# Episode 6 - The Golden Game

**Source:** For Amusement Only EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2015-03-18  
**Duration:** 13m 41s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://foramusementonly.libsyn.com/episode-6-the-golden-game

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## Analysis

Nick Baldrige discusses Golden Gate and Silver Sails bingo machines, focusing on the rare purple section and golden game mini-feature. The episode provides extensive technical guidance on maintaining bingo machines, covering motors, ball specifications, light bulbs, lamp sockets, and playfield components. Baldrige emphasizes the importance of correct ball sizing (1 1/8 inch vs 1 1/16 inch), proper bulb types, and understanding the shutter motor's role in game operation.

### Key Claims

- [MEDIUM] Golden Gate and Silver Sails were the only two bingo machines with a purple section — _Nick Baldrige, episode opening discussion of Golden Gate machine_
- [HIGH] Bingo balls are 1 1/8 inch in diameter, larger than flipper game balls at 1 1/16 inch, and cannot be interchanged — _Nick Baldrige, technical segment on ball specifications_
- [HIGH] Some brands of bingo pinballs can become magnetized, causing them to stick together in the trough — _Nick Baldrige, technical segment on ball properties_
- [HIGH] Typical bingo machines have around 100 individual lamps in the back glass — _Nick Baldrige, light bulbs technical segment_
- [HIGH] Lamp tower shields are now only manufactured in Belgium and are very expensive to import — _Nick Baldrige, playfield components discussion_
- [MEDIUM] Pinball Resource in New York avoids openly discussing bingos and prefers the term 'multi-hold pinball machine' due to historical illegality of bingos in New York — _Nick Baldrige, citing Steve Young at Pinball Resource and hearsay from the grapevine_
- [HIGH] The shutter motor in bingo machines controls a fiberboard mechanism that opens to drop balls and closes during gameplay to change logic paths — _Nick Baldrige, technical explanation of shutter motor operation_

### Notable Quotes

> "The purple section is available by moving the screen to the left when you have gate lit on the back glass. Now if you have gate lit, it will not light okay and vice versa."
> — **Nick Baldrige**, opening segment
> _Explains the mutually exclusive mechanism between red letter game and purple section on Golden Gate_

> "If you have balls that are too small, it's not going to push the appropriate trough switches to tell the machine that it's in a particular state."
> — **Nick Baldrige**, ball specifications segment
> _Explains the critical technical reason why correct ball sizing is essential for bingo operation_

> "The 55s are very hot bulbs. The only place where you can't do that is in the red letter circuit."
> — **Nick Baldrige**, light bulbs segment
> _Clarifies which bulbs can be swapped for cooler alternatives and which cannot_

> "Bally wanted to save money and make their own parts. And their idea of a lamp socket is kind of good. It would be really good if it didn't wear down over time."
> — **Nick Baldrige**, lamp sockets segment
> _Explains the design philosophy and long-term durability problem with Bally's proprietary lamp sockets_

> "At some point if there enough interest we may have to do a group buy and do a big import run on you know a thousand or more of those lamp shields"
> — **Nick Baldrige**, lamp shields discussion
> _Indicates potential community solution to the lamp shield availability problem_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Nick Baldrige | person | Host of For Amusement Only EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast, expert on bingo machine restoration and maintenance |
| Steve Smith | person | Collector mentioned as owning beautifully restored bingo machines including Golden Gate |
| Steve Young | person | Operator of Pinball Resource in New York, offers motor rebuild services for bingo machines |
| Golden Gate | game | Bally bingo machine notable for having a purple section and golden game mini-feature |
| Silver Sails | game | Bally bingo machine, one of only two machines (with Golden Gate) featuring a purple section |
| Pinball Resource | company | Service provider in New York offering motor rebuild and repair services for vintage pinball and bingo machines |
| Bally | company | Historical bingo and pinball machine manufacturer, designer of lamp socket and component systems |
| Magic Screen Games | game | Referenced as baseline bingo machine with approximately 100 lamps in back glass |
| Mystic Lion | game | 20-hole bingo machine to be discussed in future episode |
| For Amusement Only | organization | Podcast focused on EM and bingo pinball, hosted by Nick Baldrige |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Bingo machine gameplay mechanics, Motor maintenance and repair, Ball specifications and properties, Lamp and lighting systems, Playfield components and restoration
- **Secondary:** Legal history of bingo machines in New York, Parts sourcing and availability
- **Mentioned:** Community solutions for parts scarcity

