# TOPCast 3: Jack from Pinballsales

**Source:** TOPCast - This Old Pinball  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2007-02-11  
**Duration:** 60m 0s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** http://www.pinrepair.com/topcast/showget.php?id=3

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## Analysis

Jack Quinonez from pinballsales.com discusses his 30+ year career in the coin-op and pinball business, from operating 500 machines in the 1980s to founding pinballsales.com in 1999 importing used European pinball machines, and transitioning to selling new Stern games. He shares insights on Stern's current lineup (Pirates, Family Guy, Elvis, Lord of the Rings, Sopranos, Simpsons, NASCAR, World Poker Tour), emphasizing Pirates' strong sales (300+ units) and expressing optimism about Family Guy's appeal to younger players. He advocates for promoting location-based pinball to grow the player base and discusses the complexity of modern pinball manufacturing at Stern.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Pirates has sold over 300 units and is expected to be Stern's best-selling game for a long time — _Jack Quinonez speaking about his sales figures and impressions after visiting Stern factory_
- [HIGH] Jack has pre-written orders for approximately 60-65 Family Guy machines — _Jack Quinonez directly stating pre-order numbers for Family Guy_
- [HIGH] Pinballsales.com's sales were $1.4 million in 2000, with 55-60% from used machines; today less than 1% are used machines — _Jack Quinonez providing historical business data_
- [HIGH] Spider-Man will come after Family Guy in Stern's 2007 release schedule — _Jack Quinonez stating 'Spider-Man is going to be after Family Guy' as not a big secret_
- [HIGH] Pat Lawlor designed the Family Guy playfield and was present during Jack's visit to Stern — _Jack Quinonez mentioning Pat Lawlor's involvement and his presence at the Stern factory visit_
- [HIGH] Jack started in the pinball business in 1975 after leaving school, with 30+ years of experience — _Jack Quinonez providing biographical background at start of interview_
- [HIGH] Stern has a complex manufacturing process involving assembly line, parts testing, documentation, and CAD design teams — _Jack Quinonez describing his tour of Stern factory with Joe Blackwell_
- [HIGH] Jack sold 100+ Pirates pre-orders within one weekend after pictures and videos were posted online — _Jack Quinonez: 'By Monday, I was over 100 games'_

### Notable Quotes

> "I think this is going to be Stern's best-selling game for a long time because of the gameplay, because it's a Disney theme, and it's got pirates on it, the artwork looked good, it didn't offend anybody."
> — **Jack Quinonez**
> _Prediction about Pirates' market success based on designer feedback and sales data_

> "We're over 300 Pirates right now that we sold."
> — **Jack Quinonez**
> _Concrete sales figure demonstrating Pirates' commercial success_

> "Family Guy, it really says some things that are out there. You know, there's some language in that show that's, you know, it's out there. So you have three different settings on speech. And I think this thing says 800 different voice calls and everything."
> — **Jack Quinonez**
> _Details about Family Guy's content and customization options_

> "I don't know how the heck they do what they do and they put their thing in a box and it actually comes out and works."
> — **Jack Quinonez**
> _Expresses amazement at Stern's manufacturing complexity_

> "I think the game overall it's going to bring in a lot of players that are younger...I think if you have that game lined up with some other pinball machines, I know what those kids are going to walk over to. They're going to walk over to Family Guy."
> — **Jack Quinonez**
> _Assessment of Family Guy's demographic appeal and market positioning_

> "We have a great opportunity to go out on location and we need to ask these locations to get pinball machines. And when those games are out there, we actually need to put some money in them."
> — **Jack Quinonez**
> _Advocacy for growing location-based pinball as a means to develop the player base_

> "It's just amazing. But the game itself is really solid. It's going to earn money, for sure, for operators commercially."
> — **Jack Quinonez**
> _Commentary on Family Guy's commercial viability for operators_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Jack Quinonez | person | Founder and operator of pinballsales.com; 30+ year veteran of coin-op and pinball industry; major Stern distributor |
| Stern Pinball | company | Major pinball manufacturer; current focus of Jack's business; produces Pirates, Family Guy, Elvis, Lord of the Rings, Sopranos, Simpsons, NASCAR, World Poker Tour |
| Pat Lawlor | person | Legendary pinball designer; credited with designing Family Guy playfield; present during Jack's Stern factory visit |
| Gary Stern | person | CEO/leadership of Stern Pinball; recipient of suggestion for Family Guy game from Jack's son |
| Pirates | game | Stern pinball game with Disney theme; 300+ units sold; strong commercial success; Jack predicts long-term best-seller status |
| Family Guy | game | Upcoming Stern pinball game based on animated series; designed by Pat Lawlor; features 800+ voice calls; three speech settings; 60-65 pre-orders; appeals to younger demographic |
| Spider-Man | game | Upcoming Stern pinball game scheduled to release after Family Guy in 2007 |
| Marco Specialties | company | Pinball parts superstore; sponsor of TopCast; founded 1985; online since 1996 |
| Dick Sarkesian | person | Co-owner of Mondial International and Gottlieb; helped facilitate Jack's early European import business in 1999 |
| Joe Blackwell | person | Stern employee; gave Jack and his son a comprehensive factory tour |
| Lonnie Ropp | person | Stern software/design staff involved in Family Guy development |
| Keith Johnson | person | Stern software staff involved in Family Guy development |
| Charlie Backer | person | Stern's national sales manager; helped facilitate Jack's factory visit |
| Dwight Sullivan | person | Stern team member involved in Family Guy development |
| Ray Tanzer | person | Stern staff member involved in game production oversight |
| Mike O'Donnell | person | Stern staff member involved in game production meetings |
| Pinball Hall of Fame | organization | Benefits from Pins and Vids video sales; pinball museum and arcade venue |
| FAO Schwarz | company | High-end retailer that sold pinball machines; Jack sold Star Wars Trilogy and other games to this customer in late 1990s |
| Fuzzy's Family Fun Factory | venue | 15,000 sq ft Family Entertainment Center owned by Jack in New Jersey; sold in late 1999 |
| Mondial International | company | Distribution company owned by Bob Fezian and Dick Sarkesian; owned Gottlieb; Jack worked as general manager 1998-1999 |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Stern Pinball's current game lineup and sales performance, Pirates pinball game success and market reception, Family Guy pinball game development and features, Pinballsales.com business history and evolution
- **Secondary:** Spider-Man pinball upcoming release, Location-based vs. home pinball market dynamics, Stern manufacturing complexity and process, Pat Lawlor's role in modern Stern game design

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.82) — Jack expresses strong enthusiasm for Stern's current and upcoming games, particularly Pirates and Family Guy. He praises the manufacturing quality, the design team's work, and the games' commercial potential. Positive sentiment about the pinball community's growth and potential. Some mild frustration about industry challenges (container sourcing, parts availability) but overall optimistic tone about the market.

