# Episode 66 - Pinball Maintenance

**Source:** Wedgehead Pinball Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2025-01-20  
**Duration:** 50m 49s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** Buzzsprout-16406503

---

## Analysis

Alan and Alex from Wedgehead Pinball Podcast discuss fundamental pinball machine maintenance for home collectors. They cover cleaning methods (emphasizing Novus 2 as effective and safe despite online criticism), waxing older machines, rubber maintenance using Pin Guard, and wear-part replacement. The episode debunks common myths about over-maintenance and advocates for practical operator-level care standards.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Novus 2 is safe and effective for cleaning clear-coated playfields (post-late 1980s games) despite internet claims it damages playfields — _Alan and Alex cite their experience as arcade operators maintaining games with 60,000-70,000 plays that are cleaned weekly with Novus 2 and remain in resellable condition_
- [HIGH] Naphtha is less effective than Novus 2 for cleaning playfields and is carcinogenic/banned in certain states — _Alan explicitly states naphtha 'does a really shitty job of cleaning the playfield' and is a 'flammable petroleum solvent' and 'carcinogenic so you can't even buy it in certain states'_
- [MEDIUM] Modern Stern games accumulate more grime due to higher ball velocity causing more rubber and metal degradation — _Alan references Roger Sharp's comment about 'ball's moving at a much, much, much higher velocity nowadays' and notes this causes 'micro shavings' from metal-to-ball contact that become magnetized and accumulate_
- [HIGH] Waxing with carnauba car wax is effective for older pre-late 1980s games but not necessary for modern clear-coated games — _Alan recommends mothers brand carnauba paste wax for EM and early solid state machines, noting Novus 2 acts as a pseudo-wax for modern games_
- [MEDIUM] Pin Guard rubber cleaner is superior to alcohol or naphtha for cleaning rubbers because it moisturizes rather than dries them out — _Alan states alcohol/naphtha 'dry out and crack the rubbers and degrade the rubbers' while Pin Guard 'goes a long way' and prevents degradation_
- [HIGH] Home collectors dramatically overestimate maintenance requirements out of fear and misplaced caution — _Alan criticizes 'hilariously bad advice or wildly unnecessary advice' including avoiding over 200 plays, removing rings while playing, and turning down power to avoid damage_
- [LOW] Sprayway glass cleaner (blue cans with clouds) is superior to generic brands for streak-free cleaning — _Alan recommends Sprayway specifically but acknowledges 'any glass cleaner will work'_
- [HIGH] Playfield swirl marks and ball trails embedded in pre-1989 varnish playfields cannot be removed without stripping paint — _Alan explains these are 'actual scratches' with compacted dirt that 'nothing on Earth' can extract without removing surrounding paint_

### Notable Quotes

> "They bought a pinball machine they're trying to clean it they're afraid that novice 2 is gonna clean their pinball machine too easily or too well so they're using this flammable petroleum solvent that's banned in certain states"
> — **Alan**, ~17:00
> _Critique of naphtha advocates, illustrates the psychological basis for online maintenance anxiety_

> "We're putting 60 70 000k on our godzilla and then selling it like you know what i mean like we're fucking we're doing real numbers out here dude we're pushing weight"
> — **Alex**, ~32:30
> _Emphasizes operator experience as empirical evidence against Novus 2 damage claims; 'pushing weight' is colloquial for high-volume gameplay_

> "Novus 2 is what pinball maintenance is built on"
> — **Alex**, ~31:45
> _Encapsulates the episode's central thesis about Novus 2 as industry standard, contradicting online criticism_

> "if you do get to the point where you're having to clean a game that has gotten dirty what the other guys will tell you to use instead is just fucking annoying"
> — **Alan**, ~15:30
> _Frames naphtha recommendation as a contrarian position, not a superior alternative_

> "Don't listen to idiots that clean their games once every couple months and don't know shit dude"
> — **Alex**, ~31:30
> _Dismisses low-play-count home collectors as unqualified sources on maintenance_

> "It's like over time, they'll lose balance and they'll degrade. So pin guard is the way."
> — **Alan**, ~27:15
> _Direct endorsement of Pin Guard as rubber care standard to preserve longevity_

> "Anything from the late 80s and onwards, Novus 2. These play fields have what we call a clear coat on them an automotive clear coat"
> — **Alan**, ~9:00
> _Clear delineation of product recommendation based on playfield chemistry_

> "These old games are pokey now just fucking wax your game dude"
> — **Alex**, ~24:30
> _Practical advice framed colloquially; emphasizes waxing as performance enhancement_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Alan | person | Host of Wedgehead Pinball Podcast; arcade owner and pinball technician with operational maintenance experience |
| Alex the Waterboy | person | Co-host of Wedgehead Pinball Podcast; provides operator perspective and agrees with Alan's maintenance philosophy |
| Roger Sharp | person | Referenced in discussion; made comments about modern pinball ball velocity on the show |
| Novus 2 | product | Plastic polish and de facto pinball playfield cleaning standard; central focus of episode's defense against online criticism |
| Pin Guard | product | Rubber cleaner recommended for flipper and post rubbers; alternative to alcohol/naphtha that preserves rubber integrity |
| Naphtha | product | Petroleum-based solvent; criticized in episode as inferior to Novus 2, carcinogenic, and banned in certain states |
| Pinball Life | company | Online pinball parts retailer where Pin Guard and other maintenance products can be purchased |
| Mother's (car wax brand) | product | Carnauba paste wax recommended for waxing pre-late 1980s playfields |
| Sprayway | product | Glass cleaner brand (blue cans) recommended as superior for streak-free pinball glass cleaning |
| Pintastic | event | Pinball expo event on East Coast; fundraiser goal for Wedgehead hosts to attend |
| Wedgehead Pinball Podcast | organization | Alan and Alex's podcast; running fundraiser for Pintastic attendance with sticker giveaway |
| Ko-fi | company | Fundraising platform used for Wedgehead Podcast fundraiser (ko-fi.com/wedgeheadpodcast) |
| Pinball Wizard | company | Online pinball parts retailer where Pin Guard can be purchased |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Playfield cleaning methodology (Novus 2 vs. naphtha vs. glass cleaner), Rubber maintenance and degradation (flipper, sling, post rubbers), Waxing older machines vs. modern clear-coated games, Online maintenance myths and overcautious home collector culture, Operator-level maintenance standards vs. home collector expectations
- **Secondary:** Modern Stern game grime accumulation and ball velocity, Glass cleaning and sight line maintenance
- **Mentioned:** Podcast fundraiser and Pintastic attendance

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.78) — Alan and Alex are encouraging and practical, debunking myths with conviction. Tone is informal and profanity-heavy but supportive toward home collectors. Mild frustration directed at online contrarians rather than audience.

