This is a Blockade Podcast with your hosts, Chris and Jared. You are listening to The Blockade Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Frebus, a.k.a. Shut Your Trap. Joining me as always, halfway across the world, in the Southern Hemisphere, down under, Jared Morgan. Just finished drinking my coffee then. It was good. Actually, there's a little bit left. I might just knock that back. I am so not a coffee person. Really? Oh, my God. It's hot water with flavor that I don't enjoy. So, milk. Milk. Yeah, you know, because I do enjoy the smell of coffee. Yeah. But that's just it. It never matches what smells isn't matching what my tongue tastes. So, I don't mind, like, all the drink of Frappuccino. That, to me, tastes good because it's basically a milkshake with coffee in it. Yeah, it's not coffee. that's the reason why you like it you know I met up with a friend of mine recently and he was you know said hey let's go get coffee I was like okay that's fine and I was thinking yeah no problem I'll just get a frappuccino and we get well he picked this place called Intelligentsia and of course it's you know they take their coffee seriously and god forbid they had a blender in there to make a frappuccino it would be like a swear word to them. What am I going to have? I kind of just said, because he goes, oh yeah, that's right, you don't drink coffee. I said, yeah. I explained what my reasoning there was. He's like, oh, you need a cappuccino. That's got milk in it and that'll be fine. I'm like, okay, fine, give me a cappuccino. I take one sip of it. I'm like, what is this foul, bitter taste that's just like, and I'm doing everything in my power not to scrunch up my face and look rude about it because he wanted to buy it for me. So I went and I got a sugar packet and I dumped the sugar packet in. That helped a little bit, but not a lot of it. Well, there you go. It must be an acquired taste for you for me. Well, you know what? I'm not a fan of bitter anyway. I don't like beer for the same reason. I hate the bitter taste. Okay. well there you go each to their own have a tea no because that's just more flavored water i'll have a hot i'll have a hot chocolate that that does me fine uh that's flavored water as well except it tastes like chocolate nah but no it's because it's got powdered milk in it and that makes it a milky chocolate sensation okay i think your argument is flawed but okay what do Am I your best flood? What do you think that powder is? It's not just chocolate. It's powdered milk. Yeah. No, that is correct. But it leads back to saying, well, a cappuccino is not fine because it also has milk in it as well. Ah, but no, no, no. See, it's water with milk added to it as opposed to the hot water blending with the dehydrated milk, thereby forming milk. because milk does have naturally water in it. Yes. In most cases, just a word to the wise people, if you're actually drinking milk in bottles from the supermarket, most likely, unless it's a very expensive brand, it's actually rehydrated milk anyhow from milk powder. See? So drink your Ovaltine, kids. Yeah. Drink hot chocolate like Uncle Chris says because Uncle Chris knows. Apparently at Starbucks they have this thing called the Unicorn Frappuccino. Oh, God, so stupid. Right? And so my wife was like, I want to try it. She's not a coffee drinker either, but she was just like, I got to try this thing. I'm like, okay, fine. So we go over, we're at Target, and they have a Starbucks built into it. And I walk over, then I don't see any signage for it, so I'm thinking they don't have it. But this is how I asked if they had it. I go, you got that abomination of a Frappuccino, the unicorn thingy? And they went, yes, sir, we do. nope nope they didn't they didn't they're like no not at our location i went okay it's like that is very funny because that's what exactly what it looks like it's got some sort of the way i understand it it actually changes color as you drink it or something yeah and it's in it's zero coffee in it it's a mango uh based uh drink yep not even coffee it's just no so it's really meant for kids it's really meant to get the kids into Starbucks so they can start their journey to caffeine and indoctrination it's a gateway drug of it's a gateway drug of coffee shops make a lurid drink that gets them in so they can actually see what it's like inside and go oh yes this is a lifestyle for me yes and next thing you know it's Mommy, Daddy, might I have a laptop to write my screenplay on inside the Starbucks? That's even slightly German, the kid. Yes, good, Dolph, you can. Speaking of drinks, just a friendly word to the wise out there that 7-Eleven will be having their Bring Your Own Cup Day coming up here. In the US internally. Well, yeah. It's going to be on the, I believe, it's the, I think it's on the 19th and 20th. Hey, the 20th. That's where we're going to do our 100th episode. But yeah, 19th and 20th of May, if I'm not mistaken. 19th and 20th of May. There you go. Yeah. In all geographies where the dates are backwards. Exactly. Which means the U.S. Yeah, which means the U.S. Yeah, that's right. Does Canada do theirs? I think they probably would because they're close enough but not quite. Right. So I think, yeah, they probably would. A quick Google search could probably answer the question. Oh, who wants to do that? Who wants to do that? Let's live in a world of ambiguity and unknown facts like we did in the 80s. I always said that the smartphone has killed all bar bets. Yeah, absolutely. In any bar argument. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Although I'm sure the bar argument, then if the person doesn't like what you show them, they just yell, fake news! Fake news. That causes a whole new argument. Exactly. Yep. So I'm looking over the... Sorry, just launching the pinball here. but I'm looking at the responses. What? We talk about pinball here? Yeah, apparently, sometimes. Oh, okay. I'm looking at the responses from the BlackAid AMA for Ask Homework. There's probably about five individual responses. Some of those have more than one question answered. So there's probably going to be around 10 or 15 questions total, I would think, that we're going to send over to Zolt. So I'll actually compile these today and get these over to him, and then we'll get it ready for the big 100. So all you that sent in your questions, all five of you, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for asking one or more questions. Yes, we do appreciate the participation. Sometimes I get shocked when there's actually participation, you know, on our Twitter feed when people ask a question of us directly. and it's like, oh, yeah, I guess I better respond to something of that nature. Yeah, that's right. It does take us by surprise sometimes, doesn't it, really? Yeah. You mean we're not just talking to ourselves? Wow, okay. Yeah, into the vacuum that is the podcast land. Exactly. Hey, so you may have noticed these last couple of podcasts, we haven't really been talking terribly much about digital pinball. and I blame Farsight because they've been doing their month off. We have no fodder. Yeah, we have no fodder. That being said, they're moving away from that, obviously, because they are going to release a table at the end of the month and the chatter at Farsight has basically been getting back to other things that are on their to-do list. But I did want to mention the beta head-to-head we test it every Wednesday about 11 a.m. Pacific time and see what the new latest things are. The cool thing is that all these changes that you've been reading about in the newsletter that they've been doing to tables, those are implemented in this beta. So we're able to actually kind of sample them and test them out. And hold