### Signals

- **[product_launch]** Pirates has sold 300+ units with very strong momentum; 100+ units sold in opening weekend after media coverage (confidence: high) — Jack Quinonez: 'We're over 300 Pirates right now that we sold' and 'By Monday, I was over 100 games'
- **[machine_intel]** Spider-Man pinball confirmed as upcoming Stern title scheduled after Family Guy (confidence: high) — Jack Quinonez: 'Spider-Man is going to be after Family Guy. And Family Guy is a great game.'
- **[product_launch]** Family Guy has 60-65 pre-orders already written before official release (confidence: high) — Jack Quinonez: 'I must have written, I don't know, about 60 Family Guys already, 65, something like that'
- **[gameplay_signal]** Family Guy features 800+ voice calls, three speech/content settings, Stewie mini-playfield with miniature flippers, and is considered very deep gameplay (confidence: high) — Jack Quinonez describing Family Guy mechanics and Pat Lawlor's playfield design choices
- **[design_philosophy]** Pat Lawlor designed Family Guy to appeal to younger players through Family Guy IP; game positioned for venues with teenage audience (bowling centers, movie theaters) (confidence: high) — Jack discussing Pat's playfield decisions and strategic venue placement for demographic appeal
- **[market_signal]** Pinballsales.com shifted from 55-60% used machine sales in 2000 to <1% used sales today; now selling full game room packages (12+ machines in 20x20 spaces) (confidence: high) — Jack comparing 2000 sales composition to current operations and describing home game room layouts
- **[manufacturing_signal]** Stern's manufacturing involves extensive parts tolerance testing, CAD teams, documentation specialists, and daily production meetings; assembly line complexity is significant (confidence: high) — Jack describing his factory tour experience: 'they test parts for tolerance and we spent time with the people that do the documentation'
- **[community_signal]** Jack advocates for location-based pinball promotion to grow younger player base and sustain home pinball demand (confidence: high) — Jack's 'soapbox' speech about needing to ask locations to get pinball machines and community members playing them commercially
- **[sentiment_shift]** Pirates exceeded expectations and generated massive early enthusiasm; Family Guy surprised Jack positively despite initial low expectations (confidence: high) — Jack: 'the game really surprised me' for Pirates; 'I thought this might be our win this year' for Family Guy despite expecting less
- **[supply_chain_signal]** European used machine sourcing has become difficult; recent bad container from Puerto Rico had water damage; suppliers increasingly asking near-retail prices for commodity games (confidence: high) — Jack describing container losses and supplier pricing changes over time
- **[content_signal]** Pins and Vids Episode 2 video release drove Pirates sales momentum; online media coverage critical to pre-order velocity (confidence: high) — Jack: 'once the pictures went up and Korn found that game and he put the video up, all hell broke loose'
- **[personnel_signal]** Family Guy development involved large cross-functional team (Pat Lawlor, Dwight Sullivan, Keith Johnson, Lonnie Ropp, Ray Tanzer, Joe Blackwell, Gary Stern) with potential ego/methodology conflicts successfully resolved (confidence: high) — Jack expressing surprise at team collaboration success: 'I'm surprised they didn't kill each other, everybody'