### Signals

- **[community_signal]** Home collectors exhibiting overcautious maintenance behavior (avoiding over 200 plays, removing rings, excessive power-down) based on fear of damage (confidence: high) — Alan: 'they just have like crazy thoughts of like what you need to do to maintain a pinball machine... don't put more than 200 plays on it because then it won't be home use only'
- **[community_signal]** Wedgehead Podcast conducting fundraiser for Pintastic attendance with limited-edition Boston Floopy Drooper stickers as incentive (25 units max at $10+ donation) (confidence: high) — Alan and Alex discussing first 25 donations over $10 receive two stickers; Microsoft Paint-drawn Floopy character exclusive to fundraiser
- **[sentiment_shift]** Significant online criticism of Novus 2 as damaging to playfields, which hosts characterize as baseless and contradicted by operator experience (confidence: high) — Alan: 'there's a whole bunch of BS about how they'll just say over and over that Novus 2, it's still too abrasive' and 'the slander against novus 2 is insane'
- **[industry_signal]** Operator standard for playfield maintenance: weekly or bi-weekly cleaning with Novus 2 on high-play machines (60,000-70,000 plays), contradicting home collector fears (confidence: high) — Alan and Alex confirm using Novus 2 weekly on operator games and selling them without visible damage; Alan: 'we've had games that get 60 000 70 000 plays on them they get cleaned every week or every other week with novus 2'
- **[community_signal]** Hosts explicitly frame operator experience (high-play-count machines) as authoritative over low-play home collector opinion on maintenance safety (confidence: high) — Alex: 'Don't listen to idiots that clean their games once every couple months and don't know shit dude' and 'we're putting 60 70 000k on our godzilla... like you know what i mean'
- **[market_signal]** Availability fragmentation of maintenance products (Pin Guard): 'some places have it, some places don't' across online retailers (confidence: medium) — Alan: 'You can buy it at certain pinball parts stores online. Pinball Life, I think I use the Pinball Wizard. I'm sure some places have it, some places don't'
- **[sentiment_shift]** Pin Guard rubber cleaner positioned as superior to alcohol and naphtha because it moisturizes rubber rather than drying it out (confidence: medium) — Alan: alcohol/naphtha 'dry out and crack the rubbers and degrade the rubbers' while Pin Guard preserves rubber lifespan
- **[technology_signal]** Pin Snake tool (flexible cleaning tool for hard-to-reach playfield areas) representing emerging aftermarket maintenance innovation (confidence: medium) — Alan ordered a Pin Snake and plans to report results on show; notes its utility for cleaning tight U-turn plastics on Rick and Morty

