The target that wasn’t working turned out to be a contact not “making” in the alternating relay.

I’m currently working on another game – a Williams Pat Hand – and I’m hoping to have that game running well in the next few weeks. 

Weymouth Farmers Market

Yesterday, Atlantic Pinball went to the Weymouth Farmers Market behind the town hall, and a great time was had by all!

We had a line-up of three games, a Williams Ding Dong, a Gottlieb Big Hit, and a late addition, a Bally Freedom.  The Freedom game had just been made operational the night before, but hadn’t been extensively tested yet.  It had a couple of minor issues pop up during the day, but still did well.

The games were very popular with the attendees of the Farmers Market.  At one point, the lines to play the games were long! 

We did very well there yesterday, passing out a ton of business cards, and letting people in the area know we exist! 

We’re hoping to attend Weymouth’s Pumpkin Fest on October 1st.  We’ll update with more information soon!

Our thanks go out to everyone who stopped by and said hi, and a very special thanks goes out to one local family who purchased one of our games at the Farmers Market!  They’ll be enjoying their new pinball machine for years to come!

Great Playing Pinball Machines On The Way!

If you access our blog through our website (www.AtlanticPinball.com), you’ve probably already noticed the changes to it.  New graphics, and an improved layout will all go to making our site easier to use.

One of the other changes we’re making is the introduction of “Player” machines for sale.  A “Player” pinball machine is a good, well playing pinball machine that is cosmetically a little rough around the edges.  Maybe the backglass isn’t perfect, or the playfield is worn, or the cabinet’s paint has seen better days, or all of the above, but they still play great!  If you want to own a cool pinball machine, but a restored machine isn’t in your budget, then this is the game for you!

We have two “player” machines coming through the pipeline right now, the first is a Williams “Ding Dong”, and the other is a Gottlieb “Top Score”.

Ding Dong is a great playing game that was released to the public the very week I was born, back in February of 1968!  Ding Dong is a good, family friendly theme with school children spelling words to light up the bonus shot and the “special” lights.  Ding Dong is the replay version of “Smarty” and features two, two-inch flippers, three pop-bumpers, and a whole bunch of targets to hit.  It has a four scoring reels and two bells which ring as you score points.

Ding Dong has been thoroughly cleaned and waxed, and has had a great deal of TLC, but it has not been restored the way we like to restore a game.  A reproduction backglass was purchased for its restoration, and is available for sale separately.

Ding Dong has a good playfield, which could use a few minor touch-ups around the pop-bumpers.  The backglass (included) is okay, but not great.  It has some peeling and flaking, which is why we bought a replacement.  Finally, the cabinet could use a paint job, and the coin door is missing parts.  Ding Dong has “good bones”, and plays flawlessly.  It’s a fun game for the money!

The other game is “Top Score”, the two-player version of Gottlieb’s popular “300”.  Top Score is a game that started out in the restoration process before we made the decision to do “player” games as well.  Currently, its playfield is completely stripped for cleaning and waxing.  When completed, it’ll have rebuilt flippers with new coils, reconditioned pop-bumpers, reconditioned score reels, and all new rubber.

Top Score’s playfield is very nice, and the body looks pretty good too.  The backglass on this game has some minor flaking and crazing, and the reds have faded to pink.  However, this game is still a classic and will be available for a very nice price!

If for any reason you’d prefer to buy either of these games fully restored, we can certainly do that for you.  If you contact us, we’ll work out the details with you.

We’ll have pictures of both games coming soon on our For Sale page on AtlanticPinball.com!