---

## Transcript

 Yo, yo, yo, it's the Pinball Pimple, and I'm not polishing my cherry hose, I'm listening to Shaggy and Norm on the TopCast. Hey guys, this segment of TopCast is not brought to you by Vegemite, providing the illusion of sustenance since 1926. You're listening to TopCast, this old pinball's online radio. For more information, visit them anytime. www.marvin3m.com slash TopCast. Okay, welcome to the TopCast. The TopCast is sponsored today by Margo Specialties, the Pin Game Journal, and Pinball Life. So today we're coming from the Department of New Games. That is, we're going to talk about some new games. We're going to have a caller call in, and he's going to tell us about some of Stern's new offerings and what they've got to show for her. So let's get rolling on this. I'm going to place the call, and we're going to bring in Jack from pinballsales.com to talk to us today about Stern's new offerings. Hold on a second. Let me get him on. Special guest Hi Jack, can you hear me? Yeah Okay, great, you're on the air Okay, that's nice So this is Jack from pinballsales.com And Jack, why don't you tell us about your company And how you got started And what your history is in the coin-op business How long is this show? Well, give me the Reader's Digest version. I've been in the business a little bit over 30 years. I started fixing electromechanical pinball machines in about 1975 when I got out of school. I love it ever since. I had some opportunities presented to me. I became presented to me, I became a game operator, somebody that had games in location. Maybe my accent gives away my Brooklyn, New York background. I'm from New York, too, so I'm with you. I had maybe at one time about 500 games out on location. In the heyday of everything, in the 1980s, we moved to New Jersey in 1989. and shortly thereafter I basically pulled up all my roots in New York, opened a couple of FECs, Family Entertainment Centers in New Jersey. One was large on a scale of 15,000 square feet where we did birthday parties. It was called Fuzzy's Family Fun Factory. I was asked to do some consulting for a company at the time, Mondial International, which owned distribution offices. Mondial, as you listeners may or may not know, was owned by Bob Fezian and Sir and Fezian, Dick Sarkisian, and they owned Gottlieb as well. And right before I got over to Mondial, they shuttered the Gottlieb factory. So I went in as a consultant. It was only going to be a one or two-day-a-week thing, and I wound up being general manager of the company. While I still had my amusement center, I had some very good people at my amusement center take care of it for me. And I would start out there about 5 in the morning and end up there about midnight at night on my way home. So it was pretty full days doing that, and that was about a year and a half. Mondale sold out to State Sales, another distributor based in Baltimore, where I was only going to do this thing for a little while, and I kind of got stuck for a year. But it was a good year. It was a growing year. I made a lot of other contacts in distribution, other distributors around the country, factory people. So I left in May of 1999, went back to my amusement center. Nobody there needed me because they had everything running perfectly without me. And I kind of got the idea. I said, you know, there's a lot of pinball machines in Europe. I could probably bring these things back and sell them to homes. In what year was this? This was in May of 1999. Okay. And what I did was I reached out to Dick Sarkeesian, who, you know, they own Mondial and Gottlieb. They sold thousands and thousands of pinball machines into Europe for many, many years. So who better to go and know all those people and bring them back to the United States? So Dick made a couple of trips, and pretty much I had containers underwater by, I don't know, probably June or July. probably about August of 1999, but no home to put them in. The funny thing was, around the same time, a business broker came into my business and said, hey, you know, you want to sell this amusement center? It wasn't for sale, and I said, well, at the right price, everything goes. So by the time December rolled around, Fuzzy's was sold. I took a space, 8,000 square feet, in an upscale industrial park in one town over in Lakewood, New Jersey. And the containers arrived the day that I got the key to the building. Now, how many containers did you come in with? Well, we probably brought in about 10 containers, 10 ball machines. So 72 games per container. Yeah. And you brought in 10 containers. Some had 55. Some were stacked in interesting configurations, to say the least. But those were in the days where Dick Sarkeesian, he had some great relationships with the people. And let's say we brought in a game that had a cracked ramp or something like that. These people, they would put the replacement ramp in the game. They wouldn't install it for us. But, I mean, I was buying Adam's Families for $600 and Creatures for $600. And, you know, after we recon them and everything, we're only selling them for, you know, $1,700 or $1,800. So there was some profit margin in it, obviously. But, you know, prices were something different. And supply was different. And demand was different. Wow. So do you still sell used games primarily or do you sell just new stuff? Well, you know, the funny thing is that if you go back to, say, 2,000, which is the first quarter of pinballmachines.com doing business, our sales, about 55% to 60% of our sales were used pinball machines. Today, less than 1% of our sales are used pinball machines. Is that because the availability just isn't there? Yeah, it's partially because, well, a big part of it is the availability. If I could get good used machines, it might make a bigger percentage. Our sales in 2000 were $1.4 million. So now if we go percentage, we're way up over that in sales. So that percentage of used numbers, units, and dollars has shrunk. But today I really only get good used pinball machines from people that we sold them to years ago. They trade them back to us Nothing that we sell ever comes back So from 1999 to when How long did it take you to sell 72 times 10 containers Full of games That must have taken Some period of time to get them all Up and working Yeah, I played a few kicking them The last container I bought Was about two years ago A supposed friend of mine In the industry told me that there were some really good games down in Puerto Rico. And I believed him, but what arrived was a container of pinball machines that looked like they went swimming without bathing suits. Right. So, you know, even I get screwed. I'm not... Yeah, and the prices on container games just, you know, used to be, you know, they were $200, $300, $400, maybe $500 was a lot for any particular game. And they would just sell them. You know, it didn't matter if you were buying a Popeye or an Addams Family. Right. They're basically the same price, and then all of a sudden, now they want to get close to retail, and they're giving you WWFs. Yeah, I mean, you're right. Two weeks ago, I had a gentleman in Argentina contact me, and he wanted me to call him back. I have one employee, at least, that speaks Spanish very well. So we did a phone call on Skype, which is pretty cool. and he spoke to him and the list was exchanged. And, you know, we're talking about Maverick. He's looking to get, you know, $1,700 from me, from me, from Maverick. And I don't know where you go with the game once it arrives, but I'll tell you what, it's not going to be in any kind of shape to sell it. That's for sure. Right, and the only place to go with that particular game is probably down. Well, you know, it's funny. I don't know why I mentioned Maverick because that's the one that kicked out at me. But last Maverick I had, I donated it to Don Imus' ranch for the kids because he was looking for a Western-themed pinball machine. So that's what I did with the last Maverick I had. Wow. Well, so now you're big on selling new Stearns. How is your relationship with Stearns? It's not good. No, no, it's good. You know, there's always a story. Everybody that knows me, you know, for a short time or a long time, they always say, you know, everything is a story with you. And it's right. We would go along selling used pinball machines, and I was happy to do that. I started that business. There was no business plan. There was nothing in writing. I wasn't going to the bank to look for me. I did it with my money. I didn't know if I was going to be in business a week, a month, ten years, or what. I did know that there was a good market in the home for pinball machines. I'll get to the Stern thing in a minute. What happened when I left commercial distribution, I was offered a job in April of 2000 by another distributor to come into their company, but I had already had pinballsales.com. and it was a great offer, but I'd rather do my own thing. And the person that made