---

## Transcript

 Outro Music Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. My name is Alan, your host of the podcast, which you probably know by now. And I am joined once again in the basement studio of my co-host, Alex the Waterboy. How are you doing? I'm doing okay, Alan. I'm not doing great because anyone who's been listening to this show for a while, they know we're doing a fundraiser. And it's been going pretty good. We're over 50% there. But Alan's saying if we don't get to 100%, he's going to Pintastic without me. He's leaving me back there. I didn't say that. I said we have to downsize our expectations, and I'm going to make a cardboard cutter of you, and I will bring that to the show. And that would probably give people as much joy as me actually making it. So maybe that's a win for them. But in the spirit of trying to get this baby over the 100% line, we're pulling out all the stops. For anybody listening, this is big news. Well, supplies last donations over $10 to our co-fi.com wedgehead podcast fundraiser. Donations over $10 are going to get an exclusive Boston themed floopy drooper wedgehead pinball podcast proud supporter sticker. If you've not attended a Howdy Partner event before, floopy drooper is the mascot of the last place team. He has nothing to do with pinball expos mascot flippy. All resemblance is coincidental. It's not the same. It's not the same as Flippy. Stop saying it is. It's Floopy. It's Floopy, okay? It's way different. He wears cargo shorts. Those Floopys you have to earn by getting last place. This Floopy is exclusive to Fundraiser for donating over $10. These are high quality, very nicely printed stickers with very low quality art on them. Drawn by the water boy. Drawn by myself. Painstakingly drawn in MS Paint. It's correct. Yeah, the medium of choice. yeah they're only available for supporters of the show the first 25 donations of ten dollars or more we'll get two stickers that's it once we do those stickers i'm deleting the microsoft paint file from my computer these are truly limited edition there's not going to be a 30th anniversary jurassic park fucking edition of these stickers that's it i mean there will be more floopies in the future maybe but the boston ones are one and done so if you want some of those boston stickers you go donate $10 to ko-fi.com slash Wedgehead Podcast. There's links everywhere. Somehow Alan will have to get an address from you. I don't feel like dealing with that. I didn't really think that part through. So you just get to get in touch with him and there's going to be some kind of honor system here, I suppose. I will send them out to you using the U.S. Postal Service. Yeah, it's going to be a good, it's going to be a good system. The best system. The best. Go ahead, $10, get some stickers, help us get out to Pentastic, visit our friends on the East Coast. Plug, that's my promo. What is the actual reason people are here today, Alan? What's our episode topic? Today's episode is basic pinball maintenance. We basically, it's a follow-up to help some of the people out there who have taken the plunge and bought their own pinball machine, sometimes against our better judgments or better advice. But we just did an episode where we talked about buying your first game, an alex forward episode where he gave some uh alex hot tips about buying houses and running up credit card debt to purchase these pinball machines and it's all good stuff really good stuff so if you've already i imagine you've already listened to that episode but this is sort of a companion piece is like oh now you have this big 300 pound machine in your basement house garage wherever and now you need to know how to maintain it and this is something that i just find a lot of like hilariously bad advice or just like wildly unnecessary advice on most of these forums by home collectors. They're spending a lot of money. They want to feel like they're doing something. And so they just have like crazy thoughts of like what you need to do to maintain a pinball machine. Mostly it amounts to like, don't ever play it. Turn the power down on everything so it's not any fun. So you don't damage the shooter lane from the ball hitting it too hard. like don't put more than 200 plays on it because then it won't be home use only or some other bullshit like that guests take off their rings yeah while they play yeah i've seen that yeah so it's like there's a lot of that kind of this episode is just here to cut through some of the bullshit i'm going to tell you as an arcade owner and someone that works on games i'm going to like we're just going to touch on a lot of these things and i think the first thing is like cleaning because this is going to be the biggest thing you're going to do as a home collector yeah realistically if you buy a stern this is probably all you're gonna do yeah more or less i would think unless you choose to add mods and all kinds of stuff which a lot of these guys do that's part of the hobby to them uh and then they'll tinker or they'll change all the rubbers in their games or whatever but cleaning is the biggest thing just playing the game it's gonna get dirty it's gonna get kind of like black dust and stuff all over the play field you'll see it often in the inlanes you'll see kind of like ball trails and if you've ever been on a location with poorly maintain games, you're like, whoa, I didn't even know they could get this filthy. And then there's a lot of debate on like how you clean a game. Yeah, there's a lot of methodology here and there's a lot of people that get really upset if you suggest what I see on the outline you're about to suggest. So I'm going to just say this, how to clean up in Wall Machine, what to use. Here's the caveat. Anything from the late 80s and onwards, Novus 2. These playfields have what we call a clear coat on them an automotive clear coat and novice is the name of a plastic polish it comes in three formulas and they're kind of numbered one two three and they're sort of like goldilocks and the three bears okay like one does nothing three is fucking terrible like it's like a fucking it's like sandpaper sandpaper and two is beautiful it's perfect three is fucking so satisfying to use on a filthy game though i gotta say you have one where it's just like jesus christ this thing's just like completely caked on and you get the three and it just cuts like a perfect little polished circle through you're like oh that's nice if you want to get that old school look of like the bare wood on a playfield throw some novice on there put some elbow grease into it three yeah the three is like wet sanding a car like you really can't probably do it too many times before you get down to bare wood novice three it'll clean the playfield but it'll look it'll leave it like looking dull and kind of matte two is like doesn't feel noticeably gritty in your fingers but one is like water one is like water yeah which is fine if it's literally just like surface dust on something you can just kind of spray some one on there because a lot of like i have a pack of i bought a pack of three because i didn't know which one to go with or whatever when i first got in and i do use the one just for like the center of a play field before i wax it just because it's like yeah i want something on there and i don't feel like going to get like windex or whatever so you're like yeah it's just to wipe things down basically it's novus 2 is just right. I mean, for many years, I think even still, but maybe not. I don't know. In the manuals, they would all say, you clean your games, use Novus 2. Okay. It's accepted. Operators have used it forever. Many home collectors, at least 20 years ago, were using it. Now there's a whole bunch of BS about how they'll just say over and over that Novus 2, it's still too abrasive. And that over time, what they're going to say to you is that, yeah, you can clean it and it does such a great job, but it's going to damage your play field. And I just want to say on this podcast, that's complete bullshit complete and utter bullshit it's one of the biggest bullshit things you hear on the internet all the time how often do you clean your games at wedgehead once a week and you use novus 2 pretty much every time right literally you have games on the floor for years and years and years we've had new stern games like we've had games that get 60 000 70 000 plays on them they get cleaned every week or every other week with novus 2 and like a toothbrush and we can sell them and you wouldn't fucking know yeah man that's why i'm always just like yeah the people that you're never gonna as a home collector with the game in your house you're never gonna clean them that often like it's not it's you will never put them through the the pain and the wear because as someone that plays at home it's like when you're playing the shit out of a game at home you can probably clean it once a month to keep it looking spotless you probably don't even need novice 2 at that level like you kind of have to go months between cleanings to get like a noticeable buildup of grime on a home game yeah it just takes a lot of plays it does it takes a lot of plays just like novice 2 it just does an awesome job and it'll make your life so easy because if you do get to the point where you're having to clean a game that has gotten dirty what the other guys will tell you to use instead is just fucking annoying okay like a lot of people will say use something called naphtha now naphtha is essentially a horrible smelling flammable solvent made from petroleum similar to