on, we'll wait for that airplane that's passing over Jerry's living room. Anyone would think I'd be below an airport at the moment. I've got the way the studio North Lakes works is I have my bedroom. I'm actually set up on the bed with the laptop on my lap as it's designed to be used. And then I have a window open to let some air flow in. Now, unfortunately, the centre of the house has a water pump to feed our tank. And we also have planes flying over. So you'll get some what we like to call environmental effects in the podcast. And that's part of the service we provide you here at BlackApe. A little foley work. Yeah, foley work. That's right. Who knows? Really, I'm actually recording in a bunker in China, but I have to make it sound like I'm actually recording in Australia and suburban. In that case, let me. You are listening to the Blockade Podcast. I'm your host, Shut Your Trap, a.k.a. Chris Freemus. Joining me, as always, from North Korea, Jared Morgan. That's Ross. Behind the DMZ line. No, just in it, because I can get internet there. For the half an hour they turn it on. That's right. So what I was saying is, we've been actually able to sample some of these tables. I've talked about Creature a little bit and Circus Voltaire. Well, the update that they did to Twilight Zone got implemented. What do you think? It was funny because as we're doing the beta, we have our headsets on so we can talk and kind of stuff. Pinball Biz 45B was on there and he was playing Twilight Zone and all I'm hearing from him is like Oh, it's so fast! Oh, man! I can't believe how much more difficult this is. This is great. I love this. Yeah, exactly. He was freaking out over twilight zone. So of course I was like, well, I better, I better check it out. And I put on twilight zone and, um, it definitely moves faster and is not so floaty. And the right ramp likes to send the ball right back down. Uh, the only thing I did not care for. So the kick out from the slot machine, much harder or much faster kick out that it's doing. If you have the flipper held up to bounce it, it literally bounces from the flipper all the way up to the mid flipper. And then you can shoot with the mid flipper. On the right. So it bounces from the right flipper, the lower right flipper, bounces all the way up into an arc to show that if you time it, you can hit the flipper again and it'll hit the mid flipper on the upper right and basically send you into the sound square or camera, depending. But I don't believe any of the Twilight Zones I've ever played the bounce has been that high. At most, the bounce does a little arc and threatens to go either back in the in lane or out the out lane. Yeah, that's what usually happens with it. Yeah. It's actually dangerous to have the flipper held up when the slot machine fires. you're better off just dead passing it to the left it should be a dead pass to the left but that was one of those things where I was like not too happy about that change or whatever but I did notice with Black Knight they adjusted the back glass or did some other picture of the back glass I'm not sure what the only issue is it looks like a nuclear bomb went off behind it because it's completely blown out Oh, okay. So they need to tweak the DX11 lighting on it? They need to tweak the lighting, absolutely. You know what? It's a trend that is, I notice all the time with Farsight, that they make their table lighting way too hot. And you have to turn it almost practically, I mean, down to 20%, 15%, in order for it not to be just blown out. and I really wish they would make it. I don't know if they're trying to prevent the table from going pitch black and that's the issue or what it is, but when you have it at 50%, that should be almost starting to blow out but not blowing out so that if you really wanted that hot look, then you can crank it up to 70% or something like that, but I can't imagine anybody actually doing that. No. Because I'm constantly, the first time I load up a game, the first thing I do is I turn down the lighting from 50% down to 20%. And there's still a couple of tables that it's, it's still too bright for me with the lighting. So I don't know. One of those, one of those things that, but I've noticed that with some of their back glasses that they've redone, that it's just like, Whoa, Hey, let's, uh, let's crank down the contrast on that. Let's drop the nuke. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's interesting. So black night, have you noticed any tuning changes in black night? God, no, I'm not playing that table until I actually, have confirmation that they've done emulation, which they have not. Which they have not, so nope. Nope. So they may have actually tweaked the tuning, but you don't care. It's dead to you until they actually do that. That's right. There is no Black Knight until such time as there's emulation, for the same reason I pretty much don't play Gorgar. Oh, yeah. I like to play Gorgar. Yeah. But, yeah, it would be better if it was emulated. then there's I mean regards to anything else that Farsight's got going on it's still pretty quiet so there's not much to report on the digital front as usual we haven't heard anything from Zen other than that hint that we'd gotten a little while ago from one of their developers right wasn't it that they were super excited for what they were doing that's it yeah we haven't heard any more news about what's going on there we're running a sale for May the 4th I did note they had a 50% off them which I think might still be running so if you get onto the podcast and listen quickly to it you may very well be in for a surprise if you haven't yet bought all the Star Wars tables so yeah I like it how they do it because it just lets new adopters get on there and get the full set of tables and not have to worry about costs too much, which is great. Yeah. It's good. But, yeah, that's really all the news digitally we have. There's not even – I did notice something the other day which was interesting. Arcuda has been a little bit quiet of late. I was just going to mention that. Yeah. So Arcuda has been a bit quiet of late. What they're doing now is every Thursday Australian time they are releasing a What's Happening at Arcuda video on their YouTube. And the first one was just an introductory video. It didn't really have a huge amount of content anymore, sort of pitching what the series is going to be about. But I think the second one is going to be interesting because we, while we're in a commercial arrangement with them, we haven't really received a lot of insider information from them. So it'll be interesting to see what they're going to publicly talk about, about the platforms. and I don't think it's just going to be the pinball platform. It's going to be all the other Arcuda game platforms that they have. So, yeah, let's see what they've got up the sleeve. It's good that they're actually broadcasting it. I like that. Information, it's a good thing. It's a good thing, yeah. So I should mention today, although by the time you listen to this podcast, folks, it'll have passed and you'll have to wait a whole other year for it, but I be remiss if I didn say it National Scrapbook Day for my wife has been at her scrapbook table all day but it also free comic Book Day I don know if they do that over there in Australia for you guys but in the U all across the nation Free Comic Book Day You go into your comic book store, and they have free comics that you can grab. So every year I take my son over to the comic book store, and he goes and grabs his five free comic books that they let him have, and that's our comic book buying for the year. Never goes back there again. Nope. Well, you know what? He doesn't like superheroes so comic book store