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Goat Shed Ramblings: Looking Towards the Future - Pinball Expo 2024 - Kim Oswald

Pinball News (Pinball Expo 2024)·video·45m 29s·analyzed·Oct 18, 2024
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.038

TL;DR

Goat Shed founders outline EM preservation strategy, training, and community impact at Pinball Expo 2024.

Summary

Kim Oswald and Graham McGinnis from the Goat Shed in Newcastle, Australia present their vision for preserving electromechanical pinball machines. Graham shares his 60-year journey from casual player in the 1960s to self-taught repair expert, including co-authoring two pinball books with Marco Rosagnoli. Kim discusses their YouTube channel (2,700 subscribers), Facebook group (approaching 5,000 members), training courses, and comprehensive restoration philosophy, emphasizing that their mission is to keep classic machines alive for future generations rather than for profit.

Key Claims

  • The Goat Shed raised approximately $25,000 for charity (Survivors) at their Newcastle Pinball Association pin fest in September 2024

    high confidence · Kim states 'we just had one a couple of weeks before i came over and all people bring their machines in and this time we had 104 and we raised $25,000 for charity'

  • YouTube viewer demographics for Goat Shed videos show 53% are aged 55-64, 22% aged 45-54, and only 21% aged 65+

    high confidence · Kim provides detailed analytics: 'the people that watch our videos are all mostly between the ages of 55 to 64 years of age, we get roughly 53% of people watching them'

  • The Goat Shed operates six days a week but only works half days to avoid overwork and maintain Graham's health

    high confidence · Kim states 'we only work half a day but we do that six days a week because we can't be working on pinball machines all day'

  • Graham McGinnis has been involved in pinball since the mid-1960s and is self-taught through studying schematics and learning from experience

    high confidence · Graham: 'I first got into pennies back in the mid-60s when I was a young bloke' and 'anytime there's a problem, I looked at the book, looked at the schematics and sort of nutted it out'

  • Kim has approximately 55 years of electromechanical experience from office equipment repair (typewriter mechanic, accounting machines, photocopiers) before joining the Goat Shed

    high confidence · Kim: 'I've done 45 years in the office machine business I started off as a typewriter mechanic' and later 'all up, I've had about 55 years electromechanical experience'

  • The Goat Shed's two published pinball books with Marco Rosagnoli were completed between 2002-2007

    high confidence · Graham: 'I think we've done probably around 2002 to 2007 just to get two books out'

  • There are at least six to seven active EM pinball Facebook groups, with the original EM Pinball having ~7,000 members and Goat Shed approaching 5,000

    high confidence · Kim: 'there's about six or seven em facebook groups out there there's the original em pinball which has got about 7,000 odd members. There's ours, we're approaching 5,000 members'

Notable Quotes

  • “our whole philosophy in this is to try and keep these classic old pinball machines going for future generations. Because if we don't keep them going, they're going to disappear and that would be a tragedy”

    Kim Oswald@ 22:01 — Core mission statement defining the Goat Shed's purpose and philosophical approach to EM preservation

  • “we're not here to make money we do charge people it's it's our hobby it's our passion and we want to keep this passion rolling forward if we can”

    Kim Oswald@ 23:43 — Clarifies the non-profit ethos and reinvestment model of the Goat Shed operation

  • “I think the hobby for EMs is getting bigger... But they're going to get high enough where people won't buy them. So our days of buying wrecks for a couple of hundred dollars and doing them up are pretty well gone”

    Graham McGinnis@ 16:22 — Assesses market trends in EM restoration showing scarcity and rising prices

  • “we want the customer to enjoy the experience... we don't want it to come back we want the person to be able to enjoy it”

    Kim Oswald@ 30:48 — Philosophy emphasizing quality restoration and customer satisfaction over turnover

  • “I went and had a look at it and miraculously I was able to repair it... his interest in pinball had ignited”

    Kim Oswald@ 18:59 — Describes the accidental entry point that led to Kim's involvement with the Goat Shed

  • “what that says to me is that a lot of older people, 65 plus are probably you know passing away and the more the more people that are into this now in the this demographic of 45 to 54 years of age now that's only our channel of course but this indicates that we need to do something about it”

Entities

Kim OswaldpersonGraham McGinnispersonMarco RosagnolipersonThe Goat ShedorganizationNewcastle Pinball AssociationorganizationSurvivorsorganizationSpankypersonPinball Snapshotproduct

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Goat Shed operates as passion-driven, reinvestment model (charges customers but all revenue reinvested in parts/supplies, not personal income); half-day schedule accommodates health constraints and sustainability

    high · Kim: 'we're not here to make money we do charge people it's it's our hobby it's our passion' and 'all the money we make out of the goat shed doesn't go into our pocket believe me it goes into buying parts'

  • ?

    community_signal: Goat Shed running quarterly training courses (3-4 per year), YouTube channel (2,700 subs, 5 years old), Facebook group (5,000 members) to educate and preserve EM knowledge

    high · Kim states 'we run about three training courses per annum maybe four' and discusses YouTube/Facebook metrics; courses 4-5 hours covering relays, score motors, etc.