lighter fluid and paint thinners this seems like something our buddy jeff from waltz would use oh yeah jeff's dad for sure walter fucking game on player and uh it's carcinogenic so you can't even buy it in certain states that's how you know it's good shit worst of all it does a really shitty job of cleaning the playfield like old guys love it like they love lead paint so sometimes you'll hear them loudly yelling at clouds and forums about how you gotta use nap the man ignore these idiots they're afraid to clean the game they're afraid of cleaning a pinball machine just let that sink into you they bought a pinball machine they're trying to clean it they're afraid that novice 2 is gonna clean their pinball machine too easily or too well so they're using this flammable petroleum solvent that's banned in certain states and they're like yes now here's the thing when you use naphtha it's a very mild solvent which means it does kind of fuck all to help you clean the play field i mean it takes a lot of elbow grease to like get shit up and at that point you could probably just be using a dry rag like a dry like microfiber cloth yeah probably get pretty damn close yeah that's what i was gonna also say are you like have you ever used naphtha nope i've not people if you can get it at your hardware store and you want to give it a try you can see for yourself buy a game let it get really dirty after a couple months of play and then use a little bit try to clean it with a naphtha and then try to use your novice too and then see what the fuck you're actually going to use the rest of your life like if you don't believe me there's kind of a reason novice has just been like the settled thing and it just feels like a reactionary thing that people are like no no it's too much and you're like no it doesn't seem to be hurting nothing no it doesn't hurt shit when you're using novice or whatever to clean a play field are you always using microfibers microfiber cloths yes or t-shirts or t-shirts yeah that's kind of i use t-shirts to do glass and stuff just because they've been washed enough like when i have old t-shirts with holes i'll cut them up yeah yeah and wash them up and only fibers behind yep but i use microfibers for the novice I don't know if that was standard, but I would just say for anybody with a new game, don't use paper towels. They'll make a fucking mess. Yeah, they'll just kind of deteriorate. Yeah, you leave little fibers everywhere. If you do anything with a paper towel on a pinball machine, you're just making a headache for yourself. Like even cleaning the glass, you're way better off with a cloth. I do use paper towels when I clean the glass. Well, you've got bar paper towels, though. Yeah, we got bar towels. Which are like brown, like the brown ones don't leave the fibers. If you have like glad paper towels, the white ones, they just leave shit everywhere. Oh yeah, like little fuzzes, yeah. That's what we're saying is any game from the late 80s, anything that has a clear coat, use Novus. On older games, like pre-1989 sort of, these games all had some layers of thin varnish on them. This only kind of offered basic protection from wear, so it's common to see wear spots down to the wood on all these old games, unless they've been swapped with a new reproduction playfield, and you can use Novus on these. It's not going to make it substantially worse, But no, this isn't necessarily cheap and it won't be nearly as effective as like it is on a clear coat because it's a plastic polish. The clear coat, once it's cured, is essentially like a hard plastic. And so it works really well on these old games with the varnish. There's like ball swirl marks that'll be embedded into the play field. Yeah. And like nothing is going to get those out. Yeah, you get those. They look like little pencil marks kind of. It's like a little curl. Yeah. And those will never come out. Those are like there's nothing on Earth that's going to pull those out because whatever would pull those out. would pull the rest of the paint off. Yeah, because those are actual scratches. Those are scratches and just compounded dirt that got stuffed in them over the years. So it's essentially barely treated wood, those old playfields, which is why they more worn And also operators at that time were just trying to make their money back and get on so maintenance was done maybe more sporadically when these games were new Yeah I think the mindset back then was like they disposable Like, you just kind of buy the next game anyway. And so, when I do these older games, I'll use a mild solvent, usually glass cleaner, like Alex mentioned before, or rubbing alcohol. And that's just to sort of pull the top layer of maybe dust or a little bit of light grime off the playfield. You do got to be a little more cautious with some of these older games because you will run into patches where it is bare wood and right next to it is a little bit of paint that's on the play field. So if you get a little vigorous, you can like chip up extra stuff. Yep. Like you can you can fuck shit up. I think that's where people are concerned about the new games is because they see the old games that are worn down to bare wood. Yeah. And those you I mean, old stuff you do have to treat with like gloves like you have to not literally. I just mean, you have to be gentle with it. my experience getting old games is first of all most of mine i've bought from people that take better care of them than i do but the couple i have bought like dirty it's like i go through once with like novice and try to clean it up and then after that it's really it's like you seal it up with wax which i assume we'll kind of get into in a minute and then uh you kind of just like try not to touch it as much as you can because you just don't want to wear it away at what paint is there they also don't shed nearly as much rubber as new games they don't get they don't accumulate the grime the way the clear-coded games do. Yeah, and also if you notice, the Stern games accumulate a lot of grime. And I think some of it's that a lot of those games are really popular on location right now. People are playing the hell out of them. Roger Sharp, when we had him on the show, alluded to this. The ball's moving at a much, much, much higher velocity nowadays, so it causes more damage. And the dirt that you're getting is some of it's rubber degradation from a ball hitting it, tearing it up, all that kind of stuff. But a lot of it, too, is just micro shavings of the ball hitting metal things, shaving off little iron filings. They get magnetized because every coil under the play field is essentially an electromagnet. And then it kind of sticks to itself. It gets put on the play field. The ball hits stuff. It sticks to the ball. The ball tracks it around the place. Yeah, there's a whole bunch of metal and rubber wearing out. And then that, in turn, wears things out faster, which is also why you do want to kind of stay on top of your cleaning. because if you put it off although i guess yeah if you put it off that's not a good idea although i have seen people online where they get like an old op like a routed game that's just absolutely filthy they'll be like it looks like the grime has protected the plate underneath because you you get rid of the layer of grime it's like pitch black i saw this godzilla that was on a boardwalk or something yeah and it was like pitch black and they're like look you can cut right through and it looked brand new underneath kind of the testament to like the way they build the modern games you're like these things can take a lot so don't worry about the novice hurting them yeah it's ridiculous but the other thing you're going to do like alex said is once you kind of clean them like i said glass cleaner mild solvent whatever just even maybe even like a dry rag kind of just to pull the dust off then you want to wax them so these older games wax so we're talking about nem most early solid states up until the late 80s early 90s these games all could use a coat of wax i use a caranuba car wax because it's cheap it smells really good and it's easy to find at any auto parts store currently have a tin of like the mother's paste like the the most classic you're not using turtle wax you could that's like a cliche corvette owner brand of choice you get your fucking white new balances your cargo shorts and your turtle wax out that's how you know you're going to a car show somebody says someone will argue again like everyone argues on the internet This is people argue that certain car waxes are worse and they're bad and whatever. I don't actually know that much more. I've always used this. This mother's can. I have a couple because I couldn't find one and I bought a different one. And it all kind of seems to be the same. Yeah. Like you can get like I have one that I bought from pinball life or something like an actual like pinball wax. That's a carnival. It's just a carnival, whatever car knob. I don't know how to fucking say that word. Yeah. But I bought the actual pinball wax and it is it's nice because it's more liquid. so you can just kind of like drizzle it onto the playfield versus when you buy car stuff, it's kind of more solid sometimes. Yeah, it's like a paste. Like mine's a paste in a tub. They do have the liquid one, but... As soon as you start working in, it doesn't matter. And then, yeah. It leaves a wax. So basically, you know, like the wax will make the games play slick and fast, and it basically is there to create a very thin layer on top of the playfield that protects it