# #97 Williams Phoenix - The Classic Pinball Podcast

**Source:** The Classic Pinball Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2022-12-06  
**Duration:** 70m 54s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/george272/episodes/97-Williams-Phoenix---The-Classic-Pinball-Podcast-e1r29eo

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## Analysis

George and Dr. Dave discuss restoration work on classic Williams and EM games, including detailed troubleshooting of a Williams Phoenix (1978) with a defective transformer and capacitor, a Six Million Dollar Man with a dangerous tinfoil-substituted fuse and burned coil, and a pair of Craigslist games (Eldorado and Paragon) with varying condition and repair needs. The episode covers technical diagnostics, sourcing parts, restoration philosophy, and pricing strategy.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] The Williams Phoenix's 18-volt capacitor had previously leaked and the transformer was defective, causing overheating. — _Dr. Dave confirmed he sourced a replacement transformer and capacitor kit from a collector friend and resolved the issue._
- [HIGH] The Six Million Dollar Man had a 15-amp fuse (later found to be tinfoil) installed instead of the required 1-amp fuse, causing a burned-out solenoid coil. — _Dr. Dave's detailed account of diagnosing the problem and the owner's subsequent repair with Maureen's assistance._
- [HIGH] The Eldorado purchased on Craigslist was in exceptional collector condition with perfect backglass and playfield, requiring only tilt adjustment. — _Dr. Dave's field assessment; he estimated market value at $4,000-$5,000 and praised the previous owner's restoration work._
- [MEDIUM] The Paragon has a yellowed/dingy playfield likely due to shellac coating degradation and UV exposure over decades. — _Dr. Dave's visual inspection noting yellow staining and comparison to original mylar stickers beneath protective coverings._
- [HIGH] Orange dot coils (sold by Steve Young/Pinball Resource) provide 10% more power than standard coils; yellow dots provide 20% more and are generally too powerful. — _Dr. Dave's explanation of coil variants and their adoption by collectors responding to early yellow dot feedback._
- [HIGH] The Eldorado owner used high-tapping (5% flipper power boost) combined with orange dot coils and rebuilt flippers, resulting in professional-quality restoration. — _Dr. Dave's field assessment praising the work as matching factory quality despite 94,000 plays on the machine._
- [MEDIUM] Anchor pricing strategy—quoting high initial estimates to make actual bills seem reasonable—prepared the Craigslist game buyer for potential costs. — _Dr. Dave's explanation of how he quoted the Paragon/Eldorado job higher than expected to condition the customer._
- [HIGH] The Paragon is missing two gates: the beast slayer gate on the left flipper side and the waterfall gate, affecting playability. — _Dr. Dave's detailed walkthrough of missing components and their impact on ball flow._

### Notable Quotes

> "The thing was like hot iron hot...that capacitor leaked out all kinds of crap."
> — **Dr. Dave**, Early segment
> _Diagnosis of the Phoenix transformer/capacitor failure that motivated the repair journey._

> "Who has one of these? And I got about two people in Pinside said yep, have one here works perfectly available."
> — **Dr. Dave**, Early segment
> _Community sourcing strategy for rare parts on Pinside forums._

> "Guess the fuse value...15 amp...how's a 15 amp sound stupid...mother put tinfoil in it."
> — **George (introducing the game show bit); Dr. Dave (answering)**, Six Million segment
> _Dramatic revelation of a dangerous and amateur repair that caused the coil burnout._

> "Louis basically approached this game with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch instead of maybe some proper tech equipment."
> — **George**, Six Million segment
> _Characterization of the previous non-expert technician (Louis/Bag of Donuts) who damaged the machine._

> "This guy did what I would do. This guy did the work."
> — **Dr. Dave**, Eldorado segment
> _High praise for the previous Eldorado restorer's professional-quality approach._

> "If this guy wanted it, he'd probably get $4,000 or $5,000 for this game. I mean, this game is worth good money for the right collector."
> — **Dr. Dave**, Eldorado segment
> _Market valuation of the restored Eldorado, establishing it as a premium restoration._

> "Orange dot is their awesome coil. So if you've got a game that you've just gone through, it sounds like the 10s work pretty well."
> — **Dr. Dave**, Eldorado segment
> _Technical endorsement of the orange dot coil standard for properly tuned games._

> "Anchor pricing is kind of like when gas goes from $2 to $5 a gallon, then back to $3 feels like a bargain."
> — **Dr. Dave**, Paragon segment
> _Explanation of psychological pricing strategy used in service quoting._

> "The beast slayer doesn't it's not your friend it's not slowed down it'll if it's hit right it'll just go right through."
> — **Dr. Dave**, Paragon segment
> _Technical explanation of how the missing gate affects Paragon playability._

> "I was trying to make something work, but I didn't have it...I'm going to have to look at mine and try to match it up and find another a spare or two."
> — **Dr. Dave**, Paragon segment
> _Acknowledgment of future preparedness for oddball replacement parts._

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| George | person | Co-host of Classic Pinball Podcast; plays games, asks diagnostic questions, provides comedic commentary. |
| Dr. Dave | person | Co-host and expert technician; performs detailed restorations on classic pinball machines; sources parts and troubleshoots technical problems. |
| Williams Phoenix | game | 1978 Williams game designed by Barry Oursler; 6,198 units produced; featured spinner, bumpers, drop targets; subject of transformer/capacitor repair in this episode. |
| Six Million Dollar Man | game | EM game with six displays; suffered burned coil due to 15-amp fuse (later tinfoil) replacement; required flipper rebuild and display repairs. |
| Eldorado | game | EM game with ~20 targets; same game as Target Alpha with different artwork; Craigslist purchase in exceptional collector condition; required only tilt adjustment. |
| Paragon | game | Solid state game; second Craigslist purchase; missing multiple gates (beast slayer, waterfall); yellowed playfield; required rubber and component replacement. |
| Barry Oursler | person | Designer of Williams Phoenix (1978). |
| Steve Young | person | Owner/operator of Pinball Resource; sells orange dot and yellow dot coils and replacement parts like insert coin stickers. |
| Maureen | person | Assisted Dr. Dave on Six Million Dollar Man restoration; performed significant flipper rebuild work. |
| Jeff | person | Known as 'Junkie Jeff' from Allentown; sold Dr. Dave a roached Six Million Dollar Man playfield for $20 (parts source). |
| Stew | person | Friend mentioned by Dr. Dave; knows someone in a monthly pinball club who had a spare Williams Phoenix transformer. |
| Dudley | person | A large, playful dog that belonged to the Six Million Dollar Man owner; interacted with Dr. Dave and Maureen during service call. |
| Louis | person | Also known as 'Bobby Bag of Donuts' or 'Uncle Bobby from Boston'; previous non-expert technician who attempted Six Million Dollar Man repairs with pliers and blowtorch; worked on cigarette machines. |
| Guido | person | Mentioned as the person from Revere who had the Six Million Dollar Man before Bobby from Boston. |
| Pinball Resource | company | Supplier of coils (orange dot, yellow dot), insert coin stickers, and other restoration parts; owned/operated by Steve Young. |
| Pinball Life | company | Vendor of rubber bumpers and playfield components; alternative to Titan; Dr. Dave prefers for rubber stretchiness and pricing. |
| Titan | company | Premium vendor of rubber bumpers and silicone playfield components; more expensive but wider size selection; Dr. Dave notes less stretchy silicone than Pinball Life. |
| Pinside | organization | Online pinball community forum where Dr. Dave sourced Phoenix transformer through community outreach. |
| Craigslist | platform | Marketplace where both the Eldorado and Paragon were purchased; noted as source of unknown condition/history machines. |
| Classic Pinball Podcast | organization | Podcast hosted by George and Dr. Dave; episode #97 covers Williams Phoenix and restoration field stories. |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Transformer and capacitor failure diagnosis and repair, Dangerous fuse substitution (tinfoil vs. proper amperage), EM game restoration and condition assessment, Playfield coil upgrades (orange dot vs. yellow dot), Parts sourcing and vendor comparison
- **Secondary:** Flipper rebuild and rubber replacement, Missing components (gates, rubbers, springs) and repair impact, Craigslist game buying and condition variability

### Sentiment

**Mixed** (0.65) — Positive sentiment dominates when discussing successful restorations (Eldorado praise, Phoenix fix). Frustrated/critical tone emerges discussing poor prior workmanship (Six Million botched repairs, Paragon neglect). Warm, conversational tone with humor and camaraderie between hosts. Some exasperation at tangents (cigarette machines, environmental discussion) but ultimately light-hearted.