the offer to me at the distributor, he said to me, I don't really wish you anything bad, but you'll probably be out of business in a few months and maybe then if you're looking for a job, you could get in touch with me. So it's kind of funny what happened. Was that like a preemptive strike? Is that what he was doing? Well, you know, I believe that he didn't see any of the home market, which none of the commercial distributors saw. You know, they all thought I was nuts, you know, but I looked at it this way. I was an operator and technician, and I saw locations, and I saw the equipment out there, and I looked at the map and the demographic of people, and we're in Central New York, and you're building all the big homes back then. And I'm saying, you know, I have millions and millions of people potentially to sell to in a growing market every year, and the coin-op side of this thing is shrinking every year. So I think I'll take my chance on the other side of the fence. Plus, you know, the other thing, Joshua Clay, was I developed a customer in FAO Schwarz while I was at State Sales and Mondial, where I sold equipment to FAO Schwarz, and let's say I sold them, you know, a Stryker Extreme pinball or whatever I was selling them, or actually goes back earlier than that. Let's say it was a Star Wars trilogy. It was in their catalog, I think, in 1997. And they were selling them for $7,500, and we were selling them for like, I don't know, $3,300 or $3,400. Were they actually selling them at that rate? Oh, yeah. Were they getting it? Yeah, they were selling them then, if you go back to the old catalog, yeah. But, I mean, did they actually move the items? Well, you know, they're customer-based. They need things. Those kind of companies need a wow item for the catalog sometimes. I mean, they had a Monopoly set for $100,000 with, you know, ruby and diamond-encrusted playing pieces. So, you know, they need those kind of wow items, and pinball machine is always cool. But their customer base, you know, it was like if Ozzy Osbourne walked in there and pointed to a pinball machine and he said, give me that, give me this, give me this, that was the kind of customer base they had. Right, right. Which the Internet changed the dynamic of those kind of stores selling at the prices they were selling for also. So you're not selling to them anymore? Yeah, sure I am. But do they still move product? Yes, they do. In fact, last week they sold a Coke machine. Huh, wow. That we're delivering to a Fortune 100 CEO in Manhattan this coming week. Wow. And you said you're located in New Jersey? Yes. And what part of New Jersey? It's Lakewood, L-A-K-E-W-O-O-D. It's central New Jersey. For those people that are fans of Jersey Shore, it's about 15 minutes from Jersey Shore, about an hour north of Atlantic City, about 15 minutes south of where Bruce Springsteen is from in Freehold. You know, we can be pretty much a lot of different places in an hour. We can be in Philly. We can be in Manhattan in an hour and 15 minutes. So it's a good place for us, and it's five miles from home. I live in Jackson, New Jersey, where Great Adventure is. And contrary to what a lot of people think, they didn't name the town after me. And how far are you from actually Manhattan? The way I drive, it's better now. The way you drive. All right, we're going to take a little break here. Hold on a second, Forrest Jack. I'm going to run a couple of commercials here. Pins and Vids Episode 2, Attack of the Phones, is now available at pinsandvids.com. It's the best Pins and Vids yet. Double the fun and half the underwear of the first episode. Surely you be nominated for an Oscar for the best use of fake phones in a niche video or best special effects during a dream sequence Worth much much more than the including shipping selling price it worth at least or Get your copy now at pinsandvids And now for a word from our lawyer The entire sale price goes to the Pinball Hall of Fame. First episode also available. Some pinball machines were hurt during the filming of the Pins Vids, but they were all. Get your deranged DVDs on CoinUpGoodness now. You think you have what it takes to get out of TopCast? So do we. The truth is we can't get enough of these personal problems. you know hi this is Rick Twan this is Eric A. hey this is Flipy hey this is Kermit this is Nathan S. this is Mr. Hyden so if you have a sensational desire to hear yourself plug in to podcast.org radio and you're really hoping to send the corn an email and it'll give you instructions on how you can be on the next show t-h-e-k-o-r-n at t-h-e-k-o-r-n dot net corn at the corn dot net and we'll get you fixed up right away and probably on the next show Hey, we're on the radio, TopCast. With you here is Norm and Shaggy. Two interesting guys. I like this show. Hey, this is Curb, and even hot Russian chicks love to listen to Norm and Shaggy on TopCast. Hey, this is Oksana. You're listening to TopCast with Norm and Shaggy. Okay, we're back with Jack from pinwallsales.com. Are you afraid to say my last name? Well, you can go ahead and say it. You don't want to mispronounce it, right? Yeah, there you go. Quinary. Yeah, I was going to step all over that in a big, bad way. I got that. So what are you selling now as far as Stern Games? What's available for you to sell? Oh, wow. Well, we have Pirates, which has been really, really great. Great game. We have some Elvis. We have some Lord of the Rings. We have Sopranos. We have Simpsons. We have NASCAR. And we have World Poker Tour. And we have Family Guy soon. I must have written, I don't know, about 60 Family Guys already, 65, something like that. Well, on any particular, if you have a good run of games, I mean, how many units can you sell of, say, a Family Guy? We're over 300 Pirates right now that we sold. Wow. Yeah. You know, when I first saw the game... Pirates, you mean? Yeah, when I first saw Pirates. Let's go to that one before I get to Family Guy, which is really great. And a lot of people just think, you know, if you ask Gary Stern what his favorite game is, his... Yeah, it's whatever game he's making. Yeah, his stock standard answer. Oh, whatever's on the assembly line right now. So, you know, Gary, but, you know, Gary does have favorites, and, you know, we all do. I mean, I tell people the different flavors of ice cream, and, you know, you like vanilla chocolate, but when I first saw Pirates, you know, it was at a time where I didn't see it. I didn't get out to Stern last year until July, and I had about, you know, 40, 50 orders for the game, and nobody even saw a picture of the thing. You know, it was really wacky. And I was just hoping the game was going to be good because I was going to be in trouble otherwise. You know, I give these people back their deposits or just, you know, I can't really put on a good face, you know. But the game really surprised me. And I said to Dennis Nordman, and designers love to hear good things. You know, I tell him bad things sometimes, but I didn't have to tell him anything bad. I said, you know, I think this is going to be Stern's best-selling game for a long time because of the gameplay, because it's a Disney theme, and it's got pirates on it, the artwork looked good, it didn't offend anybody. Yeah, what's there not to like? Yeah, I mean, you know, even the... There should have been more chicks on that back glass, though. There should have been more chicks, I'm for sure. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I agree. That's for sure. They should have had some wenches, I guess they call them, right? Yeah. Yeah, there you go. What's a pirate without a wench? because we had so many customers emailing me in pirate talk and calling me in pirate talk. It was a little scary there for a little while. But on just the ride, the day I took the trip to Stern, it was a one-day event. So Charlie Backer, Stern's national sales manager, and he's a guy some days I wind up talking to him, you know, ten times a day. And the time it took him to take me from Stern to the airport, I sold three games on my phone on the way to the airport. So once the pictures went up and Korn found that game and he put the video up, all hell broke loose, literally. I mean, we had 100 games sold by the end of that weekend. I think I went out there on a Friday. By Monday, I was over 100 games. Wow. Yeah. So have you played? It really was. Have you played Family Guy? Yeah. And give us your opinion on that. You know, I don't want to sound like the same old, but I wasn't expecting much with Family Guy. My son, Jack, he's going to be 16. He's really into Family Guy. A couple of years ago, you know, he said to me, how come they don't make a Family Guy pinball machine? So I gave him Gary Stern. Oh, so it was your idea that they did that. No, it wasn't his idea. I think they were working on it already. I gave him Gary's email address, and I said, write him an email. You ask him. Let him deal with two Jack One areas. We'll