from further wear from the ball rolling around. Yep. So that's why you wax old games. the process of waxing by the way do you actually do what like do you give it 10 minutes or whatever yeah you wipe it on it goes all hazy you give it a while to kind of sit there until you can like clearly see it on the play field yep yeah it'll make everything look all like yeah it'll look kind of like opaque yep and then you actually wipe it off and you wipe it off so yeah i think i have that a little bit yeah but yeah it's genuinely a big difference on classic games oh man the way they play modern games you don't really need to do this i don't know so novice the great thing about novice on the modern games is like kind of because it's a fine plastic polish it cleans it but because it's also polish it sort of acts a little bit like a wax it's not a true wax but it's sort of like it sort of acts like a wax even like a film on it makes the game slick and fast just like when you wax an old game where you're using actual wax it does a similar thing you know like the old games you gotta wax the new ones i just use novice it works i mean the other thing you're going to need to do is you're going to need to clean all the rubbers. This is essential. I found the best, absolute best rubber cleaner is called Pin Guard. You can buy it at certain pinball parts stores online. Pinball Life, I think I use the Pinball Wizard. I'm sure some places have it, some places don't, but it's called Pin Guard. Some old school guys like to use alcohol or naphtha. And both of these, this is where naphtha actually works really well. To clean like the... It'll clean the dirt off the rubbers, but they also dry out and crack the rubbers and degrade the rubbers when you do this. So it's kind of like it'll clean them, but it'll ruin the lifespan of them. And so it's not great. You kind of need to moisturize the rubbers. Yes. Like, yeah. Exactly. So it's like over time, they'll lose balance and they'll degrade. So pin guard is the way. It's not expensive. And a little of it goes a long way. I say this, too. You got to clean the glass. Sprayway makes the best glass cleaner. You'll be able to find it at a local grocery store or hardware store. It's those big blue cans with clouds on it. They're the best. But any glass cleaner will work. I mean, but this is just, this is a great way to get easily clean, even a very dirty glass without streaks. Yeah. So. That's the nicer part about having an actual glass cleaner around us. It doesn't leave streaks. It doesn't leave streaks. So the process, I guess, we talked about a little bit. Process for older games that are covered in dirt or grime. I use the mild solvent, like glass cleaner. Wipe it with a microfiber towels. T-shirts work great, too. old t-shirts that you cut up i leave it the wax to dry for about you know and then i rub i rub my rag into my wax and i just kind of put little circles and try to get every every piece of the pinball machine covered in some wax and i leave it for 15 20 minutes and i come back with a different cloth that doesn't have wax all over it a different microfiber and i wipe off the effort that will save you effort otherwise you'll just keep doing it man and you wipe off the excess right like and then when you keep them waxed it means that you don't need to clean them first anymore like as long as they're always waxed then you just kind of like you put more wax on it you rub it it rubs the dirt the dirt gets into the new the new wax you put on and then you wipe off the excess and it takes kind of the dirt with it it's very simple and it's so worth doing if you want a game to feel snappy and fast like especially an old game like oh it's kind of these old games are pokey now just fucking wax your game dude yep uh and then the process for the clear coated the modern games you drizzle thin lines or drops of novice 2 around the playfield and the ramps and then i use like a toothbrush to just scrub every nook and cranny for parts unreachable with my little toothbrush i use like a soft bristle bendy toilet brush have you gotten a pin snake yet no but i've i just ordered one it hasn't shown up oh yeah let me know how that works i'm genuinely excited yeah if you'll hear it on the show folks this isn't a plug if it's garbage we'll let you know we'll let you know either way either it's awesome or it sucks you'll either never hear about it again or i'll be very hyped the the the u-turn on rick and morty is filthy and it's a it's a bitch to get that plastic off and get in there so i'm just always like oh this actually seems like something useful so i'm excited for that one yeah i just basically i use my toothbrush or i use that like kind of soft bristle toilet brush and then i clean and i swirl and wipe up all the novice along with the free dirt and grime with a microfiber cloth afterwards old t-shirts like i said they can also work and i usually just put the machine into test all lights mode so that all the lights are on and then i'm wearing a headlamp so i can make sure i can see you want as much light as possible well you just live with a headlamp on that's true because i i mean i use it all the time but i just mean for like a home a homeowner it's like what what's very easy to do is like put novus all over you kind of scrubbed it and then you think you wiped all of it and they'll be playing and you'll be like there's like these like white spots or puddles all over the place and you're like, ah, shit, I missed all these spots. And that always feels really stupid. Yeah, it sucks having to take the glass off again. Yeah, so it's like use a lamp, use as much light as possible so you can see what you still have left. And then like as far as like cleaning rubber, I just use Q-tips dipped in pin guard, the rubber cleaner, or you can use a small paper towel dabbed with pin guard and then you just sort of, you just kind of wet it and then you just sort of rub it and the grime will just come off. Pull off that like kind of black metal dust and you just want to hit every surface that the ball hits. Do you do ball rails, like metal guides? I don't do anything with metal guides other than I... You don't polish them or anything? I don't use a polish. Some people use a metal polish. You don't even clean them with pin guard? I don't do any cleaning other than I will take my rag that I'm already using to clean the Novus off the playfield, and I'll wipe metal ramps. That's what I do. I don't ever... I've just never had any so bad I didn't know on route how it would go. Yeah. I just use the same rag, and it usually pulls everything off of the guides. Yep. The pin guard will clean up all the... If you just clean the play field, and you don't clean the targets, or you don't clean the rubbers that the ball's bouncing into, there's dirt on all those, too. And you cleaned all the visible dirt on the play field, but the ball's going to hit those targets, it's going to hit those rubbers, it's going to grab that dirt, and it's going to throw it right back on the play field as it rolls around. So you want to clean all that stuff. And so that's why it's good to have a good rubber cleaner, like pin guard, and then with the targets like stand-up targets or whatever i always just use a little novice in my toothbrush and i just give a little scrubby little scrubby do same thing like novice is a fucking that's why i'm like i'm against the novice fucking slander dude novice 2 is what pinball maintenance is built on once i bought someone i was like oh my god this is just it made everything so easy the best don't listen to idiots that clean their games once every couple months and don't know shit dude they're putting they're putting 80 plays on a venom before they fucking sell what the fuck do they know dude i don't know shit dude we're putting 60 70 000k on our godzilla and then selling it like you know what i mean like we're fucking we're doing real numbers out here dude we're pushing weight that's that's why the novice i just have i've been confused about the novice slander from the beginning in like even when i was new in the hobby as soon as i got it i'm like i can see why there's the resistance when you feel like three you're like well this is gritty this is gonna clearly do some damage but then like two i was even from the get-go i'm like i think i know better than these guys yeah because i'm just like i don't think it's doing anything bad and it for me personally i was like well i'm not going to keep the game that like i'm not going to be the one that sees the damage just does anyway and that's why it's interesting to be like oh operators use it too then who the fuck is seeing the damage nobody it is crazy the slander against novus 2 is insane i don't i don't know why but like if we can get i don't know what chemical is that like a 3m like it's going to be some huge company that makes novus i assume yeah i assume yeah if they could give us a sponsorship that would be sick dude i'd wear a novus hoodie dude yeah well because those bottles are pretty fucking sick dude the novice 2 bottle and label is fucking iconic they're nice and they've been the same i think for a long time yeah so i'm like i kind of yeah i'm gonna get some novice merch after this yeah we take no sponsorships unless it's for novice novice reach out okay wear parts so that's everything for that's everything for cleaning cleaning which is the most common thing you're going to do with your game but there's also parts that just wear out okay so we're not talking about like big repairs or diagnostics or anything on this