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Strong positive sentiment in EM community toward Goat Shed; multiple people approached Kim at Expo thanking them for educational content; describes community as 'very close-knit and friendly'

    high · Kim: 'a lot of people have approached me over the last couple of days and thanked us for their videos which is very humbling' and 'The pinball community is very good, very close-knit and friendly'

  • ?

    community_signal: Newcastle Pin Fest demonstrating strong community engagement with 104 machines and $25,000 charity fundraising in single event; annual event since 2012

    high · Kim reports 'all people bring their machines in and this time we had 104 and we raised $25,000 for charity' at Newcastle Pin Fest 2024

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Multiple EM Facebook groups (6-7 active) indicate fragmented but growing community; Goat Shed positioned as educational authority with largest alternative group (5,000 members vs 7,000 for original EM Pinball group)

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.136

0:00
Thanks very much. I'm Kim from the Goat Shed in Australia. G'day and welcome. There we go. We're a bit better now.
0:16
So we're just going to start off. My friend and colleague, Graham, and mentor can't be here. He can't travel. So we've just made a short presentation. Your watch goes for about 16 or 17 minutes. So let's sit back and watch and see what Graham's got to say.
0:58
Well, hello to everyone at Pinball Expo number 40. Here we are all the way down under here in Australia at the Goat Shed in our home in Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia. And we're just showing you the back deck where we do all our training. That's the table we've got set up for the training, the television for the presentations and we even have a mini commercial kitchen and everything here. Now this was used just yesterday. We had our pin fest over the weekend, very successful. I think we raised roughly very close to 25 grand for a charity.
1:46
All right, let's have a look. It's not a bad day here today. The sun's out. here's the side of the goat shed that we had made that little annex was built last year June or July there's the side door into the shed over there let's just go around the front have a look and see what we can see and this is what people see when they walk down toward the shed there's the big barn doors we had built right up the top there you can see a goat somewhere up there really cool eh and now we'll just head into the shed this is where all the machines come into the shed have a look here here's the lightning ball we're currently restoring there's our big goat shed sign that we had made by our artist Linda that's that area there so we can store a few machines up there a couple of machines that we've got underway the motor board out of one there pro football there's the front of this lightning ball looking really good wonderful in fact and we've got some storage shelves up there which we've got legs up there at the moment we're really got to sort that out a bit more so just a few parts and things over there all sorts of different things we've done videos and those before we won't bore you people with them there's another workbench we have there and let's walk out into the main shed there's a ramp here now we we had this doorway built there used to be a door just here that we had that filled in a ramp built so we can wheel machines up like this here we've got a jungle princess there on wheels so we can move it around easily let's just come in that's just arrived for repair ready for assessment we're going to do a video on that soon and very very quickly there's all our touch-up paints oh there's an old trade stimulator our grinder and we've got another workbench over here with a drill press on it and a few other things there's our spare parts department all in there all our new parts live in there and there's all our rubbers. All right.

  • Graham underwent a kidney transplant around 1993 and recovered within six months to resume pinball repair work

    high confidence · Graham: 'i had a um the kidney transplant around 93 and i got better within the next six months and i sort of got back into fixing pennies'

    • Kim Oswald@ 26:45 — Identifies demographic trends in the EM preservation community and the urgency of succession planning

  • “I first played my first pinball machine in about 1963. I was 10 years old and it was a game called Tropic Isle, a game by Gottlieb, which was manufactured in March 62”

    Kim Oswald@ 22:17 — Personal origin story connecting to specific machine knowledge and passion for preservation

  • “None of us here can really say that we got taught by Gottlieb or Bally or Williams because there's no one around to do it. I know I'm self-taught. I've learned a lot off my mentor, Graham, and he's learned a lot off me”

    Kim Oswald@ 24:08 — Reflects on the loss of original manufacturer knowledge and community-based learning model

  • “he's not a well man you heard him say he's got issues with his kidneys and he likes to have a rest after lunch”

    Kim Oswald@ 29:20 — Acknowledges health constraints on the partnership and operational model

  • “if we get a problem we we can't solve it bothers us or it troubles us we walk away go do something else come back and have a think about it sleep on it come back and chat about it the next morning”

    Kim Oswald@ 31:35 — Describes problem-solving methodology and collaborative troubleshooting approach

    • Pinball Perspectives
    product
    PinWikiorganization
    Pinball Expo 2024event
    Tropic Islegame
    Lightning Ballgame
    Jungle Princessgame
    Jungle Queengame
    Pro Footballgame
    Williams Winnergame
    Drop Cardgame
    Abracadabragame
    Gottliebcompany
    Ballycompany
    Williamscompany
    Goat Shed EM Pinball Repair Specialist Facebook Grouporganization
    Goat Shed EM Pinball Repair Specialist YouTube Channelorganization

    medium · Kim notes 'there's about six or seven em facebook groups out there' with various membership sizes and educational focus; a new group 'just started... recently too'

  • ?