doesn't really, you know, it's not really anything interesting to him. So he's picking up like Simpsons comics and Spongebob comics and things like that that back in my day would have been the equivalent of picking up the Donald Duck comic book as opposed to the good comic books. Yeah. So that's why they're free, basically. No, no, they actually have, like, Walking Dead comics, and there's a whole bunch of DC and Marvel comics that they have. But they're specifically put out for free comic book day, so a lot of times it will be... Like an abridged version of it or something. Or, like, for instance, they had a Guardians of the Galaxy comic. And it's more for, hey, coincidence of timing, that movie just came out this weekend, and maybe your kid's interested. and yeah, here's kind of an introduction to it so that it's a gateway. It's an acquisition strategy for comic book stores. Not to mention it makes you aware of where your comic book store is and gets your butt in there because as of course you're in there, you start looking around going, that looks kind of cool and that looks kind of cool because I love all the figurines that they have. I've never afford one of those figurines but uh they're pretty cool no no no they uh they are mostly expensive so yes uh it's cool like if you if you haven't been to a comic book store um it's another universe inside there like it's uh oh yeah there's mel because it's all like the printed paper spell in there is something else when you go in there. It's got this sort of a strange vibe inside it. Well, at least the ones here do. Funny places. Not like your regular bookstore. No, no. And it's fun also. I just pointed one out to my son. I was looking through the glass cabinet and they had an X-Men comic in there and I went, hey Mace, look at that. That one cost $100. He was like, $100 for a comic? Go figure, right? Yeah. That's nuts. The whole comic books as investment thing. I'm sure there's a whole other story altogether, really. Oh, yeah. That and your big ball card traders, which interestingly enough, the two don't tend to mix. But they kind of do the same area existence, paper grading and sealing your books up and all that jazz. Yeah, it's kind of crazy, isn't it? One of the things about collecting a thing is that the only way it's valuable is if there's still a market for it. For example, I've got these over here in Australia back when I was younger. Our phone booths accepted these cards. They were called phone cards, and they were preloaded with value. So they started off as being these sort of magnetic strike cards and then graduated up to more sort of credit card style cards. And they all had different pitches on them. So, of course, pitches equals collectability. Yeah. And I was pretty into it. I used to go around all the local phone booths and do the old, this will make no sense for people listening, but do the old, because they had these two holes. Okay. These two holes where you put the used phone cards. and if there were any in there, you could just feel them underneath there and then you'd just reach and see them. Oh, okay, okay. And, you know, there used to be a philatelia dealer around the corner, a stamp dealer, and a philatelia. I always get the emphasis and farcist on the wrong syllable when I say that word. And he used to buy the cards off us as well and sort of give us a bit of pocket money. so it was kind of good. Not quite a collection of them. I was thinking, what am I going to do with these? Because for that very reason, if the people who used to collect them are no longer around, then they're valueless, basically. Right. So I need to get rid of them, but I'm not sure how, to actually offload these and even get something for them because I don't really want to keep them. They had no sentimental value to me. A lot of times it's all about timing. when you go to drop these things. My friend of mine, it's amazing his nose for what is collectible and what isn't. The things that he'll get into and then 10, 15 years later is exceedingly valuable. And most of it's in tabletop gaming and just kind of gaming in general. Um, he would go after these obscure titles, uh, that might be sold in, you know, your toy store or whatever. Plus then the, the tabletop gaming. And oftentimes he would never get around to opening it up. And then all of a sudden, 15 years later, there's this huge market for it because all this stuff is completely rare. And because he's got it still on the tree, it just exponentially becomes even more valuable. And I'm like, how is it that you keep on buying this stuff that has this value? He's like, I don't know. I just have a nose for it. But it even extended to he called me up because years ago he lent me his Wii and never bothered to take it back. And he gave me a bunch of games. And he calls me up and he goes, hey, do you have this one? I want to say it's Fire Emblem, but I'm not sure. But anyway, it was this one RPG game. and I go, I look through the thing and I go, yeah, yeah, that was one of the ones you gave me. He's like, awesome! People are going nuts for it right now on eBay. And it was this weird circumstances of, you know, it was a very limited run and it wasn't popular in the States and all this stuff. All of a sudden he's got this game that's worth, you know, 300 bucks. What? That's insane! Like I said, He just has this knack for picking these obscure things that all of a sudden gain value. I see our longtime showlister, Andrew Driver, is quite into cartridge-based or retro gaming. And I'll see some things that he's retweeted through about cartridges and stuff that have fetched an insane amount of money on eBay. And this is like a cartridge that probably would have been, you know, $50 when it came out, $300 now. Just insane. It's crazy. And these things were, you know, the cartridges, as we all know, being the age that we are, like they weren't really designed to hang around. They were kind of throwaway items really, weren't they? They had a limited lifespan, just like any piece of consumer electronics. And for them to still be working today, I think, is the thing that actually makes them rare. You know what I love? With the cartridge, anybody that was a cartridge gamer, they knew that if the cartridge didn't work, what did you do? You blew on it. Blow it, which is even worse. Well, but that's the funny thing. Everybody always says, that's not a thing. It doesn't make the cartridge work. I'm like, if it doesn't make the cartridge work, then how come it always worked? Well, I think it could be that there's a little bit of – it could be dry in the context. as you've well seen with pinball stuff, there could be things like the constant in and out of the cartridge might have put a little bit of a nick in one of the contacts. So putting a little bit of moisture on there from your breath. Well, see, I think that's why they're saying don't blow on it because they're afraid that you're going to spit on it, basically, and that's going to cause the problem. But I bet if you just took a regular can of air, they'd be like, yeah, that's fine. Yeah, probably, yeah. But I think, yeah, the whole blow on the cartridge thing always used to be a thing. Like it was proper. Or it was universally accepted as something that works. Yeah, it's like, oh, yeah, a bit of dust. Just give it a bit of a blowing, it'll be fine. Right. But, yeah, I mean, you know all too well that, you know, these electrical components aren't designed to work for a long time, as you've seen on your pinball machine. Yeah, let's talk about the hell that, well, I shouldn't say hell, but some of the fun that I had this week. Yeah, let's do that. So it started off with A-Ball Deluxe. I was trying to get the cabinet knocker to work. So in my