episode we're talking about maintenance yeah like oil change type stuff yeah and so the first thing that you're going to know the consumables are rubbers we talked about them particularly the flipper and sling rubbers but also the little post rubbers positioned in between the shots because those get hammered when you miss a shot um these will degrade over time dry crack snap or or they just like completely die they just be like i wouldn know about that because i don miss shots yeah exactly hey man you miss 100 of the shots you don't take yeah it says that over on no fear yeah but yeah like and even if they don't break they'll just lose all their bounce in life over time so when we buy an older game or we bring a game like that's been in storage for a while part of the shop job we do when i when i get ready for your floor i almost swap in like new rubber all around on almost all those games and certainly on ems and shit because it's like i want those games to play as snappy as possible yep and like new rubber will add so much life wax on the playfield will add so much life to your game it's easy to think especially with older games you're like oh this all like looks pretty good like visually and then you're like hey if that's like a 40 year old game it's probably got 38 year old rubber yeah exactly west yeah like that do you Do you remember seeing the flipper rubbers come off of that rock I got from my uncle? Oh, it's brutal. They're just caked. They're like the exact shape of the flipper. It's just this crusty little thing that comes off. And I was like, I was playing pretty good with those on there. And that's what people will do is like for some people, it's just until that motherfucker breaks, that's the only time they're going to replace it. But you will notice a benefit from replacing old rubber. If you get a brand new stern, if it looks visually good, wait until there's a reason to replace it. Wait until they break. Like, I don't – some guys like to swap in different materials. They like to use the – We've got a whole episode about – Oh, yeah. We've got a whole episode about – Go back in the archive for that one. It's a pinball setup. We talk about rubbers and detail and the different compounds and the surprise, surprise. There's disagreements in the pinball community about what the best rubber is. Yeah, there's a whole bunch of people that are wrong, and then there's our opinion. Yeah, we have the right opinion, and you should go back and check it out. the other thing you hear a lot about and this is another big line of bullshit and it's pinballs the balls themselves some people will say and you're going to see this if you're online at all you've probably already seen it you're going to say you need to throw away the balls that come in with the game and buy different and much more expensive premium pinballs this is unnecessary treat pinballs just like rubbers use them until they wear down and then replace them but some home collectors talk about replacing their balls straight up well people be like hey i just got a game and they're showing like close-up pictures of their balls and they're trying to show them like the scratches scratches or whatever and like should i replace these or whatever and some people like yeah dude i replace mine every 300 plays that is insane well 300 plays we have games that'll get 600 plays or 800 plays in a fucking week that would mean i'd be changing balls twice a week at wedge hit that's that's ludicrous like it's absolutely that's like outrageous but i know what people are saying is like they get into the hobby and they're like hey i want to take care of my investment i want to make sure i maintain the game because i spent a lot of money on it and i want to be nice i'm a pinball guy i want my game to be nice so you do need to change your balls they do wear out they do get scratched sometimes they even get like little dimples they'll look like golf balls yeah they can get chewed up and you want to pay attention because they'll do more damage the more chewed up they are. The more chewed up they are because now they're like they get chewed up when you've got balls in the game for like 20,000 plays. Yeah. Like that's when you're like, oh, that might be fucking things up. You know, I know a lot of arcades that will maybe not 20. Part of their thing is like they'll just change their balls every year, which is like that's reasonable at an arcade where they're going to get many, many thousands or tens of thousands of plays on any game in a year. That's like a good behavior for a home collector. I would just here's how you tell if you just replace them whenever they're visually like scratched up where they're very like dull looking like they look dull when they quit looking chrome yeah they should be shiny look so it can be either like heavily scratched or with deep gouges or dimpled like i said like a golf ball all those are like immediately let's go but then sometimes you just go these balls are kind of dull they're not shiny that's also the time because there are scratches on that ball they're just much finer and more of them at wedge i just do a visual inspection new stern games have six balls in them usually in the trough even if one or two just looks bad they're all going yeah replace them all at the same time but it is a cheap thing to do so it's like it's there's nothing bad it's like changing your oil preemptively you're like well you're not hurting it you could change it every thousand miles but you just don't need to it's at the same time though i don't really understand like there's like the the premium ones and they're shinier yeah there's some premium ones and people there was a thing just like everyone does they're supposed to be harder like what's the harder or whatever the selling point man i don't i don't get that the selling point is that they know people are buying games for their house for too much money and so they it's like they found a way to solve this instead of being like infinite money glitch dude what does like a normal pinball cost from like pinball life it's that scene like 25 cents right that scene from scarface they always show where it's like they're in the room and it's just the money counters. It's just like smoking the big cigar. Yeah, that's what's happening. We found out how to sell pinballs for five bucks a pop. And we got to sell these pinballs for five bucks a pop. And we got to tell them every 300 plays, baby. Time to go. Six new balls. There we go. That's 30 bucks plus shipping. Let's go. Just do what you want to do. Don't let other people tell you how to spend your money, I guess, when it comes to pinballs. Just use your common sense, man. If a ball looks bad, it is. Until it does, it's fine. It doesn't, like, the play count doesn't matter. Yeah. The next one is, like, lights, right? So games up until the mid-2010s still came with incandescent bulbs. These would conduct a lot of heat and they'd burn out. LEDs started becoming a viable alternative about 10 years ago, but the first generation of them are actually pretty shitty. They're pretty dim and kind of like ghosty. Yeah. So if you buy a game that still has incandescence or if it has some low quality, low light LEDs, it might be worth buying a bunch of new modern LEDs and swapping them all out. Also, it's always good to have some on hand, even if you do have them all swapped to the nice, bright, modern LEDs or you bought a new Stern or whatever. That's the game you bought because these do still fail sometimes. Like the general perception is that LEDs basically last forever, but they don't. Yeah, stuff always breaks. Stuff breaks. It's usually like one of the legs. Yeah, the diode. The diode inside of it breaks. The diode itself can last forever, but the rest of it doesn't. If you started using LEDs for everything in your house, you'll realize like, oh, this shit kind of feels like a scam sometimes when you have bulbs just breaking. You're like, oh, it's not burning out. OK, well, it doesn't work. I don't like. Yeah. What was the point? So you should keep a couple of the common shape and size around. There's basically two types. There's the bayonet style, which they used to call number 44 or 47 bulbs. The wedge style base, which used to be called number 555 bulbs. You'll see that sometimes when you're looking to buy bulbs. You'll see them listed as that. You'll see them in old manuals. That's how they used to label bulbs. Number 44 and number 47 are basically the same ones, a lower voltage version of that same incandescent light. And then the 555 are like wedge-shaped bulbs. The wedges push into a socket. They wedge in. And the bayonet, you need to push and kind of twist into like a round socket. Yeah, the wedge ones kind of suck, huh? Hey, man. What are you talking about? We're the Wedgehead Podcast, dude. I'm all for things wedge-shaped. Are you sure about the bulbs, though? they all have their place i mean they're they're used in both and they both fail so it's and they and they're both they could both be flaky for different reasons like the twist and bayonet ones you would think are better but those are the ones that are in all the inlanes and slingshots and on every game and those games always kind of those always flake out too and then you got to squeeze the fucking socket together and you got to do all this shit to try to if you're anal like me and try to make all those lights always work 100 of the time it's just like every time i have game open i notice the lights i'm like god damn it um but you should have some of these because