    community_signal: EM pinball community aging rapidly; YouTube viewership shows 53% aged 55-64, only 21% aged 65+; suggests younger cohorts (45-54 at 22%) need engagement or hobby will decline

    high · Kim: 'what that says to me is that a lot of older people, 65 plus are probably you know passing away' and explicitly identifies need for action in 45-54 demographic

  • $

    market_signal: EM pinball hobby framed as preservation mission with succession planning urgency; younger collectors (45-54) positioned as critical demographic for future of hobby

    high · Kim explicitly identifies demographic data indicating need to engage 45-54 age group and emphasizes 'we need to do something about it'

  • $

    market_signal: EM machine prices rising significantly; cheap wreck purchases ($50-$100) no longer viable; sourcing parts increasingly difficult but improving via aftermarket manufacturers

    high · Graham: 'our days of buying wrecks for a couple of hundred dollars and doing them up are pretty well gone' but 'There are going to be more companies bringing out parts that we need'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Partnership dynamic between Kim (55 years office equipment repair, late-career entry to pinball) and Graham (lifetime pinball enthusiast, mentorship role) reflects complementary skills and mentorship model

    high · Kim learned mechanical principles from office equipment that apply to pinball (step units/escapements); Graham recognized this and facilitated knowledge exchange: 'I've learned a lot off my mentor, Graham, and he's learned a lot off me'

  • ?

    product_concern: Goat Shed addresses systemic issues in EM machine condition by implementing comprehensive restoration protocol: testing over 2-week period, discovering issues in customer pickup, proactive relay cleaning, coil sleeve replacement

    high · Kim describes thorough process: 'we test the machine over about a two-week period on off to make sure it's going to work because sometimes you test it this machine's great we'll read the customer come and get it all of a sudden something isn't working right'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Digital content (YouTube tutorials linked to PinWiki, Facebook groups) becoming primary knowledge transmission method for EM repair after loss of manufacturer institutional knowledge

    high · Kim: 'None of us here can really say that we got taught by Gottlieb or Bally or Williams because there's no one around to do it' and YouTube videos linked to PinWiki provide distributed knowledge base