### Signals

- **[product_concern]** Williams Phoenix defective 18-volt capacitor leaked material and caused transformer overheating, requiring full component replacement kit. (confidence: high) — Dr. Dave's confirmed diagnosis: 'the capacitor leaked out all kinds of crap...the transformer had some bad stuff going on with it and that's it was defective.'
- **[product_concern]** Six Million Dollar Man had 15-amp fuse (or tinfoil substitute) installed instead of proper 1-amp, causing solenoid coil burnout and electrical hazard. (confidence: high) — Dr. Dave's diagnosis: 'a 1-amp fuse is supposed to be underneath the playfield...someone put tinfoil in it.'
- **[restoration_signal]** Eldorado restoration demonstrates professional standards: orange dot coils (10% power), high-tapping for flippers, complete flipper rebuild, Titan rubbers, LED-lit coin inserts. (confidence: high) — Dr. Dave: 'This guy did what I would do. This guy did the work...I was like bravo, whoever did this game.'
- **[market_signal]** Eldorado in collector condition estimated at $4,000-$5,000 retail; purchased for ~$2,000, representing significant value for the buyer. (confidence: high) — Dr. Dave: 'If this guy wanted it, he'd probably get $4,000 or $5,000 for this game.'
- **[operational_signal]** Dr. Dave employs 'anchor pricing'—quoting high estimates upfront to make final bills seem reasonable and avoid shocking customers. (confidence: high) — Dr. Dave explains anchor pricing concept and applies it to Paragon/Eldorado quote, resulting in customer pleasant surprise at lower final bill.
- **[technology_signal]** Community adopted orange dot coils (10% power) as standard after early yellow dot coils (20% power) proved too aggressive for untuned games. (confidence: high) — Dr. Dave: 'A couple of collectors said hey we need something a little bit dialed back...they said okay make an orange dot 10%.'
- **[supply_chain_signal]** Paragon missing oddball-sized gates (beast slayer gate, waterfall gate) are difficult to source; Dr. Dave plans to stock spares from his own collection. (confidence: high) — Dr. Dave: 'I'm gonna have to look at mine and try to match it up and find another a spare or two to have on me.'
- **[community_signal]** Dr. Dave successfully sourced rare Williams Phoenix transformer via Pinside forum community outreach, yielding multiple offers from collectors. (confidence: high) — Dr. Dave: 'I put the word out there on Pinside...I got about two people in Pinside said yep have one here works perfectly available.'
- **[design_innovation]** High-tapping modification (5-10% flipper power boost) combined with orange dot coils creates improved flipper performance in properly maintained games. (confidence: medium) — Dr. Dave on Eldorado: 'he high tapped it as well...5% or 10% more power to the coils...10% more power to the flippers...the thing was clean.'
- **[venue_signal]** Stew's friend operates a private pinball clubhouse in nondescript strip mall with ~30 games, used for personal collection and monthly pinball club events. (confidence: high) — Dr. Dave: 'it's a clubhouse for himself and he likes to host things there...he's retired...he has a little adult beverage and puts the tunes on and just chills out.'
- **[product_concern]** Paragon playfield exhibits yellowing/dingy coating likely from shellac degradation and UV exposure; colors muted; only areas under protective mylar stickers show original brightness. (confidence: medium) — Dr. Dave: 'very yellow dingy...It's the shellac they used back in that time frame make yellows over the years...if you pick it look it stood out like the full moon shining.'