sometimes you'll be messing around with a socket like me and i'll have a light kind of flicker on and off and it'll be a brand new it'll be a nice high quality led and i'll be like what the fuck and then i'll just like i'm just gonna put a new one in i put a new one in no more problems yeah right so it's like they do fail it's good to have some on hand like i said if you have an older game uh there's there's a reason to alex has a lot of games that still have their incandescent lights in yeah like um and when you're at home it doesn't really matter much because my games aren't on for long and if they burn out it's not annoying anybody but me or whatever yeah when they're on locate if you're going to leave your game on a long time the heat really does start mattering on the old stuff especially with as the glue has gotten older you can really fuck up inserts if they get too hot so if you're leaving a game on like on a location for 12 hours straight you want leds in there that's why all those the old games have the cupped inserts they got cooked They've gotten cooked. So that's – or the old back glasses. The paint on the back glasses starts flaking because it's gotten cooked. It's like it's been sitting in the oven. So there is a reason to switch to LEDs. If you're a home collector like Alex, like it's cool that you can still keep them incandescent because he's only going to flip them on for an hour at a time in the day usually. They're not usually – they're not on for 8, 10, 12 hours a day. Yeah. You know, LEDs have gotten so much better, and they're a good replacement. If you're new to pinball and you're listening to this, you know, hopefully there's some new people listening to this. uh leds come in different colors different like warmths and you just want i mean first of all if you're just replacing ones in your game like a spare or whatever just make sure you're getting ones that match because mismatched ones almost always look like ass yeah but if you're doing all of them just go warm just go as warm as you can get the leds now they will look better almost warm white warm white leds are the best got me on this warm le i'm like i was always like well for the games that came with incandescence go warm but the new ones were designed around the cool lights and then i started seeing him swap warms into like blacks black knight sword of rage and stuff and it just looks better yeah nobody's gonna nobody's gonna look at our black knight sword of rage and tell me that the original looks better it just fucking doesn't so that's our like two cents plug anytime lights come up from now on just go warm always if you're doing a full swap go with warm leds yeah you like going to the hospital in that cold clinical white light you know how uncomfortable that is yeah it's not it's not natural it's not natural your eye your I appreciate the light. We're fucking cavemen. We want to be gathered around the fire. And so the closer the light is to that, the better we'll just feel. Yeah, exactly. Now, obviously, if you like the color of LEDs, do whatever you want. It's your game. But just have some. That's our own take. And that's part of, I think, of our setup episode we were talking about earlier. One of the early episodes we did. Last couple things I have here for consumables, flippers. and man do a lot of fucking home collectors not know how to rebuild a flipper to save their lives we've talked about this before but like it seems like most people live by the axiom if it ain't broke don't fix it but really in pinball sense that just leads to a bunch of games that play slow play like shit and collectors will bring soggy ass playing games to these shows like and they just play like shit they might look like a million bucks but then they play like shit it's hard like for me when i first got into the hobby i got my first em and it was real cheap and i just figured like this is how ems i was like well they it's an em and like of course it plays slow and i mean that's true to a degree they don't have the snappy flippers i'm never gonna play like a new stern but then it was like i posted a video of it trying to diagnose something and someone was immediately like uh you got to rebuild those pops those things are like dead and i was like oh i thought i thought that was normal and i think that's the problem is a lot of the time with the older games you don't have a reference for how they're supposed to play yeah because nobody has a new one but yeah like once you play one with rebuilt flippers you you'll be like oh shit that's how it's supposed to play yeah to give a range here again these things sometimes they just fail so they work until they don't work you might have a an individual part failure at any time you could buy a brand new game out of the box and within a couple hundred plays you might have a broken coil stop or you might have the flipper lane plunger tear itself apart like these things do happen they're kind of fluky um some guys will get really mad about it on the internet uh they're mechanical games so you gotta get used to this happening there's only so much they can do for qc but i would say on average like modern flippers especially like a stern they need a rebuild every five to ten thousand plays that's about the threshold more often than you're replacing pinballs at least as often but probably more often than i'm replacing pinballs yes That's kind of interesting. Yeah. I probably, I almost certainly, although also when I'm rebuilding flippers, I'm kind of very closely looking at the pinballs themselves. I was going to say, that's why I usually see you toss all the pinballs. Yeah. Then you'll see that. Like, ah, fuck it. If you going through that if you putting that the other thing If you putting work into a game just go do everything and if i if i rebuilding flippers i putting new rubbers on the flippers and i make a jar and clean the game after i do it too well when you when you put the effort into doing a flipper rebuild you want that thing to play fucking nice afterwards so you're not you're gonna pull you're gonna do all the cheap stuff while you're in there a lot of people know that about kind of the newer games like because you know like the flipper mechs will like physically fail like they'll be sticking or they'll be bad and so someone will be like oh shit i guess i gotta learn how to do this or there's the maintenance interval like you just feel like oh man i can't quite get up that ramp anymore it feels like it's luck now that i get up a ramp and you're like it's time to rebuild a flipper dude like that's that's the time everyone's gonna try to be like i'm gonna stick these 300 fans on it and you're like dude you just need to rebuild those fucking flippers dude you got something going on there bro like that's like everyone's like jumping to like this like plug and play how do i spend how do i spend money to get out of this situation without doing it work yeah and so the thing is is like rebuild your flippers now a home collector if you're buying a new game like you're buying a new stern most of you guys are not putting five to ten thousand plays on it yeah before you sell it and new stern flippers are so fucking powerful that it's like they have a long ways to go before they start causing problems but on route you can definitely see games that get past the five to ten thousand threshold yeah and you'll play games that you're like oh these flippers are fucking mushy like it's hard to make the left ramp on Godzilla like it doesn't want to go all the way up and that's just bad maintenance by the operator or whatever and like I said I always joke about this like I hate going to big shows except for Pentastic where this will not happen but it's like collectors bring their games and they don't fucking rebuild their flippers and like usually the games are clean usually the games look like a million bucks with like powder coated and stuff like that like they they usually look like really nice copies but they usually play tired tired yeah and so and then you hear a bunch of guys going well it's all the extra power usage of having all these games here i mean they're taking the line bulges out of the wall and i was like that's what rectifiers are for buddy that's what that whole shit is for in a pinball machine you're taking the ac and you're turning into dc the real problem is just a bunch of these motherfuckers haven't ever rebuilt a flipper in their lives they like to spend a bunch of money collect their games they bring them out once a or to their local show. They don't want to rebuild a flipper, dude. They don't want to get in the middle of it and then realize, oh, fuck, maybe I'm in over my head. Like, it's one thing to change in colored light bulbs. It's another thing entirely to, like, pull a flipper mech apart and replace every component and put it all back. Yeah. But even classic games, they need their flippers rebuilt too, and that's what Alex was talking about. It's critical. Don't neglect flipper maintenance because it's literally how you interact with the game. How long does it take you to do a flipper rebuild on a modern stern? What does that, first of all, for anyone listening, what's that entail like how many parts are you actually replacing during that so one you're almost almost never replacing the coil itself right sometimes sterns the flipper plates physical metal bracket that holds it those will get sheared off screws or something in them and then you have to replace the whole plate it's not the best machining sometimes sometimes we love sterns they're the