    • 4:38
    So there's Graham sitting down, getting ready for a day's work. Yeah, another big day in the gut shed. Excellent.
    4:46
    Graham, why don't you tell the people a bit about yourself? Yeah, first off, I'm welcome to Expo. Hope you're having a great time. I first got into pennies back in the mid-60s when I was a young bloke, of course. Back in around 65, 66, because I've got three older brothers,
    5:06
    they always used to go to the pinball arcades and I used to hang along. I could barely see over the machine, so I used to stand on an old wooden Coca-Cola box and watch my brothers play. And if they won a free game, they might give me one or two balls to play with them.
    5:23
    And after that, they sort of went their own way when they got older. and I just kept playing pinball machines from there on, right into my teens, having a great time,
    5:34
    and playing the Lunker Horn. So especially on holidays, we'd go away and there'd be pinball machines everywhere, which was good. I learnt everything about the machines, the names of them, when they were coming out, what year they were made, just when I was a teenager. And even now today, Kim says, oh, what game is that, just from the cabinet or anything. I just tell them what it is and what year, which works out good.
    5:56
    And anyway, so come around about 1985, I forgot about pinballs for a few years because I remember back in the late 70s when they started to go solid state. I did like them to start with, but they just didn't have the same feel. And I still like them today, but personally I like the ODMs. And they didn't have the sand and I sort of like died off. And plus I got my first car and I started going out with women and whatever and lost the plot there for a minute. And then about, as I said, 85, I was away on holidays and there was a Comet pinball machine in a hamburger shop. And my girlfriend said, oh, so you used to like pinball? I said, yeah. I said, why don't you go and have a quick game? I said, all right. So I went in there and had a quick game. And it was absolutely fantastic because nothing like the early solid states has sort of come into their own. And I got back into it, but I wasn't determined to get one of them. I said, I want something old because that's what I grew up. That's what I knew.
    6:56
    So I went to the paper, the classified ads the next day, and looking for more football machines, and there was hundreds. It was everywhere. Cheap ads, $100, $50.
    7:07
    And they said, just come and get it. And I seen one ad stood out in particular in Sydney. It said amusements, then it said football machines, and then it said bingo machines. I said, oh, bingos. I like playing bingos. I used to play them in the mid-'70s. Lost a lot of money, of course. But I was fascinated by them. So anyway, long story short, I went down to Sydney, bought me a bingo machine, come home, and I had to learn how to fix it on my own because there was no one, not a person. I couldn't get past, couldn't get rubbers, no nothing.
    7:39
    All I'd done when I bought it off the guy and I was leaving the shop, he said, oh, I said, oh, you got any schematics for it? And he said, oh, Graeme, you're the first person who's ever asked me that. I said, righto. So this is 85. So he said, oh, I hope you do well with it, because he thought I was going to put it out on site. He said, no, no, I'm putting this in my lounge room at home. I'm going to play it.
    8:00
    And anyway, so anytime there's a problem, I looked at the book, looked at the schematics and sort of nutted it out. And sometimes it might take me a week just to find a little problem and then fix it, whereas now, you know, basically pick it up straight away. But because I had the passion, I wanted to learn, and I did learn.
    8:17
    And then my girlfriend said, oh, how about we get a pinball machine there because she wanted to play pinballs. And I said, righto. and then I just started with that and I got pinball machines and they didn't seem as complicated as bingos and um just picked it up better like just just basic things like score or sticking and whatever it was at the stage where you could buy a pinball machine for next to nothing so any machine that has some possibility I worked on any machine that was buggered I used to just strip for parts because you couldn't get parts couldn't get a flipper core couldn't get anything and so I gradually over the years built my parts up a bit and then um unfortunately around the same time i started getting really sick with me with my kidneys i had kidney problems and anyway so in 1989 i retired due to illness and um i still was buying pinball machines but i was so sick though you just stayed in the shed i couldn't do nothing to them and then um i got better i had a had a um the kidney transplant around 93 and i got better within the next six months and i
    9:18
    sort of got back into fixing pennies and me and just sort of took my own time and then around probably late 94 i met another friend who does machines not not far from the goat shed and um we went out together fixing machines probably 10 years every day he would learn off me and i would learn off him he was more solid state guy but i still done a bit on the solid state but when we used to fix an em that was great and i am and um so after a while probably it puted off a little bit around about the early 2000s and um he sort of had enough of it and he gave me a lot of his parts and then after that i just slowed down a little bit just done machines like purple ring up oh you fix them yeah right i bring one over and i just take your time and do it and it's nothing like it is now so um but in between that around about the year 2000 and I was approached by Marco Rosagnoli.
    10:13
    He said he got his number off such and such to come around because he was just starting on his first book, which we have here somewhere.
    10:23
    That was his first book. Apparently it's the best-selling pinball book in the world. It's in its third print and it's still going strong.
    10:31
    So he'd come around just to take some photos of the machines. I think I had about 10 lined up in a row here in the goat shed of course we didn't have all the benches and that we do have now my dad built that later on and um he was fascinated done a few photos and i got to know him really good and then um not long after he finished his first book he said oh because i helped him a bit and i knew a lot about pinballs he's saving you know what year was this and i tell him and we're looking up any records and so he knew well he knew a fair bit just off the cuff and um He really needed someone to help him with the photos because he had his, his wife was helping at the time and she was busy with work and a lot of the pictures that we needed were interstate So we go to Queensland and or out of state and we go to Queensland and down down down south a bit But, and so I helped him on his second book, Pinball Memories, just with the photos. And sometimes, you know, he'd be writing something. I said, I'll just chuck this line in to see how you're going. And I already had wrote a couple of articles for pinball magazines and whatever. and he said oh how about you come in on the next book afterwards and I said yeah right oh so we sort of work at a