junk that I'd gotten from Pinball Resources, I happened to also get the coil for the knocker. So I was like, great. So de-soldered, attached the solder back on, my first soldering job, and I was like, woohoo! put it on, turn the machine on nothing oh no what happened, why is this not working so on to Pinside I go and it's amazing how little time I'd spent on Pinside in the past three years and suddenly I'm like on there all the time you're making up for it now but anyway so go on there and I get I get a link to this site that basically is all about working on old Bally machines and troubleshooting and I look at coil not working and it gives me the rundown of where to look in my schematics which is like thank you because I have no clue how to read an electrical schematic and it chased down and basically it told me look here and see what you got. So it turns out that one of my transformers and resistors were cooked and blown out. So I was like okay I gotta go replace those. So off to Radio Shack, which I was crossing my fingers was still open and hadn't completely shut down. And sure enough, I made it. They still had six days left. And into their little resistor and diode bin I went and I found the correct transistor and I found the correct resistor and they were 90% off. Yeah. That's cheap. So I bought $10 worth of that stuff and only paid a buck. I wish this I wished that I had known what other components of that nature, what the numbers were that I needed, because I would have just bought a whole bunch. Yeah. Yes, absolutely. But I didn't, and the store's closed now. So anyway, back home I got. I pulled the board, and I took soldering iron to the board and melted the solder, pulled off the transistor, pulled off the resistor, and then went, okay, time to put in the new one. and that's where my first mistake was uh-huh because I didn't understand that you need to take off the old solder first yes yeah you do so all I did was I heated up the old solder and then pushed through the transistor and then the new solder cooled around it and I went okay and then I added a little more solder on top of that and figured that'll work and job's done and then I did the same thing to the resistor and I was like okay let's just check this bad boy out and I flick the switch on the machine and I hear the knocker go BAM and it's still buzzing and so it was locked in oh no turn it off I'm like well obviously the coil works and I figured that my soldering job was fine because it made the thing function so I went back to this troubleshooting guide and it's saying, you know, if your coil is locked on it might be also this diode and it might be, you know, and so it becomes this and it might be the chip that controls all the transistors I'm like, oh my gosh, really? I got to figure all this out what am I going to do? I kept on saying that you need to check the voltage you need to check the voltage you need to check the voltage so I was like, you know, maybe I need to go finally buy my own voltage meter my voltmeter so over to Harbor Freight I go and paid the wee bit of money that they were asking for those. Came back home, checked the transistor. I'm not getting any voltage at all out of it. I went, okay, maybe my soldering job ain't so swift. Yeah. So I took the board over to my neighbor who knows a thing or two about soldering and electronics. And he kind of goes, well, yeah, your problem is you got all this old solder on there. I was like, okay. So he gives me this little device that sucks up solder, which is kind of cool. Sucked up the old solder. Solder vacuums are cool. I've got a couple of them floating around here. Sucked up the old solder and come to find out that the ribbon, the circuit ribbons, had delaminated and were kind of pointing in weird, funky directions. So that was, yeah, so the transformer was not exactly making a connection. So he did a soldering job for me, thankfully, to kind of flatten them out and get them touching where they're supposed to be touching properly. And then we plugged it back in, and ta-da! My cabinet knocker works again. Yay! Yay! Which is fun, because now whenever I get a match game, it scares the living daylights out of me, because, man, those Williams knockers are actually, Valley knockers are loud. Yeah, because it's actually smacking onto a metal plate, isn't it? Yep. inside the black box, yeah. So it's super loud. Yeah. Which is... Excuse me, dropped something. Which is a good thing. I like that being scared kind of by the knocker. And it's a much more pleasing sound than Stern's whee! Oh yeah, that thing. I don't know why they chose to do that. Such an annoying noise. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They could have just put an extra solenoid in there and just let it do its thing. So that was what I did with the 8-Ball Deluxe this week. The other thing that I did this week was I didn't do what? I did indeed clear coat firepower. Yay! Yay. So if you've followed us on Twitter, you've seen the pictures. If you're on Pinside and are a follower of Vid's Table Restoration Guide, You've seen the pictures. And I don't have that many people actually following my Firepower thread, which is entitled Firepower, My First Pin, My First Teardown, if you want to jump on that. That shows all the steps that I've been taking, old and new. But anyway, I'll just recount real quickly what the deal was. So went ahead, set up the tent outside, set up the play field, and went and did my first spray down. And while I'm spraying, I noticed that in the middle of the play field where all the paint had been basically jacked up, it looked like it was bubbling. I was like, ooh, what's going on there? And I was like, isn't it supposed to level out? I'm not sure what the issue is. So I sprayed the rest of the table, stepped back, let it cure for 20 minutes, went back because in my head I keep on hearing the guy Tim from our pinball league where he said, if it doesn't look good the first time, just spray another coat. See what happens. I was like, okay. Come on, second coat. Let's see what happens. So I went and sprayed another coat and although it did level it out somewhat, if you looked at it from overhead, it still looked like just a bubbling mess. Yeah. So I took photos, posted those on Pinside, went. Okay, what's my next step? To which I was told, yeah, it looks like somebody had waxed a playfield with a silicone-based wax, and it's fisheyeing, which I can say now after the fact that's not the case, and I'll explain that in a second. but so the answer was go ahead and get out your sandpaper and flatten that back out so i did i got out my 400 grit sandpaper and uh wet sanded and scrubbed the ever-living crap out of that area until it was flat again and it was at that point what i noticed was it's all these little tiny divots in the playfield whether it was from where the paint chunked up or what more likely looked was where the ball had bounced. The reason why the ball was bouncing was because when I first got this table, the paint job was so rough and bumpy, and the inserts, some of them were raised, some of them were sunk. Basically, the ball was hopping all the time. And I believe causing these little dents and divots all over the place I joke that it looked that it looked like Edward James almost his face And now I need to try and smooth that out Uh, yeah. So what did wound up saying? And, and he says, this is a big misconception with clear coating is that everybody thinks that clear coat is just going to fill in the gaps. And that's not the case at all because of its surface tension. It actually surrounds the gap and makes a ring. and further makes the divot even deeper, if you will. So what I had to do was sand as flat as I could, and then it