give him a real nightmare. So Gary wrote me back. He said, you know, we're looking into that theme. And I thought that was pretty cool because it was kind of a different direction. You know, it was back in the direction of, let's say, South Park. You know, it was that edgy kind of comedy. But I think South Park plays the way for Family Guy, you know, to happen. Well, how edgy is it? I mean, the show is pretty edgy in itself. I mean, it's not as bad as South Park was, but it's certainly the dysfunctional family on the small screen in your living room. I mean, does the pinball machine really play into that? Yeah. Good. I like that. This game... Because, you know, pinball people are all dysfunctional, you know what I mean? Well, you know, I think pinball... You know what, though? I think pinball people are people. And, you know, people in general, if you get anybody into a group, you're going to have your intellectuals, you're going to have your wackies, you know, you're going to have that in any group. And certainly we're not any different, you know. But I will say that Family Guy, it really says some things that are out there. You know, not out there, you're not from show. But there's some things that if that game is in the adult mode, you know, they might make a sale of blush. You know, it's not cursing or anything, but there's some language in that show that's, you know, it's out there. So, you know, you have three different settings on speech. And, you know, I think this thing says 800 different voice calls and everything. You know, so when I saw it and played it, But I don't think it was halfway to where it is now, software-wise and speech and sound-wise. Now, did you see it in London? No, I saw it at Stern Pinball. I was out there a couple of weeks ago. I was out there the end of January. And they were just happy to show you? Yeah, they're always happy when people come out and are interested in their product because it's an opportunity to market and to sell. But they're always happy to see me. That was the first trip I took my son on out to Stern. We went out to Chicago for the weekend. So we spent a cold Saturday downtown Chicago, and then Sunday we spent doing the museum planetarium thing. And we went out to dinner Sunday night, and then Monday it was Stern. And I tell you what, they rolled out the red carpet for him. And they treated him really well, and we had a great day. But that game, I thought it was going to be an okay game, looking at the picture and the play field and everything. And I got blown away. The game was so much better than I thought it was going to be. I was shocked. Now, are you a good pinball player? Yeah, I think so, yeah. Okay. My son got, I think my son got the second highest score on it. And on the first game, I think he got about $65 million on it or $70 million on it. And I was at like $32 million or something. He killed me. And, you know, Pat Lawler was there with us. And, you know, he was explaining the game. And then we took time and we spent time with Lonnie Ropp. And, you know, Keith was there as well. Yeah, the software guys. Huh? The software guys. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Those guys, I tell you what, you know, Joe Blackwell, it was Monday morning, and Joe Blackwell was freezing on his way into the door at Stern, and we pulled up at the same time Joe Blackwell was going in the door. And Joe, you know, gave me a big hug, and I introduced him to my son, and the guy didn't even take his coat off yet, and already he's got my son on a tour. and it's Monday morning and all kinds of crap is you figure hitting the fan people coming over to him and he's like nah nah nah I'm taking Jack Jack it's not Jack it's Jack I'm taking Jack on a tour so he took him and I went with him and I haven't done that tour in a formal way the way he did it and I tell you at the end of it I was kind of amazed at that place again I don't know how the heck they do what they do and they put their thing in a box and it actually comes out and works. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah, I know what you mean. I know, it's like amazing. It's like, all you see is this assembly line of, like, arms flailing, you know what I mean, and out comes a pinball machine. Yeah, you know, they have, I didn't realize the extent to which they test parts for tolerance and, you know, we spent time with the people that do the documentation for the games and and the CAD people, and there's just so much involved. You know, that's why, you know, to set up a company that builds pinball machines, I mean, that's, it's just, that's why there's only one company that does it right now. Right, yeah, yeah, no, I agree. Okay, let's take a little break, and we'll be right back in just a second. This portion of TopCast is brought to you by Marco Specialties, your pinball parts superstore. TopCast is brought to you by Marco Specialties, your pinball parts superstore. Visit their website at marcospecialties.com. You can search for parts by game name, game make, or part number. Marco Specialties was founded in 1985 and is headquartered in Lexington, South Carolina. They specialize in pinball parts, supplies, books, and anything pinball. Marco has been online since 1996 and is the web's oldest and largest pinball parts supplier. Their new 12,000-square-foot distribution center services 25,000 customers in over 50 countries. Feel free to call Marco Specialties at 803-957-5500. Marco Specialties, your pinball parts superstore at macrospecialties.com. This portion of TopCast is brought to you by Pin Game Journal, covering the world of pinball. Visit them online at www.pingamejournal.com. The Pin Game Journal is a proud sponsor of TopCast. It covers pinball like no other publication can. The Pin Game Journal is America's only pinball publication. Whether you're looking for new games or the classics, reports on industry shows or collector expos, insights on a game you want or features to help you fix the game you've got, Pin Game Journal is for you. Their website is at pingamejournal.com. Okay, we're back with Jack at pinballsales.com. So, Jack, tell us a little bit more about Family Guy. Well, you know, as I said, I was very surprised. I thought this might be our win this year. Just, I don't know. That was my impression. You know, I know there's a couple other things coming this year, and it's not a big secret. You know, Spider-Man is going to be after Family Guy. And Family Guy is a great game. It seems very deep. I think Pat did a great job on the play field. I love the play field, what he did with it, and especially that Stewie play field. You know, you get to actually accumulate more time to play on that game. And it's got this off-skew kind of like little bit of evil music as you're playing up there, and the miniature flippers and the miniature ball. It's really cool. I think the game overall it's going to bring in a lot of players that are younger maybe not to me it may not be a game that I would put in a bar if I was an operator not that I wouldn't put it there but I try to put it in a place where there's you know, 15, 16, 17 year olds that might not get to go to a bar again, you know, like my son's age you know, bowling centers, venues that, you know, movie theaters places like that because I think if you have that game lined up with some other pinball machines, I know what those kids are going to walk over to. They're going to walk over to Family Guy. And I'm not taking anything away from any of the Stern titles, but there's different flavors that appeal to different people. And this is a real good title, real good game, solid game. I think also that the combination of people at Stern Pinball working with Pat and Pat's team, you know, from what I understand, I mean, you had Dwight Sullivan and Keith P. Johnson and Lonnie D. Ropp all involved, you know, with Family Guy. And that's amazing. I mean, I'm surprised they didn't kill each other, everybody, working on this game. You know, everybody, I have an ego. Everybody's got an ego. And some people are more temperamental than others. and if I set something a certain way and then somebody wants to come and change it you know I think it difficult to get a whole team like that together and work together and then they produce something that's so great. And you have, you know, Ray Tanzer with all the work that he does and all of his people, and Joe Blackwell, his end of everything. And, you know, you can't leave out Gary or Jolly, Shelly, all those people, Mike O'Donnell, everybody that gets into those meetings at Stern seemingly every day, all day, what they talk about and what they go through and all the ups and downs of what they do just to get a pinball machine produced. You'd think, you know, it's just amazing. But the game itself is really solid. It's going to earn money, for sure, for operators commercially, which is why we hope that guys buy it and put it out on location. The home customers, to