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## Transcript

 Batman! Hello and welcome to another episode of the Classic Pinball Podcast. My name is George, and today I'm joined by my co-host, the backyard chicken rancher who loves cheeseburgers, Dr. Dave. Hello, Dave. Hello, George. I'm a wannabe chicken rancher. I don't have any chickens yet, but someday. As for the burgers, I'm not sure where that one goes. I couldn't come up with a good intro that's the best I could do thanks for calling me out you're welcome George and I don't have any alternatives this time so you're saved we're going to talk about Williams Phoenix 6,198 units designer was Barry Oursler it came out in August of 1978 game's got a spinner three bumpers two four bank drop targets an italian bottom if you haven't listened to the other episode it's worth listening to light the fuse with phoenix so with that said i'm going to bring dave in and we're going to cut right to the chase last you left us i believe this game had a problem with the help me transformer okay and the big 18 volt capacitor oh that's right the thing was like hot iron hot yeah so you figured out what was wrong i figured what was wrong and uh yeah that that capacitor leaked out all kinds of crap and even put it you said it didn't leak oh it leaked that well it leaked out previously that's what the guy originally complained about and i saw the leakage on there. Now it all leaked. It was just getting hot. And, uh, yeah, the transformer had some bad stuff going on with it and that's, it was defective. So I was looking online on eBay and I found one, but the guy never got back to me if it worked or not. And then I, then I put, so I said, you know, I'm going to put the word out there. I'm going to put the word out there on Pinside and some friends of mine, it was going to like blast it. It's like, who has one of these? And I got, I was really pleasantly surprised. I got about two people in Pinside said, yep, have one here works perfectly available then i had uh a friend stew knew a guy in his little pinball uh club he goes to and they play pinball once a month and one of those guys that runs one of the uh the sites he has one because he works a lot of williams games and he had next one he's going to use as a test fixture but doesn't really need it because he has a redundant thing so he offered up to me and i made him an offer on the price was fair enough and drove down to island and spent a good half a day with him and his nice little arcade that he has and uh he rents a place um nondescript little strip mall place for his own personal headspace for about maybe 30 games or so um like an abandoned mall yeah well taking space in there but it's not open to the public not open the public it's always his clubhouse yeah it's a clubhouse for himself and he likes to host things there and it's basically you know he needed room for more games he has plenty games his house, but he needed more room. He just spends a lot of his time there. He has a little adult beverage and puts the tunes on and just chills out. He's retired. And he just has a grand old time. That sounds like fun. Yeah. And I talked to him for a while and played some stuff. He has nice stuff. And he gave me the Transformer Test. The old one. I said, yeah, this has some bad stuff going on. So I took the new one, put it in the Phoenix, and the Phoenix is all happy now. So you're going to do a show and tell with me, but before we get downstairs, is their transformer configuration like the Bally games? No. So there's no rectifier board along with it? No. It's done differently? Done differently. Okay, so you're going to show me that. Yeah. So basically, I'll show you, but basically the transformer has a couple wires coming out of it and it feeds into the... So that solved everything? Solved everything. Yeah, and he gave me the whole thing because he gave me the whole kit and caboodle. He gave me the transformer, the big capacitor, the two bridges that go with it and all this stuff it all came as a whole kit i just threw it all in there even i'm having a tough time visualizing okay that's why you got to show me okay um anything else that you want to talk about regarding the game before we go and play and talk about the artwork we're going to you're going to show me the drop target assemblies because I want to see the MRS switches. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Right? MRS? I call it Mrs. The Mrs. Switch. Okay. So you're going to show me that. Anything else before we do that? One thing, you missed one feature on the game. It has that little metal two-guide ramp thing up to that stand-up target. That little shot there. Did you write that down, your little list there? It's a little... The thing on the left? On the left, yeah. A single shot? A single shot. There's a ramp? It goes up a little ramp to hit the... It's elevated? Yeah, elevated. Up a little hill. Oh, I thought it was just playfield level. No. Oh, so you get a little... See, so that's why we have to stand in front of the game. I don't have a lot of familiarity. I'm thinking that this is going to be a good game. You looked at me skeptical the last time. You're doing the same thing right now. Well, it's a System 4. It's a basic game. I get it. System 4, the sounds aren't that good. It's kind of, you know... Okay, okay. Well, you'll get my reaction. What's up, Doc? What's cooking? What's up, Doc? Oh, you're looking for bugs, bunny bunting. Doc is gonna hunt them just to get a rabbit skin, but now the rabbit's gonna get... What's up, Doc? What's cooking? Hey, look out! Stop! You're gonna hunt someone with an old shotgun. What's up, Doc? Well, George, the other day went on site to see a $6 million man. And we were basically, the goal was there was to make him better, faster, and stronger, as you do with the $6 million man. I think $6 million is a little bit high, but I'd pay about $150,000 for the man. But these days, inflation, he could be a $6 billion man. We don't know. So anyway, the... Oh, boy. It's top tier. I just want to say six million is a bit high for six million. That's all. I know my openings are bad. They might be stale, but that's... The bears will get it. Hello, bears. You'll get it. Good bears. Okay, tell us the six. My six, I'll just get mine out of the way. You go ahead. I bought a cheap play field. I only bought it for the targets. I spoke about it in another show. I think I spent 20 bucks from Jeff. End of story. Junkie Jeff. Junkie Jeff at Allentown sold me a $6 million play field that was pretty much roached, didn't have anything on it other than those targets that I wanted. Well, this $6 million man, he emailed me and said, Hey, I got a problem. The up post never comes up. There's a burned out coil. Every time I put the wire back on it, the whole game hums, and it just shuts down, so we take it off, and it doesn't really play right. It has six displays, and two or three of them don't work, and he's going to have a bunch of people over Thanksgiving. I knew that was coming. So he wants six players. The grandma story. Yeah, he wants six players, right? So I say, oh, no problem. We'll fix all that, and I'll give it a good day spa. We spend a ton of time in the game. So did you do a $6 million day spa? We did. We did pretty close. I hope it was that lucrative. Yeah, well, not that lucrative, but it was nice. you know, put a nice weebly board in there and found out the problem. Basically, the problem is kind of a little game show. So, George, today or right now, it's time for everybody's favorite game show. Guess the fuse value. What fuse value would you say, where a 1-amp fuse is supposed to be underneath the playfield to protect the solenoids, protect the circuitry of the game, what fuse value would you say someone put in there instead of a 1-amp fuse? 5. you'd be wrong george a little low try go up a little bit no you're still too low george 20 yo 15 how's a 15 amp sound stupid very stupid mother put tinfoil in it so what did they screw up in their game the coil must have been like solid you couldn't get see i don't think i don't think the owner did that i think the person before did that they had a problem so is there a metal Is there a metal shaft that goes into that coil And was it fused inside it Because it was so over No I'm happy to say it wasn't that fused Because it basically I think It wasn't fused like that I think he cut the wire before he did that Because he heard a kind of smoke and smelled it Well the story is that he bought this game From Guido From I think Revere He had a big shirt open with the hair Uncle Bobby from Boston Bobby from Boston with a chain. Bobby Bag of Donuts. Bobby Bag of Donuts is there. He had the freaking bracelets on. He had the freaking chains going on. He works on cigarette machines, George. So if you work on a cigarette machine, you can work on a pinball machine. When I owned the restaurant and bar, that thing paid off like nobody's mother. Cigarettes or pinball? Cigarette machine. Everything. But the cigarette machine was very lucrative, even though Louis took a very unfair cut. But you could never say that to Louis. No, no. wanted to live. If you wanted to see tomorrow. So Louis basically approached this game with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch instead of maybe some proper tech equipment. Not a really good tech, whoever this Louis was. Louis Bag of Donuts. To stick to cigarette machines. I can't believe those aren't on fire. Don't you wonder where they all went? There must be warehouses of them somewhere. I remember as a kid pulling on those things i thought it was going to pay off in tokens or something right but it's never going to come back so would they build like reefs off of new jersey with them i mean yeah where are those you see them every once in a while are there some collectors are there some collectors out there i think probably dead from smoking all the cigarettes i think in allentown i saw one didn't we see a cigarette machine in allentown someone had it for sale was there just kind of boy i don't see those every day i don't remember that you know what i would do maybe you put candy cigarettes in there and you do that for the kids. Then you can encourage them to smoke. Do they even make those anymore? They do. They try to outlaw them. You know what they did? They got rid of it. They did have a little bit of a red dye at the end. It was lit. I remember them as a kid. They got rid of the red part because that was too close to being a cigarette. You're going off the rails here. I'm back to Louie and the cigarettes. $6 million. Is that all you had to do? Well, yeah. I had to replace the coil and all that stuff. I had to replace the transistor and the diode on the sauna driver board to fix that. Flipper rebuild? Oh, big time flipper rebuild. The whole play field had taken it all apart. Maureen was there helping me. She did a lion's share of that. There's so many posts that were, Louie Bagadone decided to use Gorilla Titan on all the posts and kind of just drilled them out so the posts were all loosey-goosey, all rounded out. So we had to take tons of glue and bamboo skewers and do that to a bunch of posts. So you save the chopsticks