was going to be get an eyedropper full of the clear coat and just individually fill each and every single hole. Well, there was 100 plus of these on the play field. So whipped up a little tiny batch of clear coat, which was still way too much clear coat. But I mean, I literally filled the bottom line. It was on my cup. And from that, I then removed just a little bit to fill up the eyedropper. And the eyedropper, in total, I only used three-quarters of it was even in that. So, yeah. Turns out clear coat goes a long way. So I went and I filled in all the little divots. And then Vitt also suggested that fill in the valleys around all of the inserts so that everything is perfectly smooth. I'm like, okay. So I did all that. Well, I kind of went a little heavy. So now all of a sudden when it cured, there was all these little cobblestones. Cobblestones, if you will, all over the place. So I was like, okay, well, back to the 400 grit. Let's knock it down. It was not knocking them down at all. And I don't know if it was just because I use a rubber block sander. I don't know if it was just riding on top of all the bumps, and therefore it couldn't get a grip and knock anything off. but I was getting nowhere and nowhere fast. That happened to be my last piece of 400-grit paper, and I burned through it really quick. I kind of went, well, I don't know, what else do I got? I found I had some 240-grit paper. I went, you know, maybe that's what I need to do. Maybe I need to go a little severe and knock it down that way. I started up at the top of the play field and roughed it up. and this is a non-wet it's just dry sanding and man it just creates this white powdery mess all over the place and I real quickly went thank you Tim for recommending that I pull all the wiring harness off the bottom of the playfield because this is exactly what he was warning about because that powder gets everywhere I don't care how good you sealed up that table it was going to get somewhere and just make a mess so I started sanding that, next thing you know, I'm sanding the entire play field. I'm knocking everything down. And I just kept on going and kept on going and kept on going. Eventually, it got to the point where I'd gone through the clear on certain areas that were over the inserts, and I was sanding the inserts back down, because if I'd look on the bottom of the pad, it was picking up the color from the orange inserts in the middle. And I was like, wow, I had no idea how raised any of that was. But I was like, just keep on going, just sand, sand, sand, sand, sand, and so I sanded that until it was very smooth, as far as I could tell. It's a giant, cloudy mess now. Even after wiping it down, what's interesting is when you wipe it down wet, which is what the clear is going to do, it looks great. It's interesting how clear works. It'll take even the grimiest looking thing and all of a sudden make it look beautiful. I did go buy some 400 and 600 grit paper just I'm going to do a little bit of a polish so that the inserts don't show any scrape lines yeah good idea but yeah so I went from having if you go and look on our twitter feed the blockade feed I believe is where I posted those photos if I'm not mistaken but anyway you'll see the table go from you know kind of whatever okay to being really nice and glossy shiny to being a cloudy mess. Yeah. But the good news is, like I said, it's now flat as flat can be because I took the pinball and I had the play field that just an ever so slight rake so that if I put the pinball down, it would just slowly start rolling. It didn't matter what insert it rolled over, what dent looked like it was there. It never changed directions. And that was going, I was like, Hey, that's all you can ask for. That's, that's what we're looking for. Yeah, that's real good. So with sanding on the threads, on the restoration threads, is it always block sanding, like a manual sanding, or would you use a mouse sander? An orbital sander or something? Yeah, or like, you know, vibration sanders? No, everybody says do it by hand, because the problem with any of the orbital sanders or whatever, if you so much as angle it, it might gouge really fast. Yeah, you can dig in. What I was doing was... Yeah, and what I was doing was I was only sanding in one direction. I didn't want to create any swirls. So I was just going back and forth lengthwise on the play field. And sometimes I would go up on edge on the sanding block just to try and push down a little harder and kind of, again, get in between the bumps so that I could catch an edge and knock that bump down and then you go the other direction and you knock the other bump down and then finally go flat on it and be able to get it all nice and smooth that way. Now that the table is completely smooth, I should never have to go up on edge again. I should always be able to do the flat. We'll see. What's interesting is that first, that initial spring that I did, I apparently went way heavy. I mean, Vin was able to see it just in the pictures. He was like, yeah, you needed to shoot like an eighth of what you shot. so we'll see how I do this next time that I actually do clear coating it's not going to be until after I start doing some painting but I'm trying to debate if it's I had the gun too low was I going too slow do I need to just go you know do a faster pass I think I need to watch some videos on YouTube and kind of get an idea of of where they're holding it and how fast they're moving yeah that sounds like it but yeah it's interesting even after all this sanding you might say that I should have done this before clear coating but I would have been taking off paint the beautiful thing is I didn't take off a lick of paint all I took off was the inserts some of the height on the inserts yeah so I think you're probably in a good place now where you can actually now go and paint over the top of the clear and the clear is rough enough that you'll be able to lay a you know put paint down yes um because it should adhere yeah so you're probably it's that's basically what from what i understand anyone who has a damaged playfield does anyhow they lock it in and then they start touching it up because it's so easy to just take off the paint that way yeah and i think in some cases some people actually do like one color and then clear it and then another color and then clear it because it allows them to be really precise with all the colors. I think they're doing a very thin coat of clear when they do that because Vid posted a pic of what happens when you don't do it that way, when you have too thick of a clear and you can see the step in. It looks like 3D. It's like layered. That would be weird. That would be weird. Yeah. So we'll see what happens on Tuesday, so the day this podcast drops, going over to... When I say my buddy, my friend, I'm always talking about the same guy. He's got all the gizmos and toys. He's the one that's going to be cutting me the clear plastics for Able Deluxe. He's also got an airbrush station totally set up. Again, when you're into tabletop gaming, you do a lot of painting. You've got all the gear. You do a lot of painting, and yeah. so he kind of assembly lines a lot of it um and uses there is his airbrush a lot so i'll be using his airbrush so you know it's one of those things where it's like a great you've already got set up you know how to do this you can teach me how to do it properly and i can i can go from there so i'm hoping that i'll do some of that on tuesday too and we'll see how much who knows maybe maybe I can goad him into doing most of the painting for me. Yeah, I wonder how much you're going to have to pay him for that. Usually nothing, but it's one of those things. Sometimes if you leave something behind with