me, Obviously that's my bread and butter I know they're going to buy it Put it in their homes or game rooms And stuff like that And people are going to play them But do I have a minute to talk about The influence that we have in the public? Yeah I mean, we're hobby people I know I do this as my livelihood But we're hobby people And we love pinball And we love games But we have a great opportunity to go out on location and I know it's been written about on a news group before, but we need to ask these locations to get pinball machines. And when those games are out there, we actually need to put some money in them. I'm not saying you've got to stuff the cash box, make the operator think that their broken pinball machine that they're not taking care of is making money. But I think part of what we're doing with the home games, and all of us and then all of the other people that are buying home games, especially pinball machines, were actually breeding a new generation of players. That, you know, okay, my kids grew up in the industry, and they grew up playing that, and friends come over and they play pinball. But they get exposed to these pinball machines at home, and then they want to go play them commercially. And really, right now, I had a guy the other day in California that wanted to buy an Elvis, and it was a hard time getting him to even find an Elvis pinball machine anyway to go play it. I told him to go to the news group and post it. I gave him the address for the news group. I said, say that you're a home customer, you're one of my customers, and you want to play in Elvis, and I'm sure somebody will open their door to you. I mean, that's a heck of a way to get somebody to play. I mean, he bought the game, you know, but he said he had to drive two hours to go find one. So we have a lot of work to do. You know, we can't be fighting with each other, and we can't all agree on everything, but, you know, what we should try to do is keep promoting what we love, and pinball is definitely up there. I'll get off my soapbox No I think it's a good soapbox I think it's something that needs to be said You know I mean It's not People just don't understand that If you just buy machines For your basement That really doesn't promote Pinball as much as it could be Right So It's good I think it was a good speech I liked it You know, when we started... I'm not voting for president for you, though. Nah. I got enough trouble right now. I wouldn't want to switch places with that guy. Although, I think I could probably speak better. Well, we're not going to get into that. I'm only teasing. I think, you know, part of when we started, you know, we were basically selling one pinball machine, typically, to a customer. You know, now we're selling the whole game. Before I came on, I did a layout for a home game room with, like, 12 pieces of equipment in it, a room that's 20 by 20. So we're getting a lot more of that rather than just somebody saying, okay, I want to buy an old Asteroids game or an old pinball machine. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but there's a lot of other people moving into the marketplace as customers. How are your video game sales in comparison? I think Namco's rocking Bola Rama and Need for Speed, the underground driving games. We sell a lot of Arcade Legends. you know just like that we sell I mean Extreme Hunt this week a couple of extreme hunting too Ms. Pac-Man is still in there you know Ms. Pac-Man Galaga's cocktail tables uprights that's pretty much that's pretty much it in video we get a lot of service calls from people you know that have we had a service call this week guy had two cocktail table you know one was an Asteroids and one was Ms. Pac-Man and we got over there and they were both like bootleg games. He was trying to understand why I wouldn't pick up either one to be repaired. Because you don't know where you're going with them. You don't know what you're going to spend. Who knows what he wants to spend? You can't be a hero to everybody, especially with the older stuff. Can't do it. No, I know just what you're saying. We can't do it or run a business anyway. It would be profitable. I can't do it. Okay, Jack, I'm going to let you go. I'm sure you're busy and you've got things to do. Yes, I do. All right. Okay. Hey, thank you very much. I appreciate you calling. I think I'm going to go take a nap or something. I'm going to go play pinball. That's what I'm going to do. There you go. That's what I should say. Okay. Thank you. All right, Jack. Thank you very much. This is again Jack from pinballsales.com. Thank you, Jack. TopCast is brought to you by Pinball Life. Give your pinball machine new life with parts from Pinball Life. We ship pinball parts worldwide. Pinball Life is located in the great city of Chicago. Their phone number is 773-202-8758. We have an open door Ryan Policky in your hands with your questions and answers. 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. Central Time, Monday through Friday. Their website is at pinballlife.com. Pinball Life. No hassles, just the parts you need fast. Pinball Life. If you can work on your games and your underwear, you should be able to buy parts that way too. Pinball Life. Pinball Life. Because the other guys simply aren't hip enough to sponsor this crappy show. okay we're back and uh we're going to try a new segment today i saw a top cast we're going to try something called um hold on a second i got this up we are going to try and do game of the week now game of the week is our uh our featured game okay so here is our game of the week this is a 1958 United Pixie Bowler. This is the world's smallest ball bowler at only 7 1⁄2 feet long and 5 feet tall. It uses real small 3-inch balls, but it is a real genuine ball bowler. If you're watching the webcam, you can see I've got pictures of the Pixie Chicks. Get that Pixie Chicks on the back glass. They're real cute little babes bowling across a green lawn, and there's no midgets to encumber their party time, ladies' party time. But a really fun game. It uses 6-inch pins. You know, the normal pin size on a bowler is 10-inch, so this is like everything is scaled down. It's got lots and lots of oak, and, you know, it's basically just a miniaturized ball bowler in almost every regard. It's for two players, where most ball bowlers are actually six players. and here now I'm showing a picture of the balls. You can see the 3-inch balls that it uses, which are really small. I mean, compared to any ball bowler, you know, that's quite small. You know, they only made a couple of other ball bowlers with balls that size. So it's cute, though. If you don't have a lot of space, here you can see a picture of me standing next to the game, and the reason why I'm doing that is to kind of give you a perspective of how small the game is. It really is quite, quite small. Fun game, though. I mean, once again, if you don't have 14 to 20 feet to donate to a game, you know, this is the way around that. And here I am bowling it. You know, I'm bowling the game. You can see it plays just like a regular ball bowler. It's kind of cool. I actually really like this game. You know, I got this from some guys out of Canada. The lady was actually throwing it out. The game was going to be put out on the curb, and some collectors up in Ottawa picked it up for me, and then I met them in Hamilton and got the game. It had been repainted about three times, and then I did a kind of proper repaint on it, though I didn't repaint the oak. Probably should have, but I didn't. I had to repaint the cabinet. It was just a mess. I had to remake the pin deck and all kinds of other stuff, too. All right, I'm going to switch back now. Okay, going back to our regular webcam. Hold on, I'm switching back to the other mic. Okay, well that was game of the week So, the next thing that we want to try Is last week We took some calls on some people And we tried to fix our game on the air Which is incredibly difficult to do But we're going to try it So this week, we're going to give somebody a call back To see just how we did And now it's time for Stump the Chump Okay, so this is our stump to chump, and what we're going to do is we're going to call Cliffy, who was one of the people that we actually dealt with on the air. Let me give him a call here. I hope he answers. Hello? Cliffy? This is Cliffy. Cliffy. This is Shaggy from TopCast. Hey, how you doing, Shaggy? How you doing? Hey, it was a nice segment with Jack on there. Yeah, you like that? Not that Jack. We named the monkey Jack. Well, we're calling because last week we did a little stump the chump, or we gave you some technical advice on fixing your Indiana Jones. Yes, you did. And we're kind of going to see how that turned back, but I'm going to play a segment now in case people miss that. I'm going to play just a little segment to let people know exactly what happened last week. Hold on a second. I'm working on an Indiana Jones for a