layers gonna they were going to be different from the books that he done so I sort of like gonna be 50 machines you know different areas a little bit about each and do it that way and so so we got we sent out a thing the chef I to do a three book series and they wrote back and said oh it sounds pretty good send us a sample chapter and we did and they said yeah yes that's we'll give you the green light to go ahead but I'm we're gonna gonna have two books for now and that was okay because once you realize the amount of work that goes in normally two books it really does take a lot of time and so I think we've done probably around 2002 to 2007 just to get two books out which is a fair whack of time hmm so anyway so here's the here's the two books that we've done with Marco this first one was a pinball snapshot which um just a basic collection of machines now they're not all am the cover everything but there's a Spanish eyes yeah so if we don't everything like that and then they're still still out there you can get them through our shift of publishing for Amazon I suppose and getting there yeah I think you get them off Amazon yeah yeah but um back in the day it's very exciting it's this is the second month so pinball perspective perspectives very colorful books and Graham did you not have a photograph of you and Marco back in the early days? Have you got that there? We'll show the, you found one? I found this photo the other day while I was going through one of my old cupboards. And just as Marco finished his first book, we went down to Sydney to do other photos. And while we were down there, we visited my brother's place and he was getting married soon. And my brother knew that Marco is a good photographer. So he said, oh, how about you do our wedding photos just coming up in about a month's time and so I said Marcus you agree and said yeah that'd be good and um and so actually I was the best man at the wedding of my brother's wedding and uh went down then here's a random photo that his um his wife at the time took let's have a look my goodness we're just like twins wonderful yeah so um actually i still look pretty good yeah so graham um i guess you know it was a lot of fun writing those books with marco and everything like that and it's you know what 20 odd years back now but yeah yeah um while i'm in america what do you what do you what do you plan on doing are you going to have a vacation or are you going Well, I know in the last couple of times you went away, nothing much changes. It's just that I might get up half an hour earlier, but even then I might set the alarm half an hour, still wake up at the same time. I'm an absolute shocker. And so I come down here and just plod along, and we've got so much work. We just got a jungle princess in and a jungle queen. And so we're doing a bit of work. So we might get one working before Kim goes away. but apart from that we've got a dropper car playfield coming in to get stripped down for painting so we've got to take the parts off the top and the bottom and basically just leave maybe the common on the playfield underneath for the for the GI and other things and we're still working of course on the lightning ball that's got a lot of hardware just on the front of the door and the knocker and the bell and all that sort of stuff. Then I can put the motorboard in and put the... I've got to finish rubbing back the top of the head. Then I can put all the mechanics of the back box in and set that all up. I've got to do the wood. But it's going to be a slow process. Well, you've got a fair bit to do. And, Graeme, where do you see the future of electromechanical pinball heading? Well, electromechanical pinball, I think the hobby for EMs is getting bigger.
    16:06
    Of course, I know even people that have got, you know, 20 machines, late model machines, they always like to have one EM and oldie in there.
    16:15
    And it's getting to the stage now where they're getting harder, they're getting more expensive. But they're going to get high enough where people won't buy them.
    16:26
    So our days of buying wrecks for a couple of hundred dollars and doing them up are pretty well gone. You can't find them anymore. so a lot of people bring wrecks out here and we sometimes have to knock them back because they're just so bad to work on but I think the future could only get better more people making spare parts for the machines like I know back in the late 90s if a machine that had a bad play forward and a bad backlash you could pretty well guarantee you'd wreck it because there's no way it's going to look good enough to sell but nowadays basically no matter what machine you can still bring back to how it should be And so I think it's going to get better. There are going to be more companies bringing out parts that we need. And there could be some retro, like, EM machines made companies. You just don't know.
    17:12
    Yeah, that's very, very true. And, look, I think that gives everyone a great insight into yourself and a little bit about. So I'll continue the talk live now. and we're going to talk about the future of electromechanical pinball in the goat shed and where we see things happening and some of the things that we're going to be doing to help keep that alive. So, Graeme, thanks very much for that. And that's just great.
    17:44
    So, there we go. There's, oh, yeah, Spanky's girlfriend. Is there, Skanky? She's a dirty girl. Yeah, yeah. She's a bit dirty at the moment. And Spanky's away getting a spruce up for the expo. He's got the full makeover.
    18:06
    Okay, so that's Graham. And this is Spanky, by the way, and he did have his full makeover. So that's our mascot. A lot of people think we're mad, but it just goes with the saying with the goat shed. Okay, well, you've heard a little bit about Graham. probably a little bit about myself my name's Kim Oswald I've only been repairing pinball machines for the last almost 10 years I fell into this by pure accident I wasn't going to do pinball it wasn't an intention of mine I was going to build a model railroad and be done with it in my garage and a friend of mine asked me one day would I have a look at a pinball machine I said, hey, I know how to play them, but I don't know how to fix them.
    18:52
    Anyway, he said, I can't find anyone. And he begged and begged and bought me beers and that sort of done it. So I went and had a look at it and miraculously I was able to repair it. And I thought, oh, this is okay. And he had other problems with the machine and this guy wasn't real good at finding people. So I said, look, I'll find out who can do this for you. And I went to the Newcastle Pinball Association and spoke to them and they said, look you go and see this guy graham mcginnis he will do it so i went and met graham and um by then i'd sort of my interest in pinball had ignited and i decided to buy a couple of machines which i did and uh i met graham so this dude here needs his pinball fixed can you help him he said sure sure i said look i've just bought two and i'm interested in learning how to fix them and he sort of looked at me because no one had ever ever ever asked him that before and he said well you know what background have you got and I said look I'm a I've done 45 years in the office machine business I started off as a typewriter mechanic and fixed mechanical adding machines accounting machines duplicating machines offset printing machines you name it photocopiers we used to fix it and they were all like small mechanical devices and electromechanical so he He said, oh, that's interesting, you know, and he showed me a few things. And so we sort of got together. So it was an interesting start to it for sure and certain.