From when you go and get Chinese food? No, they don't give you They give you the plastic chopsticks these days No, not by me Oh yeah? Okay, well you're in New Hampshire We're not in Vermont So stop No, they probably wouldn't I'm done trying to figure people out I don't care The bamboo is going to wreck the reefs, George Or something, I don't know And the plastic is going to wreck The world Do you own a metal straw, George? Because I know people that do. You know, you ask me these questions that have never been asked of me before. No, I don't own a metal straw. Actually, I just bought another box of plastic ones. George, you're going to wreck the environment, George. Oh, God, yeah. You're causing global something. Yeah, I recycle. Never mind. The recycle is very helpful. I read an article about recycling. It goes to landfills. What a scam. It's a scam, big time. Oh, my God. It all goes to the same thing. Your heart's in the right spot, but it all goes to the same spot. Right, right. It's awful. I did something. Look, I did something nice. It's awful. I feel better. All those plastic bottles that you drink water out of, trust me. I'd like to believe they were recycled. I don't believe it. The same thing goes when you walk to cure something. That ain't doing anything. Okay, we're definitely going off the rails here. and all the greenies just i don't think i don't think we don't have any greenies no if you listen to us i'm guessing you're not uh and six million dollar man so what else did we do with that thing we uh uh put some new oh we kind of rebuilt the displays on it put a new display in there one display was actually cracked and the glasses cracked like well that's no good that's that's So do you put replacement ones in, or do you have fixed ones? I have a bunch of plasmas I fix that I have in stock. But I also have the new technology, too. But the problem with the new technology... It doesn't match up quite the same. No, it matches up great, but you want to put them all in, and it takes forever to build one. I have all the parts to build them, but it takes me all day to build these things. It's a lot of... And I don't have the cycles, so it's like, okay, well, that's a back burner for some point. So, yeah. So that was $6 million. Do you want another one? Next game. Oh, wait. One more thing, folks, about the six million. Wait. Yeah, don't order now. So there was a dog in this one. It was Dudley. Oh, not Jaws. Not Jaws. No, this is a nice – what kind of dog was this? Kind of big – snickerdoodle kind of thing, kind of big dog, kind of dumb, dopey, but fun and kind of very playful. He kept coming in and said, Dudley, come back. I said, no, he's okay, and he'd just come in. He'd jump on the couch. Maureen's there trying to get some parts. and get all over Maureen and start to lick her face and so forth. And, you know, we didn't mind it. They said, oh, I'm sorry. He's not bawling. We love dogs. It's fine, you know. But basically he was Dudley Do-Wrong because, you know, he's too wrong. Dudley Do-Do-Do? No, no. He would just be way too playful. He'd come out and just want to. Okay. So again, the customer is looking at his watch, looking at the dollar signs. And I'm playing with a dog. Yeah, exactly. Well, you know what? Stop playing with the effing dog. I'm doing, instead of a day spa, I'm doing doggy daycare. So that's okay. That's what you're paying for. You're working cheap. You're working cheap. Okay, next game. Next game would be. You said you went to see an Eldorado. Two, count them, two. An Eldorado and a Paragon, yeah. So Eldorado is the one with like 20 targets. A lot of targets. It's kind of like Target Alpha. Same game as Target Alpha. Okay, same game, just different thing. Give it artwork. Okay, what was wrong with that one? Well, he called originally because... So it was an EM, folks. EM. This guy bought them on Craigslist. Uh-oh. Yeah, I was expecting, when I quoted him, I said, okay, you're going to have two games. You're going to have Craigslist. You just got them. I'm going to have to be there for two days. It's going to be this much for the days behind each one of them. And I kind of quoted him, you know, a pretty lofty price because I don't know what I'm getting into. And he said, well, I think it's only this and this. And I said, well, if it's really just that, it'll be a lot lower. But I just want to prepare you in case it's a lot more, it's going to be this. Right, in case you bought a game that's... And he was fine. He was fine with the quote. So I was happy going there, and hopefully it's going to be good for him. But he's ready to pay up if it's not, which is fine. So we're on the same page. So when I got there, all he said was wrong with the Eldorado. He said, oh, it just tilts all the time. It didn't tilt before. We moved the games. We were in a different place, and we moved the game. We heard about that in the last episode. And it tilts all the time. It's okay. That's gonna be something simple. I'm sure so all I was wrong with El Dorado was basically He leveled the game a little bit and the till was way too tight So I just made that just moved a little tilt Bob that That simple That was simple That was it How was the rest of the game I was so shocked at how nice this game was This game looked collector. I said, where did you get these games from? Well, one was from one guy, and he looks like he had a bunch of collection, and he seemed very, I don't know, knew what he was doing. And the other one with the Paragon, he was good too, and I said, yeah, I can tell the Paragon. He kind of got some things right, but still, it's a little bit iffy. the Eldorado, that thing... Right, but the Eldorado could be the big time suck in comparison because it being an EM versus the solid state. I said, you know what, whoever did this did, I said, this guy did what I would do. This guy did the work. So did the guy pay up? No, he paid like two grand for a beautiful Eldorado. I mean, the back glass, perfect. Perfect playfield, perfect back glass. Playfield protector on it. Nice cabinet. Okay. Coin door shined up. Okay, so he bought a good deal. Even new coin door. We don't usually tell tales like that. No. Usually you're telling us horror stories. No, this thing was like, if this guy wanted it, he'd probably get $4,000 or $5,000 for this game. I mean, this game is worth good money for the right collector. So that's the good one. And let me say one thing. I just want to say how much I was basically oohing and aahing over it. I was telling the guys, like, wow, this guy put orange dot coils in there. A newbie would put orange dot. Orange dot is what Steve Young sells, Pimmo Resource. because their regular coils that come with the game sometimes can be a little bit... They got more winding in them? A little more winding, or a little less winding. Less winding means more power. Okay. So these have 10% more power than standard. They also sell a yellow dot coil, which everybody was getting those. It was 20% more powerful, way too powerful for these games. So a couple of collectors said, hey, we need something a little bit dialed back. It was years ago. They said, okay, make an orange dot, 10%. Orange dot does the job. It's their awesome coil. So if you've got a game that you've just gone through, it sounds like the 10s work pretty well. Most people probably, if they don't work on their game and want a quick upgrade, put the 20 in because their game isn't tuned like it should be. If you really tune the game. Yeah, if you really, but see, and this guy even, he high tapped it as well. So high tapping means you have 5% or 10%, I think it's 5% more power to the coils. Then you put 10% more power to the flippers. And he rebuilt all the flippers. And the thing was clean. I think it had 94,000 games on it, plays on it, but it looked like a day one out of a factory. I mean, it was really, I was like, bravo, whoever did this game. The only thing the guy didn't do, which I brought with me and did, he did so much other work to the game. The last two things he didn't do, he didn't replace the little compression spring on the shooter rod. It was still kind of brown rusty. Everything else is mint. It's like, why wouldn't you place a $3 part? Didn't have it, maybe. He had everything else, though. Right. And that and the 25-cent insert coin sticker, those are all cracked and wrinkled and crappy. You can get those brand new from Pinball Resource. I know he bought the orange drops from Pinball Resource. He could have bought this other stuff, too. So I had that with me. I put in the brand new 25-cent stickers on there, the blue little writing on them, gel, 25-cent, and the white thing back behind them. Put some warm LEDs behind that. that looked fantastic now new spring on there I said now your game is totally complete now you can make money in this game if you ever want to sell it this game is a nice game door is beautiful so the whole game played great too didn't need anything else just that just a little tweak on the twist and then so going over to the paragon a little different story so the paragon you know the guy put you know well first of all it's a craigslist game so yeah oh yeah oh okay one more thing about Eldorado put the wrong rubbers on And he did Titan rubbers all the way around. Titan, which is expensive. So super bouncy. No, just like super, they stay clean, durable, don't shed like a regular rubber. No, I know. But some of the people don't know that if you, you don't have to go to Titan. You can go to Pinball Life, have the same stuff. Don't crap on them. They're really good. Well, I will say Titan has great products. It's like Chevrolet and Ford and Chrysler. Everybody's got their favorites. Let everybody pick their favorites. I've got them from everybody. Here's the thing. Titan has sizes that pinball life does not have. I'll give them that. They have certain things pinball life doesn't have. But I don't care for their – the stretchiness of their silicone rubber isn't quite as stretchy as pinball life is. So I do both vendors, but I do like pinball life. It edges out a little bit more for me because they're cheaper too. But the other thing the guy didn't do in that pinball and that he – I could have gone from Titan. They're thinner rubbers on the flippers he did not put in that only Gottlieb uses. So he put in the regular rubber for a bally. But that's about it. That's only my complaint with that game. So wait, I want to ask about the Paragon. So, condition. Condition. Not nearly as nice as the Eldorado. As far as Paragons go, how is the back glass? Because that's usually an issue. Back glass is pretty minty. Actually, it's real minty. So no peel or pick up on the bottom? No. by the channel real nice back glass is nice how about the cabinet itself kind of pretty good it's pretty uh some good red not totally faded to pink you have eight eight cabinet ten back glass okay so we only have one thing left play field not much wear on it but i will say very yellow dingy and you can definitely tell because i mean really like that's what you think so maybe yeah i think I think so. It's got to be. So you can tell. I mean, you can tell, first of all. I mean, if you're cleaning the cabin. I don't smell