guy. Silly path of adventure problem. You know, the motor's not working, and it seems like it goes too far, and then the motor cannot seem to bring it back. The little opto board that tells it, you know, left and right, I had to put a new lower opto on. Did you replace the other one just for, you know, giggles? No. You know, I would do that, too. Figure if, you know, one went, maybe it's not such a stretch to think that another one is going to. Okay, so that was what happened last week. How did your Indiana Jones pan out? Well, actually, you know, I told you I'd replace that lower opto, and I did check voltages, but you told me to check them again, and specifically at that little board and on the optos themselves. And, you know, of course, I was a little stubborn with that. I was like, you know, doggone it, I just put another opto in there. Now, what I didn't say is I didn't put a new opto in there, Although I have a bag of them around here somewhere that Charlin gave me. I couldn't find them for Leavener money. But what I did have was an old TZ clock board, so I pulled an opto off of that. And when I pulled that little POA board off again, I checked the voltage at the opto, and then I trigger it, and I saw no change. So then I knew, oh my God, this is another bad opto. And it wasn't too far-fetched, obviously, since I pulled it off a bad TZ board. Yeah, the optos just get cooked inside that TZ board from the heat and the lamps. The ones on the long-legged optos that get cooked. So I was pulling these. These are the standard short-legged optos. They don't generally get as bad. Right, right. But apparently it did. So I pulled another one and took a chance, and now I'm getting kind of scared about lifting traces, you know, soldering and unsoldering on that POA board. But by golly, I put another one on there, stuck it back in, and then I got the, on the DMD display, the visual line showing the beam across the opto. And all was good. All was good. So you got it working. So, yeah. So as it turns. Thanks for the help on that. So we were actually right. Yeah. Yeah, imagine that. Yeah, that's hard to believe. That is just unbelievable. Okay. All right. Well, I've got to thank you and your tech advice for helping me with that. And I couldn't have come from a better chump. All right. Thanks, Cliffy, and I appreciate you coming back on the show. All right. Take care. Take care. Bye. Okay, so that was Stump the Chump. Now we're going to take some calls. If you want to call in, you can call in our 800 number. It's 1-800. If you have any questions, opinions, anything about pinball, relating to pinball, feel free to give us a call. And, you know, we'll put you on the air. And while we're waiting for that to happen, I've got a couple little things to run here. Pins and Vids Episode 2, Attack of the Phones, is now available at pinsandvids.com. It's the best Pins and Vids yet. Double the fun and half the underwear of the first episode. Surely you'll be nominated for an Oscar for the best use of fake phones in a niche video or best special effects during a dream sequence. Worth much, much more than the $6 including shipping and selling price, it's worth at least $7 or $7.50. Get your copy now at pinsandvids.com And now for a word from our lawyer The entire surprise goes to the Pinball Hall of Fame First episode also available Some pinball machines were hurt during the filming of the pins and vids But they were all get your deranged This portion of TopCast is brought to you by Pin Game Journal Covering the world of pinball Visit them online at www.pingamejournal.com Webwide Video is a proud sponsor of TopCast For all your video needs Head on over to webwidevideo.com Okay, we've got a caller and we're going to put him on the line right now. Hello, can you hear us? Yes, I can. What's your name? First name This is Jesse Great Jesse Where are you calling from I calling from Wisconsin your neighboring state Great So tell me what kind of game do you have and do you have any issues with it Are you looking to get solved? Well, in fact, I don't really have any problems with the games right now. I just wanted to call in and tell you guys you're doing a great job. Oh, well, cool. I appreciate that. And the interview with Jack was really neat and informative. Great. Great. We appreciate that. And what kind of collector are you? Do you collect EMs or solid states, or do you collect both? I collect anything I can get my hands on, really. Okay. My collection right now has mostly some early solid state stuff. Okay. And I enjoy working on the EMs and the newer WCS games. I guess I really can't call them new anymore. Right, the 90s stuff. Yep. Okay. Well, cool. All right, hey, I appreciate you calling. Okay, great. Thanks a lot, guys. All right, take care. Bye. Okay, again, our number is 1-800. We've got somebody right now. Hello, how are you doing? Good, thanks. So, what can I help you with today? And what's your first name? My name's Reg. I'm calling from Florida. How are you? Reg. Cool, Reg. I'm very good. How are you? Good, thanks. By the way, I'm very impressed with the radio show and really enjoy listening to... Well, good. Thank you. I appreciate that. Listen, I've got a 1980s firepower machine that I've had since about 1988. And basically, I've been looking at possible ways of restoring the play field on that and just figured I'd give you a call to see what kind of opinions you'd have. It has the typical wear in the planet or Death Star area. Really hard to touch up. Yeah, really hard to touch up. And I'm not an artist in any way. I've looked to see if anybody has some type of overlay or NOS play field available, but I've had no luck. So I figured since you seem to be the expert, I'd give you a shout. You know, on that, I've not seen an overlay either. That one, I've seen actually one person do a really nice job on touch-up of that caliber, and that's actually a gal. Her name is Phoebe. I believe her website is pinballpainting.com That may not be accurate You may want to I just found that today as a matter of fact About three hours ago I just found that Yeah she's She's real good with that type of touch up I mean there's you know A lot of people myself included We can do Good decent touch up But that particular thing That planet that's in the middle of the play field On firepower That's a really, really tough one. It's not something that I'd want to tackle. But I've seen some of her work, and she seems to excel in that kind of that style of touch-up. She's really, really good at it. Now, that type of play field and that air, what kind of paint did they use over there? What kind of finish? That's a lacquer finish? Right. It's a lacquer finish play field with probably just one or maybe two coats of clear coat lacquer, acrylic lacquer over top of that. But if it was me, I would touch it up and then I'd clear coat it with like an automotive clear. But, I mean, you could use other things. I would, on that one, though, do, anytime you farm something out to somebody and you're going to spend money and time and have them touch it up, you might want to ask them if they do the clear coating, too, because, you know, that's kind of a, it'd be nice if it was a one-stop type gig. Yeah, exactly. Now, on something like that, what do they typically do? You take the play field off and you wrap it up in some type of cellophane and ship it out that way? Yeah, that play field actually comes out pretty easily. And then you kind of mummify it in bubble wrap and find a suitable box, which is probably tricky. The other thing, too, is you have to consider the length times width times girth dimensions and find out what UPS and FedEx Ground take as their maximum moment, make sure you don't exceed those because a play field could actually get to the point where it's bigger than what they might be willing to carry. Right. Now, the play field is kind of flaky right now. When I rub my hand over the surface, it just feels rough and flaky. Is that because the lacquer is coming up? It's hard to say without seeing it, but I would suspect that, yeah, that might be the case. I've seen them flake off before. it doesn't take much to get it like that so what would you do in the case that it is flaking is buffing that just the way to go to I think once you start the touch up process a lot of those issues will get handled automatically because whoever is going to do it is probably going to remove any serious flaking and then they're going to touch up the bare wood areas and then once you clear coat the whole thing it kind of That makes all those issues go away. Right, right. You know, so that's... As far as the cabinet, let me ask you this. The cabinet head at one point took a fall, and it kind of split and stuff, and I re-glued it back together, and you can still see the seams, but if I wanted to refinish the cabinet itself, I see in your videos you pretty much repaint. What's your opinion on the decals that they have available? You