### Sentiment

**Neutral** (0)

### Signals

- **[restoration_signal]** Lamp tower shields for bingo machines are now only manufactured in Belgium and are expensive to import, creating potential for group buying initiative (confidence: high) — Nick Baldrige discusses that lamp towers are only made in Belgium now, incur huge import taxes, and mentions potential need for group buy of 1,000+ units
- **[restoration_signal]** Bally proprietary lamp sockets wear down over time, causing flickering bulbs; repair involves lifting contact hook with screwdriver or replacing with bayonet sockets (confidence: high) — Detailed technical explanation of how Bally socket hooks wear and solutions available
- **[restoration_signal]** Pinball Resource in New York offers rebuilding services for bingo machine motors at a fee (confidence: high) — Nick Baldrige mentions sending motors to Pinball Resource for rebuilding and notes the service is available
- **[operational_signal]** Using incorrect ball sizes (1 1/16 inch instead of 1 1/8 inch) in bingo machines will break trough switch timing circuits and cause game malfunction (confidence: high) — Technical explanation of how trough timing circuit relies on proper ball size to trigger switches
- **[restoration_signal]** Some bingo pinball brands can become magnetized, causing balls to stick together in trough and jam during gameplay (confidence: high) — Nick Baldrige advises using magnetism-resistant ball brands to prevent adhesion problems
- **[restoration_signal]** 55 watt bulbs used in bingo machines generate significant heat; swapping some for 47 watt bulbs reduces heat but dims display (confidence: high) — Technical discussion of bulb wattage trade-offs, with exception for red letter circuit which requires specific bulb configuration
- **[regulatory_signal]** Bingo machines were illegal in New York historically; service providers like Pinball Resource avoid using the term 'bingo' and prefer 'multi-hold pinball machine' (confidence: medium) — Nick Baldrige cites Steve Young's preference for euphemistic terminology and notes New York was 'very famously dangerous' for bingo machines
- **[restoration_signal]** Bingo machines use multiple spring types (coiled perimeter springs and semicircular protective springs) integrated into artwork and playfield design (confidence: high) — Detailed description of spring mechanisms and their aesthetic integration