it. I didn't smell it. You don't have to smell it. It can just. It just seemed kind of yellow staining everywhere. It just seemed kind of like goopy. It could be fade, too. It's something. Someone smelled some vanilla syrup. I told this story before when I was trying to restore the hot dog. Yeah. And what's his name from Maryland? I can't remember his name. Doesn't matter. Brought a unused playfield. So I'm thinking, okay, new old stock playfield. It's going to be nice, right? This thing was either shellacked or whatever it was. It was just yellow. I'm like, what are you? And he got mad at me because I didn't want it. He took the thing and threw it in the pile. Just pissed. Is this a reseller? Who is this guy? Yeah, it'll come to me later on. I've talked about him before. I just can't remember his name. I don't think he's in business anymore. I think he sold his warehouse down in Hagerstown, Maryland. People know who I'm talking about. I just can't remember. Yeah, but it looks like the bottom of an ashtray. Forget it. Right, but that's probably what it looked like, right? Yeah, but it's also the coating they used. The whites aren't white. Oh, totally not. The colors all are off a little bit because of the yellow. It's the shellac they used back in that time frame. make yellows over the years and some batches they did were worse than others and this one here you can tell when the air gets over the years here case in point they had a little uh those those hafu mylar stickers in front of the kickers right those are on there since day one you wouldn't believe how white that looked underneath that thing like day one you can pick it look it stood out like the like the full moon shining that's how white this was the rest of people was like yellow ding you know so it could have been you know it could have been that the shellac along with sunlight. Could be anything. But I think he paid probably two grand for each game. But I will say not my favorite board, but they had an Altec in there. Not my go-to. So what was wrong with the game? Really not. What he called about, this guy was not handy at all. He did not even open the coin door. He could have opened the coin door and fixed this stuff himself. If you don't have experience with it, wouldn't you rather have him not touch it than touch it if you didn't know what he was doing? Okay, yes, yes. But for instance, case in point, so what happened was the Paragon person never put new rubbers in the game. These rubbers were all kind of crappy. They were still holding their own wood, but you can just tell they have a lot of crepe to them. You kind of stretch them, they've got some crepe going on, so that means they're way past their prime. The right kicker was broken. The ball was sitting inside the kicker with the broken rubber. The in-lane wire form to the right flipper, that was off. So this doesn't sound like a great find for a homeowner from Craigslist. Oh, and the Paragon. This sounds like a game for somebody who knows how to fix them, not somebody who wants the game to work right away. Yeah, it was limping. It was limping. I mean, it wasn't a total basket case. It was kind of a B or a C in that condition. What were you saying? Oh, yeah, the Paragon. So on a lot of these Paragons, I don't know what happens, but the beast layer, the gate on the left side where the flipper is, there's supposed to be a gate there. Right, just before it gets to the flipper. Yeah, it's totally missing. There was nothing there. Is that an oddball size? Do you have one, I guess? An extra one? No. Yeah, so what did you do? Just leave it off? Yeah, I left it off. I was trying to make something work, but I didn't have it. Because he never talked to me. He never said anything about it. So I didn't have it on me. but it might some of them are just oddball on some of the games right and trying to find that one or a replacement sometimes isn't easy right that's why i don't i had the game i just don't remember i'm gonna have to you know just for the future i'm gonna have to uh this has happened before i think the other paragons are missing so i'm gonna i'm gonna look at mine and try to match it up and find another a spare or two to have on me because and oh no so that was missing which is not makes the game just not as much fun to play because the ball just wants to it'll go out a lot easier the beast slayer doesn't it's not your friend it's not slowed down it'll if it's hit right it'll just go right through it'll go right through you try to you try to hold the ball might go right over the beast slayer uh where it might just bounce over bounce around and hit the gate and come to your flipper might bounce around and go back out again right that kind of thing then it's also missing a gate at the top that is like there's multiple gates in this game i think it's like four gates total yeah the one that goes into the waterfall yeah the one that goes in the waterfall that's missing. So the one that's, well, put it this way, the pop bumper one, the pop bumper, or if you, you know when you shoot the spinner on the left-hand side, goes up and around and over the waterfall? That gate's missing. Not really the end of the world. The gate below, that's there. That needs to be there. You know, the gate below where you shoot the ball up the right-hand side, that's there. So it's missing some stuff. We gave it a good shop job, nothing too crazy. And, you know, he came out, you know, he came out, I gave him the bill. He was pleasantly surprised. It came out pretty much less than half of what I thought it was probably going to be. So I gave him this huge trade. But you prepared him. I prepared him. You didn't shock him. It's called, what's it? Oh, you know what it's called? It's called anchor pricing. Have you ever heard of anchor pricing? No, but okay. Anchor pricing is kind of like, you know when you go to the gas station and usually you're just spending like $2 a gallon of gas, and all of a sudden it shoots up to like $5 a gallon. Oh, it's unheard of. Five bucks a gallon, and everybody's paying. All of a sudden, now it's back down to three bucks a gallon. Oh, it's great. The prices are coming down. It's three bucks a gallon. You were complaining it was anything over $2 a gallon about a month or so ago. $3 a gallon would be unheard of after paying $2, but now you've used to $5. $3 is now reasonable. It's called anchor pricing. Yeah, okay. So the same thing with Paragon. So there's a big arching thing. All these belly games. There's a big metal rod at the top. They shoot the ball up and it goes back and forth on a big rod at the top of the play field. This one was kind of bent out. It wasn't quite seated properly. And I was wondering why there was a little rubber post missing or didn't have rubber on it. So I put that on the game and I had him play test it. All of a sudden, oh, the ball got stuck. I said, I'm going to play test it. I always play test the game. He's like, oh, that's because that's bent. All right, well, I'm going to take the reason why the guy who sold the game had the post off. That's why. I took the post off and it runs fine. so you know possibly there i didn't want to i was going to mess with the with the rod in there it's like you know it's fine it's playing fine do you have extras no it would be it basically require like another half hour to an hour of time to make that right no i have and i was getting late again with all the playfields i bought i have one or two of them i don't know if i've i don't know why i would ever use them other than what you just said well it's bent or somebody bent or it's not really rusty you can't get you know something like that You save it. Yeah. You never know. Can't buy them. Can't buy them. Can't buy them. Oh, did we do flipper rebuilds? No, you know what? On this game, actually, the guy did a pretty decent job of flipper rebuilding. Oh, that's good. That saves a lot of time. Yeah. And money. His solder job, kind of questionable. But it passed. That's quick and easy. Yeah, but it passed. Oh, yeah. The drop targets would not go down. They kind of, you hit them, they go, almost like a, almost like a Gorgar or a Williams don't drop that well at all. Was it really dirty? It was a little bit grungy, but I never seen... That's the inline ones. Inline ones and the other side. Oh, really? Yeah, they both, but the inline ones were just horrible. So I had to adjust the switches a little bit on that. I had to clean it, put a little lube on those, and then I had to actually cut the spring a little bit. Normally there's gunk and garbage. Yeah, but I cleaned all that, and it still was a problem. So it's like, okay, last ditch effort, I'm going to take about 10% off each spring to get a little more and that did it. That actually brought it down nice. So that's what I want to do with those. That's about all for the paragraph. Okay. I got a question. So the last, I don't know, one or two shows ago, you were on your way out the door to go work on a Frontier. Yes. What'd you have to, and I asked, would you sell it? Did you ask her? I did ask her. What'd she say? She said, yeah, she definitely would want to sell it eventually. I think she even approached me on it before I even had to ask her. so do you buy these games eventually because we're going to be moving at some point because they have several houses they're going to move down the Cape because they already have a house down there and this house they have is a mansion I said yeah definitely I'd buy it because I know I worked in this game I sold this game to them years ago like 10, 15 years ago maybe it has my old sticker on there so it's amenable what did you do to that game just clean it up give it a quick service look over make sure everything worked right Yeah, because everything I've done 15 years ago is still good. But then again, when I look... So you tune the game up a little bit. I do. I look back at my work from 15 years ago, and it's like, oh, boy, I've improved my game so much since then. But you learn. Practice makes perfect. Yeah, you kind of learn and evolve, so to speak. Okay, I'm going to have you do your last piece for this segment. You said you had a tech tip. For Indiana Jones? All those games. Indiana Jones, Twilight Zone. All those games, the Super Pins pretty much have this issue. They have this Z connector, they call it. It's a 156 connector on either side, and it goes from the driver board, feeds 5 volts to the MPU board. And on these certain games, Indiana Jones, and on other games like, say, Adam's Family or some other games from that time frame, it was a direct connection, connector to connector 5 volts goes through and pretty good and so that connector is usually pretty good don't mess too much with it when you add a Z connector, you just added 2 more connection points so the more connection points you add to something the more chance that you're going to build up resistance and that kind of thing so I worked on this game like 6 months ago and I rebuilt the 5 volts and everything on it and I tested and everything was fine it was 5.02 everywhere, it was great they call me a couple weeks ago and said, hey, it's game's resetting all the time again. I said, okay. So I went out there and I checked the 5 volts on the main board and it's getting 5.08. I checked the 5 volts on the MPU side and it's 4.75. The game will reset. So it dropped just that little bit with those extra couple connections? Oh, that's a lot. That's a lot of drop. Because these games will reset and it goes below 4.7. No, I understand. 