best but sometimes yeah sometimes they're not every machine from every era has its problems yeah but i would say that if i just have to do like a standard say a two flipper game Black Knight, that takes about 15 minutes. Okay. But I'm doing it on the floor. I'm doing it with experience. It might take a person doing it for the first time an hour. Yeah. I don't know. It could. But it's not like it's – It's not crazy. It's not – It's not like you're going to be spending like eight hours doing this. No, no, no, no. No, no, no. You get faster the more you do them, and it just entails a new stop, a new coil sleeve, a new plunger link, a new metal bushing. and I usually put a new return spring on because those things wear out over time and they're cheap. And then it's just like six or seven components. Replace both at the same time. Even if one failed and the other one didn't, replace them both because the other one's worn. You start to get good at like pulling a coil stop off and looking at it and it's all cupped. Yeah. Or you pull the plunger link out and it's all mushroomed out or it's sharp on the edges where it hits against the coil stop. That's time for a rebuild. Like, usually I could just pull a coil stop off and, like, kind of slide the coil out, and I'm just, like, looking at a bunch of arms, like, yeah, it's time. Yep. It's time. Like, I pull two screws out, and I'm like, it's time. Let's do this. And it's just, like, things, it's just their wear pieces that wear out, and they get slop in them, and they start getting more friction, and it just makes them work worse. As you know, like, you, that's how you interact with the game. Yeah. You're a pinball player. Like, your interaction with the ball is through the flippers. important thing and that's why it's just one of those things that you gotta keep that in mind if you buy a game used especially if you buy a game and you're like man i bought this guardians of the galaxy and like this thing it just does not play as snappy as the one i you know i that made me fall in love with it yep if you got it used it probably needs a flipper rebuild you know if that's what your problem totally it's just it's it's not like you can find a video on youtube or something like there's there's lots of resources out that'll show you exactly how to do it it's not complicated and it's something that everyone needs to get good at doing but yeah like please rebuild your flippers but i will say for most home collectors on a modern game or even on a classic game if you rebuild it once while you have it that's probably all you'll ever have to do it like yep because it should last like i said five ten thousand plays usually so it's like rebuild a lot of flippers around here exactly because you don't need to usually like but when you need it you fucking need it so it's like what's one of those things that you just got to do and the last thing I'll say about pinball maintenance before we end this episode is you will need a soldering iron and you will need to know how to use it. I have been a cook for 20 years professionally and I use my soldering iron as a pinball tech just like I use my knife as a cook. It's literally my most important tool. I use it all the time. Most of the time when a mech or switch or whatever stops working you'll find just a broken wire at one of the lugs. You just kind of look for it and then you find it like oh shit you just got to trim back the wire. You got to add some new solder. You got of solder that wire back on that thing works again a lot of times those fixes are under five minutes but you need a soldering iron and you need to know how to do it yeah i'd say one thing if you're soldering on games my one piece of advice if you're doing something on top of the play field which doesn't happen often but you do do occasionally yeah make sure you throw a rag underneath where you're soldering or something oh yeah so you don't trip solder on it just but other than that also turn the game off god yeah yeah well okay good basics but as i say it's pretty hard to fuck up soldering so don't be like afraid of it i think a lot of people are like oh i don't know about that and you're like no man pinball machine soldering until you get to a board anything you're doing on the play field itself is really simple solder you can't cook there's no little looked at i've looked at solder joints that are just atrociously bad but they worked yeah somebody somebody attempted some some home guy somewhere attempted it and then fixed the issue even if the solder joint is really ugly and and is full of cold solder whatever they got at work in and that could be you too and you need to you you learn your way around alex has a soldering iron recommendation uh that he posted in a facebook group uh do you remember that one off the top of your head what's what's your soldering iron recommendation the weller d650 is that what you're going for yeah oh yeah no i don't i can't make a joke on here because people might actually take it seriously even within the context of the threat of the post itself people took it seriously. All right, I'm going to read this. This was in a pinball enthusiast Facebook group from October of 2023. Alex said, if you're using anything besides a Weller D650 to work on your games, you must be some kind of sissy that can't handle real power. I could solder two pieces of glass together with this son of a bitch. Ice cold to 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit, three seconds flat. The only iron you can use for intricate pinball board work and for commercial plumbing installations without changing tips. that's not true i would not do board work with the weller i will say those wellers if if no one knows what we're talking about they're like the on off soldering guns that like look like a fucking like a star wars like blaster pistol and uh they get super fucking hot super quick and they are sick if you're working on really thick wires that are like if you just need to like glue two things together ASAP and they're big wires. They're really nice, but I would never buy one for pinball work. Yeah. I do have a Weller soldering station that I use. It was like a hundred bucks and I use it every day. It's the best, but it's like Weller makes good products. Hakko makes good products, but you could also use a cheap iron too. Like I see people that use a cheap. I've got a little Chinese station one that was like 30, 40 bucks or whatever. Like a Chinese isn't a knockoff of something. It's a no name one that someone was like, this is a pretty good one. and it's adjustable temp and it actually seems to work very well. You don't need much, but you just need to get one and then get comfortable with it because you've got to figure out what temp you need to solder things at. Yeah, it's a little bit of trial and error, but you'll figure it out. But yeah, that's basically pinball maintenance. It doesn't need to be anything crazy. It doesn't need to be anything that you're afraid of. You'll get online and you'll hear people just argue about naphtha and don't use Novus. And they'll be like, you got to replace the balls with premium balls every 300 plays. and yeah unless you like collecting a bunch of like barely used pinballs for like art projects i don't know why the fuck people are like place of pitballs every 300 plays it's insane past all of this there's some other common mechs like slings or pops that will break or they'll become weak those will all need to be rebuilt but i feel like most of that would kind of be better in like a future episode about general kind of pinball or parent diagnostics and we might end up doing something like that in the future although i feel like a lot of that space is well covered by people making videos yeah that's a very visual thing works better for that because it's something you could reference yeah and that's out there you guys use youtube get on a forum people will help you out there's lots of resources out there yeah but hopefully this kind of gave you a more realistic perspective of what to expect when you buy a pinball machine and what you're realistically gonna have to do yeah what you're gonna have to do while you have it for a couple years or whatever but we just want to thank you once again for tuning in to another episode of Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. And until next time, go out, play some pinball, play some pinball on location. Pay somebody else to do the maintenance for you. Pay them to do it for you. But if you already bought your game, now it's time to clean it. Give it a clean. Make it nice. Make it snappy. And until next time, good luck. Don't suck. So? So? So you're supposed to teach and I'm supposed to learn, remember? For four days I've been busting my ass every one of the goddamn things. You learned plenty. I learned plenty. I learned how to sand your decks, maybe. I've waxed your car, paint your house, paint your fence. I learned plenty, right? Not everything is the same. Oh, bullshit. I'm going home, man. Daniel-san. Daniel-san. What? Come here. Show me wax on, wax off. Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Show me pentafence. Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Show me side to side. Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Show me sandalwood. Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes. Look, always look. Come back tomorrow. © BF-WATCH TV 2021

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

---

*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 6b770d32-44cc-4c42-bc90-1fe81e1b32a0*