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## Transcript

 what's that sound it's for amusement only the em and bingo pinball podcast welcome back to for amusement only uh first off a correction to the correction i said that bounty was 1967 it's 64 i'm sitting beside a game that was made in 1967 and i get confused easily so uh our topic for today is the golden game and the purple section. I mentioned that Steve Smith has these beautifully restored machines. One of them is a Golden Gate, and Golden Gate and Silver Sails were the only two machines, that I'm aware of anyway, that have a purple section. The purple section is available by moving the screen to the left when you have gate lit on the back glass. Now if you have gate lit, it will not light okay and vice versa. So you can't play for a red letter game at the same time that you're playing for a golden game. The thing that you win if you put three in the purple section is the golden game. And the golden game is a special mini game, kind of, that starts. It drops all your balls, just like in a red letter game, but it will let you shoot your balls into several golden sections. Some are marked with stripes, some are just plain gold, and they're all different sizes. So if you manage to get three or two, depending on what's lit on the back glass, into those special sections, then you can push the R button and collect whatever number of credits are listed on the back glass. And those are separately tallied from the red, green, and yellow scores that are listed in the normal odds section. This time for our technical segment, I wanted to talk a bit more about the motors that are located in any bingo. So to recap, we've got the ball lift motor, and these were some of the first games with an automatic ball lift. That was primarily to prevent cheating and also to allow the machine to count. It had to know exactly how many balls had been shot versus how many were left in the trough in order to properly lock you out of various features and also prevent you from just launching them all at the same time and potentially damaging the machine. The motors involved, the ball lift motor with the machine off, you can move with your hand and you can verify that it moves freely. If it doesn't, then it will probably need to be cleaned or rebuilt or just de-rusted if it's rusted into place. you can try giving it a couple firm wax with a rubber mallet or something similar and just see if that loosens it up. You can also try spraying break-free or PB Blaster in there, but I'm not a huge fan of doing something like that just because the potential for fire. And also, usually those kind of degreasers cause more problems than they solve, so I'd really advise against doing that if you can. You can also send the motors off to Pinball Resource to be rebuilt. One word about Pinball Resource as far as bingos go, they're up in New York, which was a very famously dangerous city for bingos to be mentioned They highly highly illegal or they were years ago Steve isn a huge fan and by Steve I mean Steve Young up in Pinball Resource isn a huge fan of talking about bingos openly If you need to refer to a bingo or a bingo part he suggests saying a multi-hold pinball machine. I've done this via email and phone with them multiple times, and he doesn't have a problem with that. I've never mentioned bingos to him. I've just heard that through the grapevine, so just something to put in the back of your head there. So they do the repair on those and they'll send them back for a fee. There are two other motors in most bingo games and sometimes another one, depending. There is a control unit motor. The control unit, again, is it's kind of like the score motor, which we'll go over when we get to regular EM pinball, but it's essentially the brains of the operation. Now, in order to test if that motor functions appropriately, you can, again, with the machine off and unplugged, take your finger and spin the fan blade. You should see some of the cams rotate. Now, some of the cams are not going to rotate because they're locked via solenoid. So once you verify that it will basically turn, then you can try and use your finger and hold in the solenoid that allows it to spin. Now, some of those are kind of difficult to get to. In the backbox, there are at least one and sometimes two additional motors. One is for the mixer unit, and that, again, controls the portioning of the features and the odds. That, again, has a little fan, and you can spin it with your finger and just make sure that it turns appropriately. There are a few switch stacks located directly to the left of the motor that will spin and bump and do all that kind of thing as you spin the motor. So just verify that it moves, and it should move very freely, and that's your basic just making sure it's a live test. So let's talk about balls, specifically pinballs that are used in a bingo. They are not the same size as the typical pinball used in a flipper game. Flipper game, at least post-war, was 1 1 16th inch in diameter. A bingo ball is 1 1 8th inch. You can't use the 1 1 16th inch balls in a bingo and have it work appropriately. The problem is that the trough is part of the timing circuit. And if you have balls that are too small, it's not going to push the appropriate trough switches to tell the machine that it's in a particular state. So ensure that you have the correct size balls. They sell them new. They are more expensive than the 1-1-16 inch balls. If you plan on buying a lot of bingos, you could buy them in bulk and get a discount from a ball bearing place or something of that nature. While we're on the subject of balls, it is possible to magnetize some brands of bingo pinballs. And if you do that, then you're going to have problems all over the place. Balls are going to stick together in the trough. They're going to want to mate up when you shoot a ball and it rolls past another one that's already in one of the trap holes. So ensure that you get ones that are resistant to magnetizing and you shouldn't have any problems. Now, light bulbs. The typical bingo has around 100 individual lamps, at least Magic Screen Games and up in the back glass or behind the back glass. Those bulbs are all supposed to be 55s except for in the red letter circuit there are two lamps One is going to be a 55 that is red Now those red 55s are very hard to find In fact I never found one But what I have done is taken a normal 55 and then painted it red You have to