4.7 is the no man's zone. I'm saying in perspective, you're saying it's a lot. I'm just looking at it from a number standpoint. It's not a lot, but it's enough sensitivity to throw everything off. When people rebuild these things, they're looking for any extra little tenth of a volt they can get. They're going to do everything. They're building tenths of a volt. So what did you have to do? Redo the connector? Better, George. I took that. That connector is not needed. That connector was made there for ease of manufacture from one wiring harness to another. They needed to make these other games. Well, we'll just do your typical wiring harness from whatever game that we made a crap load of. We'll put it in this game. To make it work with this game, we need a Z connector for manufacturing ease, let's say. They don't need it. I cut it out of there. I cut it out, and I soldered it together, and heat shrinked it. so now I made it like a simpler game of that time that doesn't need a Z connector because you don need a Z connector the game does not need it you still can take the boards out you still can unplug them there no unsoldering involved I have no reference point I listening I understand Yeah But again, that's why we do show and tell. Right. Because I'm much better, like most people, okay, you're explaining it to me in words, but now you're going to show me, and the show me is always the ah, that's the aha moment. Aha moment. Ah. It's a spatial relation. Well, that's just the way I learn. Other people don't need that. Yeah. I do. I need the tactile piece. The big takeaway here is what I did is different than some other people would do. They'd like solder wires directly onto the board. That's a no-no. So I don't do that. I actually still use connectors. You still want connectings to take boards out. No unsoldering involved with doing this method. Okay. Yeah. now another exciting episode in the life of the most fantastic crime fighter the world has ever known we're down in the basement and dave has me in front of the williams phoenix he's been working on took the glass off beautiful looking game lots of yellow lots of red it's a sharp looking game uh like i said before you know the five upper lanes the three bumpers and the two uh sets of drop targets the one thing that i didn't understand when you said there was i don't know if you said ramp or rail but that single target on the upper left side has two rails in it so when the ball goes up it hits an elevated target which is definitely different they just didn't go with the flat play field with the target they gave it a little bit of they made it a little bit different so dave's going to open up the game because i'm curious to see he's talked about it i get i guess in at least two or three different episodes ad nauseum i was going to say that and i caught myself um he's going to show us the uh or show me anyway the magnets the mrs switch on these drop targets. Alright, so as we were talking before, we've got the Phoenix here, and we've got two sets of four bank, and then we've got two singles in the center. And I put the MRS in all of them. Oh, I missed those. Yeah, they come up when you start the game up. Well, we're going to play in a little bit. Yeah, so here's where they are. I'm going to lift this up here. So pretty much like a ballet game. A bit more light on the subject, too. okay wait light oh there we go let there be light and maybe over here maybe let me grab my water out of the way okay what am i looking at oh wait i can't talk i gotta talk over here right so i can look over here all right okay so there's a there's a circuit board right which is totally different than a bally game totally different way different way to do it so where's the mrs switch they're on see a little blue things these two blue things here and how many of their is a set of blue for each target so four yep so a total so how much to to uh you know four on one side four on the other side or are you saying well there's two there's two mrs total of eight for one bank right how much does that cost it's a little pricey it's like i think uh i want to say 35 bucks a side so 35 for that, 35 for that. That's not too bad to make it work correctly. But you don't need the stupid, you don't need those little horseshoe contact stuff anymore. It comes with a neodendam magnet that you glue to each target. So there's no contacts at all, no contact points. So you put the switch on the old board? No. The old boards, I actually should show you that if I got one handy. It's a piece of crap. So you buy this all as one piece? All as one piece. The board? Yeah. All as one piece. That whole green thing is a board. The original comes with individual little green boards. You know why I'm confused, right? No. Why are you confused? Because the one I bought is just a single MRS switch. It's about this big. It looks like a little rectangle. Yeah. That's it. Right. This is a whole... Different form factor. Totally different. It's a different form factor. Okay. Yeah. I'm going to sound like I'm a million miles away, but that's okay. No, they'll get the idea. Huh. Okay. Yeah, this is... Look at that light. Look at that light thing. That's some gizmo. So here, this is the other technology, which is previous, which I'm going to be selling. These are Siegecraft electronics. These are replacements of what the original was. So this is what actually was original in each Target had one of these. Right. Individual circuit boards that the little thing, that the little horseshoe would go slide down. Why did they make this so complex compared to, like, a Bally game? Maybe, I think they had, I think it was all, what, cooperated or, not cooperated, what do they call it, patented? I think it was patented. Yeah, so they. I'm looking at this game, and it's, that's why I wanted you to open it up. look at this light bar thing. That's some gizmo. So you know what? So that light bar thing, instead of having individual little sockets for each one, and you can tell at some point, this is a new old stock play field someone put in this game. You can tell at one point, they were going to plan on putting individual light sockets, because look at the little divot holes for each one of them. But they said, no, we're just going to put it all in one light bar. And Stern did the same thing. It's a cheap way out. It's cheaper to manufacture. So they work, but if you've got... You're building everything off board and then just inserting one bar instead of doing each individual one. So you throw it on. It's cheaper to throw it in. Talk about fall. But if one goes bad, what do you get? You get to replace all of them. It's a nice looking game. And the guy who ever did this, he put all new coils in. I don't know why people put all new coils in a game. Usually a coil works or it doesn't, but he put all new coils in. I put in the new WPC Flipper Mechs in there. I see that. that so the big the big upgrade in this game was wpc flipper max and the uh mrs uh drop target switches and these have a single see the little single drop targets they have this but those those are single bands do they make a board for that yeah oh yeah they make ones onesies three z's four z's five z's but there's so many games i looked in the in the history of williams games there's very few fives very few fours there's there's a couple threes and ones so threes and ones are more popular three banger and one banger okay show and tell over show and tell for that part but this i bought so many of these but you understand why this is totally it's not ballyworld you're not in ballyworld again if i didn't have you as a friend if i didn't have you I would never know. Where would I ever see it? But that's the way to go. And I can't believe you have another World Cup here. That wasn't one of our more popular segments. This World Cup, the people, we'll just do a quick aside to the World Cup. We'll come back to that later. But this was a basket case. I mean, the play field was totally trashed. Maureen has been doing her. I even told the guy, this thing is kind of beyond touch-up work. I mean, I can get the whole thing working for you and get it nicely playing, but I don't know about touching it up. you know, so I'll see what we can do. But Maureen has kind of worked miracles on this thing. She actually, this thing was all planked out, and all the artwork was kind of all, you know, stringy and just not there. Deep cleaned it. She's been touching it up here and there. So it actually looks, it looks a lot better. It doesn't look like a total, you know, a total dog now. So it's actually going to come out pretty well. Well, it's actually relevant. It's relevant? Revenant? What's going on starting today, Dave, in the world? World Cup? Soccer? No. You looked at the game. That's the only reason you knew that. Okay, yes. Yes. Yes. It starts today. Are there any players? There are a lot of pissed off people. Are there any players left? I thought they were all taking, you know. How many players? I thought they were all. What do you know about soccer? They were all dropping like flies over in Europe. What do you know about soccer? I've seen them all dropping like flies lately. They were all having a problem. They were all falling down the field. I don't know why. But somehow they are. I don't know what you're talking about, but whatever. People are pissed off because they can't drink beer in the stadium. Why not? Because they're in Qatar. Oh, that's all right. It's a Muslim country. Right. All right, well, you know. But they had an agreement where they could. And now they can't. Well, isn't that kind of a... So I'm wondering if there's going to be a soccer riot. Well, they don't have any beer, so they can't riot. They're not going to get any courage juice to riot. They need to have beer to make that riot happen. Okay. well why have it in guitar we're not political here when I showcase these games so a little behind the fourth wall here when I put them on my YouTube channel I put my Invisiglass on all the games so that when I'm playtesting and showing how they play the camera can show all the detail without the loudness factor with the glass off so it looks like the glass is off, it's so clear but it's nice and quiet so you can see what's going on and not be too loud. Did you put this on YouTube? Not yet. I'm going to. I'm going to later. But unless the customer asks for it specifically, I don't include the Amiga glass because it's a big upgrade. You're going to pay for it. There's some customers that will do that, but more just want a new sheet of tempered. The biggest thing between the MRSs is trying to wire up the switches the right way. They're labeled and so forth, but the big thing where I had to get over with it is the wires, most all of them reach where they're supposed to go, just like in the old board. One of them doesn't. One of them you have to add