somebody that you know is into that kind of thing, they might just take it upon themselves to do it. Just color match everything for you and touch it up. Exactly, because he's into detail work. He'd probably love it. so I'm like maybe he can be the one that paints the planet in the areas that it needs to paint I can spray white I can spray black and I can spray red but when it comes to actually kind of mixing colors to match and do these little intricate little things I don't know yeah I've seen some of the restoration work that people have done on their other planets from the ones you've been flicking me and I've got to say they're pretty insane these people are just like wow you managed to do it and I can't even see what you've done to fix it's amazing it is so they've got a real eye for it it's pretty cool it's fun going through these threads because once you start posting a thread on what you're doing other people start commenting oh hey look at my thread and I've got the same machine look at what I'm doing and you start looking at some of these things and you just go it can be depressing. Let's just put it that way. I saw a guy's thread on I can't remember. It was either A-Ball, Deluxe, or Firepower. But anyway, he was redoing the cabinet. And it was gorgeous. I mean, this guy completely rebuilt. I mean, every single corner was just true and square. And it was painted gorgeously inside. And he even found the original warning stickers for voltage to apply back in. All of his metal plates are just super shiny, which is what I love. I hate dull metal, which is, of course, what they threw in all these machines. I'm the kind of person that I would chrome everything. I would love to flip open a table and just be chrome. That would be incredible. Yeah. You see that kind of stuff, and that's where I always just... I think that's what intimidated me the first time. where I thought that, oh, if you're going to be a pinball machine owner, you have to do all of X, Y, and Z. And it wasn't until I started going over to people's houses in League where it was like, no, you don't have to do that. Just have a table that plays well. There's different kinds of – Plate-conditioned tables are just fine to own. Yeah, there's different collectors. Because one of these guys' houses that we'd go over to, he had this great collection of tables, probably 16 machines, 16 or 17 machines. And there were all these tables that I love. I was just like, oh, that's awesome. And there was not a single one of them that was in restoration quality. Right. These were all like what you would see in the arcade. They just happened to all play well. I mean, they all worked. The flippers all worked and there was no bad switches or anything else like that. They just didn't look all that pretty. And then you go to other guys' houses and every single one of them is a mirror shine and LED'd out and all that stuff. So it is kind of one of those things where it's perfectly acceptable to have a player quality machine and just enjoy the hell out of it. It's exactly the same as those folks who own cars. Some people love to have a completely and utterly tricked out car, but some people, they just want to drive it and they don't care. so yep uh players condition i think they call it in pinball um yeah you can play and it's great and it may not look super swift but it reflects the age of the table and that's fine so so speaking of this there was kind of i i posted a craigslist ad uh specifically for jared because jared jared is always complaining that uh even the crappiest of machines would cost him an arm in a leg in Australia. I found a table that was in the crappiest of conditions. It was for a Barracora pinball. I've never heard of that. It was from 1981. It's a Williams machine. This would be pre firepower, no speech on this particular machine. Pre-firepower, pre-Gorgar. I believe that would be a system three or four, I think. Yeah. And the person was asking $50 for it. Said that it, electronics worked. Didn't say that the pinball machine actually worked, but they said the electronics worked. So I'm assuming. It was pictured with lights on. So that's something. At least the transformer's not fried. That's good. That being said, the cabinet was completely stripped of any and all art. There was no back glass. There was just a photo or like a picture of the back glass of this is William's attempt at doing an H.R. Giger painting apparently. And all that was left was just this image of a woman's face and there was nothing else on the back glass at all. You could see right back through to the light board in the back. and then they completely and then well they taped off where the the scoreboard is using blue painter's tape yep and then there was a picture of the play field but it was hard to tell what condition it was in because the glass was just covered in dust yeah so i was i was like you know for a hot second i was like you know 50 bucks for a table that works why not but then it was it's an hour and a half drive to even look at this thing. And what I did real quickly was I did a Google search, went to Internet Pimble database, looked up the game, found out information about it. And then I went on to eBay and Pimside, and there ain't nobody talking about this machine. And there's not a back glass around, and I didn't see stencil kits or anything else like that. I was like, oh, if you're going to do any attempt at restoring this, you're going to have issues. Good luck finding parts. Good luck finding anything that'll... I think you'd be able to find most of the electrical parts for it, like all the mechanical parts. Right, but all the artwork, good luck. The artwork, no. I think the only thing you could probably do is print out, get a back glass one-to-one printed down at your local Officeworks, and then just whack it in the glass, and that's your back glass. The only thing I found on eBay was a couple of people were selling the plastics, so those were available, and the bumper caps were available. That's all you need. That's all you need, right? Yeah, that's fine. So in the time that it took me to look at this ad and do the little research and then post it, get ready to post it to Twitter, it had already been yanked down, which means they'd sold the thing. Well, for 50 bucks, what not. Yeah, and that's what I thought. I was like, you know, for 50 bucks, you could probably part it out for way more money. But again, I was just like, I wouldn't want to do that to myself. A, I don't want to deal with eBay and parting out something. and B, if I had a machine, I want to play the machine, but I've never even heard of this machine. And it was just like... I think I've seen Barracora a couple of times go through TNT Amusement's YouTube channel. It's very indicative of the era of the table, so it's not a really complex table, but it flips well. Yeah. Because most of those tables of the era, they tend to play, they're brutal, and they play well because they're simple. They're just a single-level play field, and they just do what they do. Lots of drops. I think it has lots of drop targets on it. It had drops, yeah. It has like an inline... It had drops and a horseshoe and it had multiball. That's basically all it had going for it. Yeah. Yeah, some of them definitely got different parts, I reckon. They would have parted that out for sure. Just one of those things that I have, if it was a couple of miles from me, then I probably on a whim would have been like, sure, let me go look. Impulse buy kind of thing. but if it's a 90-minute drive out to the thing, the impulse quickly abates and logic starts coming back in, you know, reality. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's a fair drive for something that may not even be working. That's like me driving down to the Gold Coast here. Right. And that's non-trivial at all. So yeah I totally get your thoughts Well and especially since this is what I going through right now with my firepower it was literally one of those things where the day I got the money and the money was given to me by my in and it was with the express instructions, you have to buy something fun with it. I went, what am I going to buy fun with? And I went on Craigslist, and boom, there was a firepower for $500, which is exactly what the money was that I had. You went, okay, I'm doing this. I called. I said, come down. If you're not down here within the next two hours, somebody else is going to be here and buy it. So it was like boom. There was no time to think. And it wasn't until after I'd handed the cash off to the guy and we're walking outside and the sunlight hits the play field that I went, oh. Instant regret. Right? That's when the buyer's remorse starts setting in. So knowing everything that I'm going through with just restoring firepower to a playable state, I can imagine what an absolute project would be, and I would never – I don't want to get into that kind of a nightmare. That would be new. I saw, as I was like, you know, you get onto Pinsir and you go down the rabbit hole in Lynx, and I happened to come across this guy who was doing a restore on an EM, and it was very interesting to see how he zoned things off when he was doing it. Of course, EMs, their artwork is generally pretty basic and they have lots of block colors in the play field. So he was able to go, look, on a play field that's got a lot of paint damage, I actually just find a paint that matches the paint mostly and then repaint the entire play field in that color. So it's like, yep, that is a color that's going to be replacing all of that color, and that's just how it is. Look, it's not completely authentic, but it's close and it's consistent and it looks good at the end. And that's really all you want when you're actually doing something like that, really, unless you're an absolute curious and you're going, oh, no, I have to have the absolute right Pantone. Yeah, but where are you going to find that Pantone? It's not like it's listed on any of Gottlieb's or William's site, what Pantone they used, and any machine you find is probably going to be faded a little bit. At some point, nobody's going to have a new-in-box EM. So even if you took the Playfield down and got the paint spectrally analyzed at your local paint shop, you're going to have at least some inconsistency anyhow. Yeah. So don't sweat the details. Put something on that looks good and get on with the job. And I'll tell you what, It looked really good when he'd done it and he'd repainted everything and he actually like sprayed, airbrushed a lot of the big areas and masked off the ones that didn't. And it seems to be when he was talking about there seemed to be a real technique in actually masking and doing that right. So I found it very interesting. But at the same time, I thought, you know, if I could actually find like something, a real bombed out, even play field down here that would just junk to bits. I could just have a go at it. You could. And just have a go at touching it up and see how it went, just to see what the end result could be. And I don't know if I could get to the point where it was cleared, but I could at least try and touch up the paint and see what it looked like. I'm sure you could find a fairly cheap, junked-up Playfield on eBay and have it shipped to you, and it wouldn't be terrible shipping. I actually think I probably know someone, The same guy who sells pinball machines for one and a half grand, I'm pretty sure his wife is actually involved in the business as well, and she does a lot of playfield touch-up. And I know that the guy sort of makes available to her a lot of playfields that are well and truly passed, like really bad. Right. And she'll just practice her technique on those playfields and touch them up. So it's possible that if I wanted to, I might just get in touch and see what playfields he might have and how much he'd be interested in getting rid of them for. Because if anything, they might turn into nice art pieces. A lot of guys do that. Yeah, use them as posters, basically. Yep. So I don't know. I may sort of send the guy an email and see what's around. I might also send an email and say, look, you know, here is what I have, like money-wise. Right. what would you recommend me buying one of the ones that you've got now based on that and see what he actually says? Because this guy, while he's in the business of selling tables, he's not one of those snaky salespeople. He'll tell you the truth. Yeah. So maybe I'll – I think it'd be worth at least letting him know. And one of those situations where sometimes they feel that tear in their heart and they're like, I want to help this person out. I want to be the gateway drug of this guy. They're addictionable. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I may entertain the idea, but you're certainly right. Going through Gumtree over here on eBay, it's not where you go and get the good deals. This guy, although he actually has a – he sells them. At the same time, they are degrees cheaper than all the other ones on eBay. And because he actually like fixes them up and guarantees they work to start with. And that's a big problem. Like, you know, taking away like you like to get to the point where everything is working. So that's one less thing you have to worry about, you know, and that's good. Yeah, I think you should do that. Get on it. I'll investigate it. And then, well, you know, I was going to say my 40th is coming up, but it's not really. I've still got like a couple of years to go. So maybe for my 40th, I'll go for perhaps one that's of a little bit better condition. Maybe try one out here, see how it goes. And then if I like the idea, then go for a really nice one for my 40th. And that could be the gift. See, my fantasy is that I get Firepower back built, this super smooth play field that I throw in the drop target mod, and then I put it up for sale and somebody is so enamored with the drop target mod and the play field job and they can care less what my cabinet looks like that they're like, you know what? I never liked my Metallica Pro here. Let's just trade. Let's just trade, but you're going to give me $3,000 as well. Yeah, you know, nobody wants a Metallica Pro. They all want the Metallica LE. So, you know, but everybody, but how many firepowers with a drop target mod are out there, right? So I don't know. That's my fantasy. And then for my... I play out these scenarios all the time in my head, and I was like, for a split second, I'm like, oh, but you wouldn't want a Pro. And then I was like, what the hell are you thinking about? That would be way better than your firepower. Well, yeah. Yes, it would, probably. As somebody that loves ramps and multiball, and I'm thoroughly enjoying the drop targets on A-Ball Deluxe, Metallica Pro would work. So what if it doesn't have spinners? Spinners don't do anything for me. It would probably fit in okay with your collection. Yeah. You'd make adjustments for it and grow to like it. Maybe I can come down with reality and maybe I can make that happen with roller games because nobody likes roller games either. No, nobody wants that thing. Yeah. That's not a classic theme for anybody. yeah i do have to admit though when seeing firepower in person and seeing the light show that actually happens when you get multiball yeah and the way um the the the back glass displays actually count down um it looks really good for the era it's like a big production when it happens. It's very cool. Yeah, so