    20:20
    So all up, I've had about 55 years electromechanical experience. Perhaps I should retire now, but I'm feeling old.
    20:29
    This is my third trip to the USA. I'm happy to be here again. Met and made so many friends over here. It's fantastic. The pinball community is very good, very close-knit and friendly.
    20:44
    I've been retired now 10 years last September, the 30th of September. So I actually forgot all about it. I was in San Diego the day I'd actually retired 10 years. So that was a bit of an achievement that I missed out on. But it doesn't matter. I'm here at the moment.
    21:00
    So when I said this to Graeme about getting together, we actually ended up, that was 2013. I retired in 2014 and it probably wasn't until about 2015 that I sort of got together with him and we started off slowly and had a few machines and we sort of didn't have any and then he had a restoration on. He does excellent artwork. He draws up his own stencils and things like that and he paints them and I hate all that sort of stuff, but he's very artistic, so he's really good at that. And away we went. So what we ended up doing was the way the goat shed came about was there was an advertisement on the television simply, and a guy had a goat, and they called it Spanky, and we thought that was a good name. And we were looking for a name, and we said, Goat's a fun, let's call it the goat shed. So that's how that sort of came about.
    22:01
    And our whole philosophy in this is to try and keep these classic old pinball machines going for future generations. Because if we don't keep them going, they're going to disappear and that would be a tragedy. I first played my first pinball machine in about 1963. I was 10 years old and it was a game called Tropic Isle, a game by Gottlieb, which was manufactured in March 62. and so by the time we saw it in australia i was 10 and i've got one of those games now i love it um and um it been fully restored by graham and myself and we have been putting a new brand new nos playfield in it earlier this year which we bought from the states so um that sort of how i got into it um and here we are now um i i have a birthday next week so this will be my third birthday in the usa and i'll turn 71 so this is the whole point of this talk tonight we're talking about the future where it's going to go i'm i'm getting old i got into this hobby quite late but we'll talk about that a little later on where we feel we can make improvements and do things to keep this all going most of you here may or may not know that we have our own facebook group called the goat shed em pinball repair specialist and we have our own youtube channel which is simply called goat shed em pinball repair specialist um is everyone aware of that or a lot of a lot of people have approached me thank you a lot of people have approached me over the last couple of days and thanked us for their videos which is very humbling we're not here to make money we do charge people it's it's our hobby it's our passion and we want to keep this passion rolling forward if we can and we get involved in these videos to train they're short and sweet mostly and they're specific about how to pull things apart and put them back together.
    24:08
    I mean, none of us here can really say that we got taught by Gottlieb or Bally or Williams because there's no one around to do it. I know I'm self-taught. I've learned a lot off my mentor, Graham, and he's learned a lot off me. I've been able to show him the skills I learned in office equipment that reflect in pinball machines, particularly with step units, which are exactly the same as an escapement unit in a typewriter, which makes the carriage move from right to left. so that's the when i saw that that's the how would i say the what was one of the catalysts i thought oh this is cool you know like i'm going to enjoy this and i really do we we both enjoy fixing pinball machines every day um with our facebook group we seem to be growing there's there's there's about six or seven em facebook groups out there there's the original em pinball which has got about 7,000 odd members. There's ours, we're approaching 5,000 members. And there's a few others there that exist. And a guy just started another one just recently too, actually.
    25:13
    So our YouTube, we've got around about just under 2,700 subscribers, which is fine. When we started, we thought if we get 10 subscribers, we'll be happy. So I think we've had that going now for about five years. and as long as YouTube leave them on there, the tutorials, it'll be good for future generations to come. And we've even had our YouTube videos linked up to PinWiki. There's some of them there, not all of them. Some of them you can go and see if you want to see about how you go and read PinWiki, which is quite a good publication.
    25:52
    You might talk about a Gottlieb ball count unit or replay unit. There's often a link to a video. well, that's probably as Chris Hibbler asked, can you use? And I said, yeah, sure you can. You know, they're there for free.
    26:07
    So with our YouTube videos, we get like statistics. And one statistic tells us that the people that watch our videos are all mostly between the ages of 55 to 64 years of age, we get roughly 53% of people watching them.
    26:35
    Now, then if you're between 45 and 54, we get about 22%. And 65 and over, we're only getting 21%. So what that says to me is that a lot of older people, 65 plus are probably you know passing away and the more the more people that are into this now in the this demographic of 45 to 54 years of age now that's only our channel of course but this indicates that we need to do something about it well it does to me anyway so we get involved um in training now we we firmly believe in training and we run about three training courses per annum maybe four depending on the amount of people that we want we showed you earlier on on the brander that we was purpose built for training we've got a television screen we can show clips and things like that and we do live training we've got a whole suite of relays that we show people how to clean and adjust we talk about how score motors work both carousel and horizontal ones and things like that and those training courses go for about four hours five hours actually now which would and the people come along and yeah we charge them money and all the money we make out of the goat shed doesn't go into our pocket believe me it goes into buying parts like new rubbers and lamps and goodness knows what else we've got a lot of second hand parts out there and you heard Graham mention where he's doing a jungle princess well I spoke to him the other day he's finished that then a jungle queen popped up and lo and behold before he's even started the other jungle queen another jungle queen turned up and we're in the middle of doing our lightning ball you may have seen it in the in the video earlier on