wire to it to make it reach. So I was getting confused, and why wouldn't these targets work in the right way and that. So I finally got it down where it could be a kind of confusing way to kind of put them all back and wire them correctly. But I think I got it now. So it takes a little while to get that to register. But I think I got it. So this one actually works great now. You want to see behind the board? You want to play it? Yeah, you might as well. We're there. It's going to be easier, right? I'll show you the new transformer. It transformed the game. So another board. Look at that thing with all the connectors in it. Oh, yeah. What is that? So that's how Williams did it. So Williams has, this is called a master display board, the master, and you've got the four slaves there, right? Again, more political. But you know what? That's the name of the stuff, and that's what it is. So we're not going to, you know, words are words. They get it. Yeah, they get it. So Bally did a lot of different things. So these are all just kind of, you know, they're dumb. The other four displays are dumb. There's no smarts to them at all. They're just a wire. Right, so the number of games, the ball in play, that's the master. All the smarts are here on the master display. Okay. Okay, and that feeds it out. So Bally didn't do that. Bally put all, well, Bally kind of shared some smarts in the MPU and then there's some smarts on each individual display as well. So they kind of shared it on all of them. But it was a lot better system because some of the chips on the master display are not really readily available, so it's hard to rebuild these. You have to kind of cannibalize some and put them in there. This one here, this one was all set to go to. Typical Williams, all set to go. About to tell the guy it's ready, but he said, no, I'm going to wait and playtest a little more. I playtested like 10 games. I'm going to playtest it another day to make sure it's really ready to go. And, of course, I turn it on. I'm going to do the video on it. Turn it on, and I got player three and four are missing a segment. And they're both together missing a segment. And it's like, that's so strange. Because how these Williams games work is that players, the odd numbers, one and three are tied together in the same circuit. One, three, and the master are in the same circuit. Two and four are on their own circuit. So different ships control different things, right? They share things. So if you've got a problem with player one, you're going to have the same problem with player three and the master. Problem with player two is going to be the same problem with player four because they share the same stuff. This game was weird. Player three and four had shared the same problem, which was making my head spin. Why would they have the same problem? Because it's not related to what the game is supposed to do because these are dumb displays. So what I did is I unhooked one of them, and the problem's still there. I unhooked the other one, played the other one, and the problem went away. So one of them, the player three, was causing player three and four to be bad, to do a weird thing. I unhooked the player three. Player four came back nice. So what was it? Just a defective display. It just decided to go bad by just playing the game a little bit. So you have extras? It was its time to go bad. So you have extras? Yeah, I have extras, so I threw one in there. Okay. It was its time to go bad. But imagine, here's the problem Imagine, do the game, all this work And deliver the game, all of a sudden He plays the next day, and that happens You're the bad guy Right, I didn't do anything Because it's 40 something years old So it's like, I don't replace everything You'd be paying 10, 20 grand for the game So you can't do everything, but I do the majority of stuff I can do to make financial sense Okay, so you're opening up the backbox And I want to hit that So here in the back, we have a nice rotten dog look at the size of that capacity that silver thing guy that's the thing that got that's the guy that got hot the boards look real nice and cool brand new boards uh that is a brand new rotten dog all in one board so it takes care of the driver and takes care of the mpu and what's the one on the right that is a rebuilt original power supply board these are very robust very rebuildable so i rebuild these they work great uh transformer is a new used one uh and they put the They put the rectifiers on the back panel? On the back panel, right there. That's weird. So a lot of Williams games did that. Right, but again, coming from the Bally world, this is like... Different. Yeah, this is the reason why I only collect one style game. Yeah, I don't blame you. A lot easier. A lot easier. I have to carry so much stuff down. This is totally foreign. And on top of it, Williams did not, this is like the Kia versus Bally's the Cadillac, you know. They didn't do things all the way to make them really robust like a Bally game. You know, the drop target's number one. They fail pretty quick after even a brand new. They never fused the transformer circuitry. So you got a lamp circuit, a feature lamp circuit on one bridge. You got a solenoid circuit on the other bridge. And those come directly from the transformer. If you had a problem or short somewhere, that would make the transformer get hot and burn up because there was no fusing on it from the factory. So I put fusing in that so that won't happen. And then also they put in a circuitry for the regular GI lights everywhere because you had GI and a couple circuits of GI in the play field, a couple circuits of GI, general illumination on the backbox panel. And they had just one wire feeding all four of those lines with one big 20-amp fuse. so if you get a problem somewhere it's taking out the fuse well good luck finding it you got to find out is it on the playboard is it on the back glass i don't know so what i did is i kind of cut that all into the one fuse made into four different fusings so i got four five amp fuses instead of 120 amps and now if you get a problem somewhere it's just going to blow one of the fuses and you'll find out where it is you'll know the location yes that's another upgrade and the last upgrade that they never did as well is over here this is from our friend andrew the weebly board guy um it's a solenoid saver oh you talked about that in one of the programs all my williams games because that if you have one bad so that's just a bank of fuses so it separates all the special solenoids if one there's a lot more specialty stuff you should do in these games oh yeah a lot more a lot more customization of these games oh yeah to get them reliable and even then are there a lot of these what i know they made 6 000 of them yeah this is the first one I've really seen out there. Okay. But they aren't really around. I mean, this doesn't seem like a game that would last. Scott's looking for one. I don't know why. Scott's looking for one of these games. I think he wants this game so he can do some custom software on this game. Well, we're going to play, so I'll give you... I'm guessing it's a straightforward game. It definitely needs an attract mode. It just sits there with no attract mode when it's off. It's screaming to do an attract mode. Okay. You know, maybe with a little sound going, squawk, squawk! Let's put this bad boy back together. That is underwhelming. Underwhelming. That's a computer, George. Okay. You know in the movies when you have computer sounds and they're playing computer, even though there's no computer sounds? Where's the ball? Oh, I need a ball. Hold on, I've got to put the ball back in. I forgot to put the ball in, George. Hold on. Oops. We'll make this happen. Okay. There. Okay. If you want I even put like a good like a good uh arcade guy I put some credits on it Yeah the sounds on this are kind of bad Yeah kind of bad Okay I going to start because I never played So they came from this game to Gorga. They made a big jump. Okay, so I'm guessing I want to get all five numbers up top. That's bonus. So I have two bonus already. Yeah, but the two and the four. Nice snappy flippers, Dave. Thank you. I can tell right away, and I drain. See the little birds chirping Chirp chirp chirp chirp Super chicken So the two and four Will raise those Individual drop targets See I raised that one there Oh okay So the numbers Two and That raised up too See See the drop targets Drop nice Wait whoa How'd you do that It dropped And every time you get that Every time you get the one Two three four So the two will raise That single drop target In the four But how did you do it At the bottom of the See it raised See the two does that one the four does one on the right. Okay. I screwed you up, but we can play again. Okay, so I have everything but the two. But I already raised. Yeah, so you hit them again. But every time you get the one through five, it gives you a letter in Phoenix. And if you get the two little stand-up yellow things, it lights that spinner for a thousand points right there. Okay. So right now I have the P and... Oh, snappy. Yeah, they're very snappy. The game plays like, you know... I want to hit that. Look at it. It was like a sweep. It wasn't like a sweep. It was a sweep. How come they don't come back up? They come up when you get them all down, they'll come back up. Okay, so now I have... Now you've got a lit spinner. 1,000-point spinner right now. Those slingshots are active. Oh, yeah, I tuned them. Nice stop. Nice little flipper catch there. Oh, there we go. 1,000 points. Okay, so I want... Okay, I'll take the three, so I need the four. No, no, no, no, no. That's nice. Okay, so that wasn't bad. Nice bonus. Okay, look at me. Look at me. 200? Over 200. 