mean the stencils? Yeah. Do you prefer to repaint using stencils, or do you prefer to use decals? Well, I think stencils are always the preferred method because that's how originally they were done. Originally they were done with large brass stencils. Obviously, you're not going to be buying brass stencils because of the cost of brass. So they sell kind of a real frisket paper type one-time use stencil. A lot of guys sell those. They actually work pretty good. I've never personally used that style. I make my own stencils. But, you know, I buy stencil material. If you go to Marvin3M.com slash fix.htm in the restoration section, there's a link for an actual company that sells stencil materials. And, you know, I make a tracing, and then I transfer that to the stencil and cut it out. And, you know, you obviously have to do it for each color. Prep the cabinet, you know, fix any imperfection in it, paint the base coat, and then spray each one of the stencil colors in the correct order. That's how I like to do it. But similarly, you can skip a step and you can buy the stencils. I understand they're not real easy to work with, but they give outstanding results. It's not an easy job. Yes, I did speak with one person. They offered both, the stencils and the decals. He was kind of trying to steer me towards the decals. Well, the decals are easy. Peel and stick, baby. Yeah. I know a guy that does that, that does bowler restorations, and he used to do a lot of stencil work, and it's to the point now where he just paints it the base coat and had a graphic artist do the vinyl graphics and peel and stick, and it's a lot quicker. It doesn't look as original, but it still looks good. To somebody that isn't used to seeing fire powers, they're going to say, wow, it looks great. to somebody that's a purist, they're going to look at it and say, yeah, those are stickers. But stickers have been used a long time. I can remember seeing Herb Silver restorations in the 90s of Fireball, and he was using stickers. So it's obviously just a time versus how much of a purist you want to be. Yeah, because the stickers would devalue the machine, wouldn't it? It's hard to say. I don't know if I can really comment on that. But, you know, it may or may not. It's really hard to say. It just depends how it all comes out. Also, I mean, how bad is the cabinet now? Is it really that bad? It's not in terrible, terrible shape. It's not like my other pins, for sure. You know, me, personally, I would glue and screw the thing back together with glue-a-grill, and then I would, you know, I would attempt to do touch-up on the cabinet because it is, once again, a stencil cabinet, and it's largely a black color base, it's not that hard to redo. What is it, black, yellow, and red? Correct. Those are three colors, yeah. You know, to me, that's kind of where I would do, try and keep as much of it as original as possible. Then when you get done, you know, spray a light, you know, just like one coat of clear coat over it to kind of just, you know, mend it all together, and you might be able to get away without having to actually, you know, do a re-stencil. Right. But it just depends how damaged the cabinet is. I mean, if it's really nicked and gouged, you're not going to be able to do that. Okay, I'm going to let you go. Thank you very, very much. Okay, you take care. You too. Bye. Bye-bye. Okay, well, that's all the time we have. Well, yeah, that's all the time we've got right now. Well, we've got somebody calling in. Hold on. Hello. Hello? Hello. Hello. Hi. Hey. How are you? So who's this? What's your first name? Yeah, this is... Lost him. We lost him. I'm still there. You are still there. Okay, hold on. I'm still here. There we go. Okay, sorry about that. Yeah, this is Spencer down in Orlando, Florida. I had a quick question on a Bram Stoker Dragula for you. Sure, shoot away. I picked this up. It was a project game, dead, not working. I brought it back to life. It had some bridge rectifier trace issues, so I fixed those. And so I just went ahead and did a shop job on it. and the ball throw that actually pops the ball into the shooter lane worked before the shop job and is not working now. I replaced the transistor on the board with a new one, no difference, and if I ground the coil at the coil, it will fire, but if I ground the coil at the board, it will not fire. When you, did you have any of the connectors, well, you obviously had the connectors off the board when you did the repair to the bridge rectifier, right? Right. And you said when you ground the coil, the ground lug on the coil, the coil does fire, but when you ground the transistor tab, it does not fire. That's correct. Okay, so that basically means that you have some kind of break in the wiring from the board to the coil. Now, that could be maybe when you put the board back in, you missed a connector. That's real, real easy on those games. I do it practically every time I pull one of those boards. The connectors like to get one or two, especially the smaller ones, like to get kind of behind the board, and then you don't notice them. And, you know, you could check the back of the manual on almost some of the last pages. There's a list of connectors, and you can find the actual connector, and you can also trace the wire color. Yeah, I've done all that. I've checked all the connectors. I'm not missing any. I've traced the wire from the coil to the connector in the back board, and it's good all the way up to the board. so I'm thinking it's got to be somewhere between the connector and the board. Now, look, I couldn't find any broken traces on the board. Could it be any of the chips or transistor chips on there other than the one that's actually for the coil? Yeah, but I don't know. I mean, it's not a stretch to think that maybe something like that happened. But, you know, again, the wire going up to the transistor, if you're grounding the tab on the transistor, All you're doing is basically that's just an extension of that ground wire from the coil. So to me, that still means you've got a break somewhere. And I guess you could do this. You could find the connector that actually goes to that coil, the female connector that plugs into the bottom edge of that WPC driver board. When I buy solder, I get the really thin solder. It's like, I don't know, 32 thousandths thick. I rip a piece of that off and I stick it in the pin that actually is for that particular coil. And then I can actually ground that right on the ground wire and see if the coil fires. And if the coil doesn't fire, that means you've got to break somewhere in the wire. If the coil does fire, that's a good thing. Then you've got to break somewhere between that connector and the transistor. And then you can just buzz that out with the DMM, your digital multimeter, and see if you got anything blown in there. Because I guess taking the connectors on or off, you could have maybe cracked the header pins. Not intentionally. I mean, believe me, it happens all the time. When you plug those things on and off, the board flexes a little bit. And maybe the backside, maybe the header pin is cracked. But you could trace that right from the header pin right up to that transistor. And somewhere you've got a continuity break in that line. It almost has to be that. You know, I'm not saying it isn't something else, but when you ground that transistor, all you're doing is you're testing the wiring from that transistor to the coil. And if it's not firing, but you can fire the coil right at the coil, then there's got to be a bust in the line somewhere. Okay, I think I've pretty much checked that kind of stuff three times. I was hoping there might be some solution out of the blue, but I'll quadruple check it again, man. Okay, well, good luck, and thank you very much. Thanks a lot. Okay, bye-bye. Bye. Okay, well, that's the end of our show. We try and keep it at an hour. And we appreciate everybody calling in today. We'd like to, you know, thank all our advertisers. I really do appreciate it. And also people that were willing to do some of the plugs for us. We've got some great plugs, like, for instance. Hey, Pinheads, this is Mr. Hyde, and you're listening to Norman Shaggy doing a broadcast of this old pinball. Yo, yo, yo, it's the Pinball Pimp. When I'm not polishing my cherry hose, I'm listening to Shaggy and Norm on the TopCast. Hey, it's Paul here from Pins Vids. When I'm not polishing my balls, I'm listening to Shaggy and Norm on the TopCast. If you're interested in doing a little plug for us, we'd really appreciate it. Just contact us, send us an email, and we'll hook you up. But we really do like those plugs. You know, some people get pretty darn imaginative about them. But again, thank you very much. This is for visiting our show. And we will see you again next week on TopCast. Marvin3m.com slash TopCast. Thank you.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 89faa6ac-a28e-45a8-936d-6bb93ef0373e*