we've painted it and we've got a new back glass for it and this and we're ready to where to get we're doing the play field up now and um we've got a pro football in at the moment we're waiting on a new cabinet repair for that and we've probably got a williams winner coming in and a drop a card and i just learned this morning what an abracadabra now at its uh mid-october we won't get all that work done it takes us roughly we only work half a day but we do that six days a week because we can't be working on pinball machines all day we go crazy um i think we're mad enough as it is you know people say we carry a goat with us so that's enough um when we do other things graham does his thing i do my thing um you just can't we could work on them but he's not a well man you heard him say he's got issues with his kidneys and he likes to have a rest after lunch and it's good to have a break you know and then you go to the pub and the trouble is the goat wants to come that's the problem very bad news um our approach to repairing a pinball machine is we we want the customer to enjoy the experience a lot of the machines we get just don't work or specials don't work or they don't they don't even realize that you can get an extra ball and things like that or the bonus count doesn't work down so we we take the head off the machine we take the insert out of that head lay it on the bench and we do the score reels and we do the step units in the back so if it's a multiplayer game we do the play unit we strip them right down we take out the replay unit because they're always gummy and sticky we put them all back together every score reel comes apart and the match unit comes apart and we put that back in then we take the play field out sit it in a cradle strip all the parts off the top of it clean it down polish and wax it then we do turn it over and do underneath we normally put a new flipper kit in new pop bumper kit replace all the lamps and inspect it visually and replace any worn parts coil sleeves included like when we do the score reels if you've got 16 score reels in a four player game every coil sleeve gets replaced we don't want it to come back we want the person to be able to enjoy it then we take the motor board or the bottom panel out as some people call it sit it on the bench go through the relays check those all out clean every relay a lot of people say you don't need to do that you don't if you're inexperienced but you're experienced we do it and when we put the machine back together it generally starts up and you know but often you've got to fix things that you know you might have missed a switch on a relay and we troubleshoot and then we test the machine over about a two-week period on off to make sure it's going to work because sometimes you test it this machine's great we'll read the customer come and get it all of a sudden something isn't working right you've got to recheck it or readjust it so we do all that so that keeps us very very very busy and um yeah it um it's fun and if we get a problem we we can't solve it bothers us or it troubles us we walk away go do something else come back and have a think about it sleep on it come back and chat about it the next morning we get into the shed at 7 30 every morning and then we say how about this how about that yep i thought of this i thought of that and we go to the machine and we generally solve the problem we've had some horrendous problems to fix of late um and with wiring and you know all the wire colors they go white particularly if they're left in the sun so you've got to sit down and oh that's a red and white wire and that's supposed to be a gray and white wire hell on earth do you disseminate that so you've got to do a resistance check through the circuit and find the other end of the wire so it's all good fun and keeps us sane and happy I think do I look sane and happy I'm not sure yeah yeah so that's sort of a day in the goat shed you know and we have morning tea we have cup of coffee at 730 20 to 8 we have morning to attend we don't stress we don't rush we just take our time we we're not under anyone's pressure to do anything when people bring their machine we say mr customer you're going to have this without it for four to six weeks and that's generally a pretty good thing so um we also in i didn't mention i come from newcastle in new south wales that's where we live that's on the east coast of australia the climate's very similar to california here i think we have far better beaches than the californians i'm afraid so we have a pinball association called the newcastle pinball association which was started back in 2012 and every september we have our pin fest so we just had one a couple of weeks before i came over and all people bring their machines in and this time we had 104 and we raised $25,000 for charity so that was really really good and that was a charity where if people are down in their luck and they can't afford to buy food for their kids they can go to this place it's called survivors or us it was a charity selected this year they'll give them hampers and food vouchers and stuff and help them along the way so that they got 25 grand out of that which was really really good um indeed so that that pinball festival started back in um yeah thank you it um it quite a humbling experience that pinball festival started back in 2012 so that was the the 13th one we had um so you know we had some happy people there for sure and certain and Graham and I just attend there as the electromechanical mechanics and there's more solid state stuff there but we just go to the bar and sit there someone says hey something's wrong but we generally don't get any problems which is really good now what we really want to talk about now is the future where all of us here in this room can do something about keeping electromechanical pinballs alive and that's all I care about I don't really like playing the modern games I'm sorry to those that do i don't own any i own nine of my own electromechanicals and the youngest ones from 1970 and just in case anyone's remotely interested i'll list what i own i own tropic isle banker ball aquarius king of diamonds sing-along williams apollo williams full house william soccer from 1964 and i also own um i just got in august the last machine which is a William's Magic City from 67. All those machines that I just mentioned, I played as a kid. And they bring back fond memories.
    35:36
    So, and we like to keep those memories going for people that have got electromechanical games. So we mentioned training. We're doing those training courses.
    35:46
    We've been doing those now for about, I think this is the fifth year. and we've probably put through about, I don't know,
    35:56
    60 or 70 students. I lost count. So the people come in, we set up, we show them everything that they need to know as basic electromechanical repair and they walk in with no knowledge or some knowledge and they walk out with a lot of knowledge but probably horribly confused because, you know, after four or five hours of people talking, people get restless, you know. Some of you might even be restless sitting in the chair now listening to me. That's okay.
    36:25
    So training is something that we need to do, all of us need to do. We can do that by courses. We can do that by learning and watching YouTube channels such as ourselves, our Goat Shed one.