205 to 81. Okay, Dave. bad. Okay, I don't know what I did right, but I did something. It's a little floaty, but not... I mean, it's period. It's period. Oh, there you go. Oh, and I got robbed for that. Yeah, that came right back. It hit that single target up on the left and became screaming back, and that was it. I have an aggressive angle on this, too. I think I have like a 6.5 on it, because it needed it. Really? Yeah. It's still... Well, the inserts are... Even though it's a new play field, the inserts are cupped. Yeah, I saw that. How come? It cuts from just from age. It really could use a playfield protector, but I'm already over budget right now. Here we go. Come on. Four. Four. Come on. Four. Four. Four. Four. Oh, no. Almost. Snappy. No. Okay, Dave. What do I want to do here? You want to get the... I don't want to do that. You don't want to go out. No. Oh, notice the pup bumper body. See those? They're translucent. I put that in there. They're yellow translucent popcorn bodies with red. So it shows more light. You know, I sound like a broken record, but it's truth. Again, your customer's going to be happy. It plays nice. I mean, the flippers make, I think, a big difference in this game. Yeah, they're nice and snappy. They're not, like, clunky. No, you did a nice job on this game. I don't understand that rail thing over there. That seems like an expense that didn't really need to happen. It's kind of like the game Time Fantasy, how they did it in that game too. Yeah, I guess it's a differentiator, but it looks to me like... Why would you do it? Oh, okay Dave. There we go. Oh nice. He gets the three and he gets all of them. Oh, extra ball lit. Extra ball lit. Oh, so you have to hit that single stand-alone target. I do. I wonder if I can backhand it. I wonder if you can... Oh. It would have been sweet if I did. Okay, so... Bang! Oh, almost. Try it again. One more try. Come on, hit it. Oh, missed again. He's got it on the right flipper. Nope, not yet. Not yet. Okay, he does. All right. Hit that target. Let's see if you can get a... Oh, a little early. That's a tough shot. I'm going to get back in. When you need it. Come on. Nope. I don't know if I can tap pass it. Nope. Oh, out you go. Missed my extra ball. Can't get fancy. Five balls? Three balls. Why is it blinking one again? Because you got the high, you beat me. Oh, that's different. You're the winner, winner, chicken dinner. Okay. That's why. Let's play one more game. So they did some technology. Here's the winner. The blinking guy got the winner thing. Well, I noticed it, so it works. Go ahead. You can start. Show us how it's done. Is there anything we haven't seen in this game? It's pretty basic. Pretty basic. I put Ellie. So where are all the points buried in this game? Anywhere? I mean, is there like one thing you should do? Oh, now I get it. Yeah, of course you do. Yeah, I don't know. Oh, wow, that was punished. Don't hit that center pole point there. Yeah, that looks very deadly. Death shot. Okay, let's see if I can get some points here. Okay. so I've got both of those single targets up oh same thing Dave 3 out of 4 I like that is that known on this game no only because the MRS switches that would not happen on any Williams game unless you have that special thing in there because it reacts so fast they drop like butter there's no resistance so they drop nice do most people do this I have no frame of reference that's why I'm asking I mean obviously the guy built it so he knew he was going to sell some yeah you gotta be kind of tech savvy you gotta be used to working on your game a little bit and you gotta kind of keep track of where the wires are supposed to go I've never heard anybody ever talk about them yeah they work really well well I heard I shouldn't say that I learned of it from Tommy Tommy Skinner, but he was talking about it in another game, not one of these games. So, frame of reference is a little bit different. Like I said, mine's only a single switch, where this has four switches on a board. A little bit different. Yeah, sounds in this game are very lame. But it's pure, I mean, I... it's not a bad thing I like that I mean that's a really you gotta show that you gotta do that and put the camera on it and show it and just keep doing it until you get a really good shot and then edit it in or do you just go let it run no editing involved well we've both done it I've done it twice already so that's a pretty cool thing yeah Dave's got a good ball rolling here good i don't know how i get multipliers oh so for net that's all so i i have a story that i wish i would have watched this movie prior to one of the shows we did although it wasn't i think we knew it wasn't going to be a big show was the uh alley show yeah i just watched a movie on him called when we were kings that sounds familiar and it chronicles the fight that he had with George Foreman in Zaire, Africa. Okay. So if you're a hardcore boxing fan or just want to know a little bit more about Muhammad Ali, I wish I would have seen it prior to us doing the show, but it was interesting. I watched it because I'm like, we did a show on this. I watched that. I watched that. Yeah. So I got 343 versus the 63. That was a good gas ball. So that's only ball two. I ate five times bonus and pretty much maxed out the bonus. So what's the threshold? Do you have a threshold set on this? I do, but I forget what it is. You forget. Of course you do. No, no, no, no! Out you go. Ball three. Let's see if I can spell Phoenix. Okay. So you put red LEDs up there on the inserts, the lane guides, red LEDs up there. Like I said, you do a good job. You don't go over the top. You give it the right accents. No topper. What are you going to put? A roast chicken up there? A roast chicken, exactly. Are you going to buy one of those barbecue units that Russia has? Or Kenny Loggins. Kenny Loggins? Or Kenny Rogers Roasters. Or a Kenny Loggins Roaster. They have that. Okay, so you're going to talk about chicken joints. Yes. So, who's the original chicken man? Colonel Sanders. Colonel Sanders. Oh, it's not Chick-fil-A? No, I don't think so. It's not Popeye? No. It's not Church's? I've never heard of Church's, no. It's not Uncle Dave's? I don't think so. Uncle Dave's Hot Chicken? Never heard of that one. Line around the block, there's one in Woburn. Woburn, Mass? Yes. It's, you know, it's Nashville Hot Chicken. Is it good? You try it? I've never had... The line was around the building. Okay, here we go. I need a four. And I get a five. And I need to get it back up there so I can get the four. And that doesn't help. You gotta trust the bounce, don't you? There we go. That's fed nice back to you. Yeah, trust the bounce. Trust... I need the four. Come on. That's why I have it so aggressively steep to see if I didn't have it that steep. But it doesn't feel super steep. Well, it doesn't. But that's we have to overcome the cup inserts with that steepness otherwise it's gonna be you know No, no, no, but this but this team is it feels the right speed this game needs it This be nice little tournament game I can see doing a little No, that was super dangerous oh nice way to feed it back to the right $1,000 spinners waiting for you. Come on. You got the Owen Phoenix. I can't get no satisfaction. There you go. Oh. I made a run, but not great. Oh, high score to date. I got 5-4-5-4. High score to date right there. Pop, pop, pop. Unless you have something else to say about this game, I think we should conclude. We can conclude with, I don't know, It looks like a giant turkey with ribs sticking out. Phoenix. I don't like the back glass. I do like the Robert Blakeman hairdo on the turkey, though, in the middle of the Phoenix. The play field isn't bad, but that back glass with the chicken, just... Don't, you know, it basically, how it goes in this game... Don't fear the chicken? No, don't work on the Phoenix if you don't have the time. No, no, don't do it. Okay. i don't even know what's from beretta don't worry the sound insert sound so did you after i made that reference did you go out and look up Robert Blakeman and beretta you did didn't you i used to watch beretta oh okay yeah yeah okay i didn't i was kind of amazed that you knew that right off the top of your head little cockatoo all the time on his shoulder a little careful with that oh i will it's well it wasn't be careful with that you already did the one joke it wasn't a big cockatoo just a little one okay okay okay say goodbye goodbye that's it okay thank you for tuning into another the tab this episode with dave and george this time on phoenix have a wonderful day and that's episode 96 or 97 something like that for the classic pinball podcast my name is george stay lit and be tilted will do no other way to be ok be listening tomorrow for another exciting episode in the life of the most fantastic crime fighter the world has ever known chicken man he's everywhere he's everywhere you had a question in one of our last programs i don't remember which one it was you were asking me about the bally kiss with that fiberglass oh yeah oh i i was reading this one grant sent that did you read all that whole thing it was very interesting yeah so that's from the factory we should we should actually tell that story because not only people know that story the story the whole the rest of the story and did you read the whole thing about it what people We'll talk about it. No, but we'll save it. I just looked at it real quick, unless you know it off the top of your head. I can bring it up on my thing. Yeah, no, I have it off the top of my head. Okay. Well, while we're playing, while I'm playing my ball, you can tell some stories. So that was one. I thought that was interesting. That was... Oh, careful. It's not the glass. Yeah, yeah. I don't want to buy that glass. No, you don't. No, I know I don't. Okay, so that was one thing. So you're going to comment on that. What else do I have? Well, let me, so I'll give you a quick rundown on the KISS thing. So that game was a prototype made in 79 because they heard that Williams was going to come up with their first talking game, Gorgar. And they had the KISS game. So they said, we've got to rush because of the AMOA, which is like the big coin-op show to showcase all the new games that year. And Williams was sick of being number two. Valley was number one at that time in the late 70s. And Valley was putting out games. Gally had fantastic artists their games were just okay but their artists were awesome Williams had their artists were just okay they had one guy Constantinino this guy did all the artwork for all the Williams games it's not bad but that's a weird it's not bad but it's just weird it looks like Robert Blakeman from frickin Beretta as a chicken it kind of does it's Robert Blakeman and that's the name of that tune that's what Robert Blakeman used to say so what they did is say we need to come up with something so they had some primitive speech thing that the Kiss game would say in this prototype cabinet where it would say KISS and then it would say Get the K I think that's all it would say Get the K and KISS so Williams had their Gorgar saying they turned up really loud Valley had their game turn up really loud saying KISS And after them doing that for a while, AMOA put in sound restrictions on the next time they do a show. You guys cannot crank up your game like that anymore. We're not, you've got to put them down nice and low next time we do this thing. So they basically took that game back. Valley didn't go forward. They did their first game as Xenon as a talker. This thing wasn't going to work out. Williams went ahead to be going gangbusters with Gorgar and Firepower. And people were waiting in line with cores to play those games. And the Valley games, not as much. They weren't first to the table with that talking stuff. So that's what really put Williams on the map more, was that. And then I saw that Kiss prototype game was for sale back in, oh, I think like 10 years ago. Someone had it for $8,000. You could buy that Kiss prototype game that was a talker, the fiberglass cabinet, in Illinois. Someone had it. Don't go to bed with no price on your head No, no Don't do the crime if you can't do the time Don't do it Keep your eye on the barrel When the snow is It's now Who do you call when you want your pinball machine restored? Dr. Dave Dave, who? Dave, D-A-V-E Yeah, Dave Dave, right But George, you don't know what you're saying. You're under their control. This joker's not only stupid, he's a moron besides. I heard that. Thanks for the compliment. Hasta la vista, baby.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 44b0c71b-2403-49b2-af9e-fe3de2ad5dcd*