make sure that you have a nice even coat on the bulb and also make sure that you're not leaving it on for many days at a time. I'm not sure how it would react, but it makes me a little nervous. So in that circuit, you have the 55 that's red, and then directly underneath of it, you're going to have a 47. Now the circuit actually electrically relies on having those two bulbs in particular installed. You can swap out the other 55s for 47s, and that'll make your back glass a little dimmer, but it will also produce less heat. The 55s are very hot bulbs. The only place where you can't do that is in the red letter circuit. So while we're talking about bulbs, you'll notice that the bingo card has bulbs that light up every time that you land in one of the trap holes. Now, the bulbs used for those can vary from machine to machine, but typically I will tell you that they are fairly expensive bulbs. So you want to make sure that all your bulbs are good and you're not going to want to change them after you've done it once. So make sure that all your bulbs are good. Make sure that all the sockets are good before you close it all up, if possible. And that brings me to lamp sockets. So the typical bayonet style lamp sockets that were used everywhere are used only in a handful of spots on the typical bingo. And that's because Bally wanted to save money and make their own parts. And their idea of a lamp socket is kind of good. It would be really good if it didn't wear down over time. So with a bayonet style lamp socket, you'll get a wear down of the insulation over time, and then it stops conducting as well, and you'll get flickering. With Bally lamp sockets, the way that they work, they are just a simple flat piece of metal with a little hook built in. So you twist your little bulb, your bayonet 55 bulb, into one of these sockets, and the little hook pushes up against the end of the bulb and allows the current to flow. Well, over time, that little hook wears down, so you can take a screwdriver and carefully push it up, and that will help relight those dead lamps. Alternatively, you can just rip the whole thing out and solder in a real bayonet-style socket. It's hard to get it all matched up, but it's certainly doable. I haven't had to do that yet on either of mine, and I've never worked on one where that was necessary. but it's certainly possible, and over time I'll probably have to do it, especially with as much play as my machines get. So that brings us to the play field. The play field is made up of several different components that you'll need to clean and replace potentially. First of all, you have the very visible lamp covers, which are those beautiful white towers that cover up the bayonet-style sockets that exist on the play field. And those lamp towers are not really manufactured anywhere except for Belgium now. You can run into a collector or two that might have some spares that you can try to buy from them but the only way to get new ones aside from that is to order them direct from Belgium which incurs a huge tax It very very expensive At some point if there enough interest we may have to do a group buy and do a big import run on you know a thousand or more of those lamp shields The lamp shields originally, I believe, had painted red tops. Very striking, very lovely to look at. The modern ones that are made in Belgium have a sticker that you apply to the top. You get a similar effect. It's not the same, but it is still quite striking. Moving on from there, you have the coiled springs that run around the perimeter of the playfield. Those allow you to nudge the ball and bounce it back into play towards the center of the playfield, or just allow you to let it bounce on down to the bottom to the ball return, bring your ball right back to you. There are other springs, which are semicircular springs with two little posts, And those posts are driven into the playfield, and the spring prevents the ball from smashing into the lamp shield or the lamp directly and breaking it. I find those to be fairly attractive, and they're usually integrated rather well into the artwork. There's not usually a spot where you look at the playfield and say, I can't believe that they put that there. It's covering up something beautiful. So aside from that, on games with rollovers, you obviously have the rollover buttons, and you've got a couple of inserts. and those inserts are lit from underneath, again by bayonet sockets with 55s in them. Now, when you lift your playfield for the first time, you'll notice a few things right off the bat. First of all, the playfield is pretty light. There is not a whole lot of stuff attached to it that makes it very heavy, except at the bottom rear. And for some reason, a lot of machines are missing a special metal bracket that prevents you from mangling all the switches which are attached to the bottom left of the play field. Those switches are controlled by what's called the shutter motor. The shutter motor is yet another motor, and it pulls this little fiberboard open or shut, depending on the phase of the game. So when the game first starts and you push the red button or you drop in your coin, it will open up the shutter and drop all the balls. They'll all get into the trough, and then that'll give the signal to the lifter motor to lift your first ball. Once it's lifted, the lifter gets a signal by the lane switch to stop lifting balls, and you shoot your first ball. At this point, your trap holes are all open, so the ball would drop right back down. If it didn't get the signal from the ball gate at the top of the play field to close the shutter. Now, when it closes the shutter, it's going to do a few different things. It's going to change several logic paths to prevent the game from thinking it's in reset or in tilt. And it will allow the machine to step up the timer, lift another ball, and progress through the game normally. Well, I think that's just about enough information for this episode. And I want to thank you again for joining me. And I look forward to talking with you next time where we'll start to go into 20-hole Mystic Lion games. Thanks very much. This is Nick Baldrige signing off. thank you again for joining us you can reach me at for amusement only podcast at gmail.com you can find us online at for amusement only.libsyn.com or via stitcher if streaming's your thing pocket casts itunes see you next time

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: c890722d-e1c4-4f01-8fad-04d40fd6d5c4*