yeah, it'll be interesting to actually, you know, once you've got it all cleared and working and playing and all that again with the drop targets in, you might actually, your opinion of it may actually change. You might go, I don't actually want to get rid of this. It might, but I doubt it. Oh, really? I don't know. Like I said, I have too many other tables that I'm fond of. Style of table. Like I said, I love ramps. I love... Firepower does have multiball, but that's all it has. I like multiple levels. I like alphanumeric displays rather than just the boring score. I like games that talk more than only being able to say firepower, three, two, one. You know, that's – I always say that it's not until you get to something like high speed that that's when I go, okay, now you're talking more my kind of table. And high speed by no means is a technological wonder. But it's sort of a little bit more like a – It's closer. It's closer, yeah. Yeah. You know, habit trails. I love habit trails. I want habit trails. I dig that. I dig that look. So that's why I'm surprised at how much I'm enjoying Able Deluxe because I didn't think that that would be a table that I would really, really enjoy. Yeah, and I'm enjoying the heck out of it. It's a lot of fun, and I'm really digging just the aiming factor, and that's why I can't wait to get the plastics in so the ball doesn't jump when it comes down to my flipper and get that thing polished up and playing really nice. I think it's just going to make me like it even more. Yeah, absolutely. But I never got that sensation off of Firepower. So that's why I say it's interesting. I mean, I think for sure you don't know how much you like a table until you start playing it. Yeah, absolutely. And I think the thing with Firepower, I'm getting the opinion that perhaps there might be a ratio between drop targets to ramps. Like how many drop targets would you need to replace the feel of a ramp in a game? So, you know, would it be three drop targets for a ramp, A short ramp or five drop targets for a big ramp? But see, it's also like, okay, take Firepower 2. It has a ramp. Yeah, but it's crap. Right, it's not a satisfying ramp. To me, there's a certain satisfaction with a certain ramp. You know, Medieval Madness has that complete satisfaction with ramps, especially since you can combo the ramps. I said a couple of weeks ago that Whitewater has one of the most satisfying ramps ever. That's true. It does. It's not that it scores a phenomenal amount of points or anything like that. It just looks cool watching the ball do this whoop-de-doo thing. It's one of the reasons why I love roller games is because it not only has this crazy ramp diverter at the top of the plastic ramp at the top, but then it goes into this cool habit trail that when you collect balls for multiball before the multiball goes, just at various points, it fires a plunger and these balls go through the habitrail and then rotate back down into where they're locked. It just looks awesome. That's cool. That's what I'm into. That's, I think, why I like NBA Fast Break. It's got very satisfying ramps and it's got this whole cool habitrail mix happening at the top for shooting the basket. There's four little habitrail kind of things. So that's visually and feeling-wise, that feels good. It's why I like Whirlwind so much, because it's got a great ramp system. And I like, while I enjoy Earthshaker, and they kind of have a similar feel, I just like Whirlwind's configuration much better, I think because it's a more open play field. Yeah. But even Earthshaker has a cool bit of ramp going on. Yeah, there's plenty of good things happening on that table as well. But you're right, I think out of the two, Whirlwind's the one that I'd pick as well. Definitely, that's what everybody would pick. Yeah. So, you know, that's why I say it's one of those things where I don't think you truly know until you're sitting there playing the machine. I've never been that enamored by Twilight Zone you know I get it for rules it's wonderful but I don't find the shot selection to be particularly satisfying no it's sort of very stop start yeah you know it is those things I think I think TPA definitely helps in figuring out what kind of table you like and what kind of table you don't but I think playing it in person is also just absolutely seals the deal because it's those tactile sensations that really can put a machine over the top again it's why I say with Metallica there's something about that table that is just very appealing to me while playing it that I've not gotten the same sensation off playing ACDC the thing I like about Metallica now I've played it is that I think it's the way the ramps behave. So if you don't shoot the ramps correctly, you're going to come back down. But when you do make the ramp, it doesn't fly up it. It actually gets to the apex of the ramp and it kind of just goes, yeah, okay, I'm just going to walk around this now rather than running at top speed around the ramp. And it's like, oh, and then it comes back down quite fast at you, but at the same time controllable. So it's sort of like it's a slow ascent and a fast descent. And I think from a field perspective, that's what you want in a ramp. And you're right. ACDC, the ramps are such that they're quite shallow in the pitch, and the ball will go up there pretty fast. But ACDC has got a different feel to it. Not ACDC. Metallica has a different feel, and I know what you're talking about. Yeah, definitely. So that's what I say. That's the kind of game I ultimately want to have. but I'm more than happy to be surprised by somebody. If there's an EM that actually grabbed me, I would be shocked. It's why I discovered that I don't like Space Invaders, partly because it's the little zipper flipper size flippers and not full-size flippers. Yeah, on the top. Yeah, and I hate those flippers. Yeah, on the top set. Yeah. I must admit the Cellar Wars I played the other day, that was fun. It was a wide body but it only had two flippers and it was just drop targets all day and it was fun. I think if it's still there when I go back to the next tournament, I will be playing it even if it's not in the tournament. I'll just be putting a few games into it because it was fun. Very fun. Alright, enough fantasizing. let's just end this thing before I go cry yeah yeah alright gang we will be showing up again next week be sure to follow the twitter feed at shut your traps at Jared Morgan and most importantly at blockade there you'll see most of the pictures that I'm talking about regarding what I'm doing with Abel Deluxe and Firepower I'm always throwing them up during the week and take a look, won't you? Feel free to comment. Drop us an email. Blahblahblockade at gmail.com Check out the website. Blockadepinball.com And there you'll find show notes and other good stuff like links if we list them. Indeed. So maybe you can throw up the link to my Firepower restoration page on Pinside and we can jump on that. I'll have to go back through my links. Maybe just email I'll be back. I can certainly do that. All right, sir. Yeah. And everybody else, thank you for listening. We'll talk again next week. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. WizardAmusement.com, the West Coast League of Classic Pinball. Makers of custom pinball shooter rods and buyer specifications. Swap out your standard ball plunger with something themed to your specific table. Installs in less than five minutes with no custom tools. Even if you don't own a table, looks great as a pinball memento to admire. Prices start at $39, but mention Blockade Podcast and receive 10% off your order. WizardAmusement.com. Sales, restoration, customization. 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