    36:40
    There's coaching clinic. Now, anyone that's here and hasn't had a look downstairs in the main room, Mark Gibson from Colorado is here with his Fun with Pinball exhibition. And if you love electromechanical games, please go and have a look at that. But Mark is also an experienced pinball mechanic. And he has, during COVID, when it started back in 2019, 2020, which shut the world down, Mark started here in the States a coaching clinic online where we use like a platform like Zoom, but it's called Jitsi. people can dial call up and we solve their problems he has a number of coaches very experienced people besides mark there's david volansky from the pacific pinball museum in alameda there's tim mehan from seattle and there's myself and there's a few other guys that hang in there's a guy called Dave from Pennsylvania and I probably missed one or two but people come and go and but the aforementioned top three is David, Mark and Tim and myself so they're great and if anyone has got a problem and they can't solve it and often people get onto the Facebook groups ask for help and they still can't solve it we say look sign up for the next clinic we'll help you out and we had a guy just last clinic we did he had a world series got leave wedgehead game mark had been trying to help him like remotely you know without videoing him and all that sort of thing and in the end this guy had this two years we solved the problem in half an hour this guy thought that was fantastic he was elated he kept on you know the accolades he sent us were unbelievable i think he wanted to marry us all.
    38:34
    But, you know, that's the sort of stuff we do to help people out. And we do that all the time. The other thing we can do, and I don't know if anyone here has got a business, you know, they run an arcade or, you know, they have machines on site or something like that. You may have an accomplice, you know. For goodness sake, get someone and train them up if you can. we've been looking for someone for a long time and just by accident about three months ago we had this guy bring a pro football to us and he said hey this is really cool i like seeing inside these things could i come and watch while you do it and we said sure no problem we can come and what he did he he only works three days a week he's about 54 year old and he's now becoming our apprentice so now we've got someone if he sticks at it and he looks like he's going to because he's just messaged me over the last two days he's just bought three more pinball machines so he's addicted so this guy we're training up we're putting a fair bit of time into him he's just going to come around and give us his time and hopefully after about 12 months he'll become proficient he's an electrician by trade and that sometimes helps sometimes doesn't big wise small wise you know um and that's our way of moving forward because as i said you know we're all getting older you know and the the demographics of our uh youtube show us that you know there's not many people over 65 watching our videos um but there's more people you know up to um up to um 64 watching them so as i say that sort of suggests to me that you know a lot of people are either you know dying and all the people that were pinball mechanics and the designers are pretty well all you know gone um i know respectfully there are a few like john osborne he's he's still with us i'll be visiting john again in a week or so he was a got leave designer but what i'm trying to say is there's no experienced people out there so we need to train more people we need to impart our knowledge onto people and we need to make sure that we have the resources in place to be able to get people to fix our electromechanical games we've got to be ever so thankful to people like the pinball resource for make making parts and other suppliers that do i had the pleasure of visiting steve young um a couple of mondays ago we were in new york city and we jumped on the train and went up to Kepsey and we got to go to his private home and look at his private collection and we got to meet all his staff and see all his own personal games and look at all the thousands of parts he's got and the ones that he hasn't got on his website, you know, because he doesn't sort of do that. But this is the sort of thing we need to do.
    41:35
    We believe the hobby has a bright future. It's getting busier and busier for us and I speak to people all over the world, mainly here in America, Canada, UK, South Africa, and they're all getting busier and busier. But a lot of the people are wanting to retire. You know, just in Pennsylvania recently, I spoke to some guys, they're all in their 70s, they're all about my age, and they're all saying the same, we need to get other people in that can do this work. so i encourage everyone to sort of be able to do so you know get someone younger train them up if we can and uh go to courses where you can and mark gibson runs courses here in the states every so often uh if you're interested try and get to one you know because we run them i don't think there's anyone else here from australia except the guys i'm traveling with but um yeah we really really need to do that I guess expectations could be high there but I'm sure I'm really sure that people are interested in preserving these games you know just before I was came on we had the guys from the Pacific Pinball Museum you know they're passionate about preserving them Mike Sheese and Larry's and those type of guys. It's absolutely imperative.
    43:11
    Okay, well, have we got any questions? Anyone like to know anything about the goat shed? About Spanky? His dating habits?
    43:21
    Thank goodness you don't want to know about that. Because I know they're running behind time. Yes? Whenever I watch the videos, I hear the birds and just wonder to know what type of birds are in the background. Oh, okay. Yeah, they're mainly cockatoos.
    43:43
    Yeah, sulfur-crested cockatoos. You'll occasionally hear a kookaburra. And whenever we hear the kookaburra laugh, that means it's going to rain in Australia. Okay? But we don't have any kangaroos hop up the driveway, nor do we have any koalas hanging off the gum trees.
    44:03
    I was going to thank you because I do a lot of WPC and stuff, but I finally got into an EM and your videos were extremely helpful.
    44:23
    And I haven't even gone through everything because we've just been doing it. But have you done like how to read schematics? Oh, okay.
    44:32
    No, we haven't. Yeah. Because some of it's easy, but then there is the secret hieroglyphics to the codes of closed switches, open switches. Yeah. Okay. So if you want to look at a video about schematics, a guy called John Robertson from flippers.com in Canada done one, Schematics 101. It's a YouTube. And David Volansky, who was just here earlier on, but he's retired for the evening now. He's done one as well. And I think that's available on the Marco specialties site. I'd have to check with him. We've steered away from it simply because we don't have the technical, like Mark Gibson, when he shows a schematic, he's got the software to draw the line, and we don't have that. So, yeah, no, but there are quite a number out there.
    45:20
    Okay. Thank you very much.