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#79 RUSH to judgement - The Classic Pinball Podcast

The Classic Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 9m·analyzed·Mar 15, 2022
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

Service tales, Rolling Stones mods, and playfield restoration techniques featuring overseas import hacks and clear coat innovation.

Summary

George and Dave discuss a service call on a heavily modified Red and Ted's Road Show, detailing eddy sensor issues and overseas import hacks. They cover Dave's Rolling Stones software mods (bonus resets, multiplier fixes) designed to eliminate exploits and increase difficulty, then pivot to John's custom electronics work on classic games and Dave Brennan's roller-applied clear coat technique for playfields shown on his YouTube channel.

Key Claims

  • Eddy sensors in Road Show and Star Trek Next Generation are problematic because they drift out of spec due to humidity, heat, and connector oxidation.

    high confidence · Dave describing eddy current sensor technology and its reliability issues in 1990s Williams games

  • Games are now being shipped back overseas again after a cycle of early-2000s imports from container loads that arrived cheap.

    medium confidence · Dave noting cyclical pattern of pinball machine international trade over 10-year intervals

  • Rolling Stones has an exploitable saucer shot that allows skilled players to achieve unlimited bonus by repeatedly hitting the left saucer without bonus resetting.

    high confidence · Dave explaining the core exploit in Rolling Stones gameplay mechanics

  • The Rolling Stones software mod resets bonus from 19,000 to zero after saucer hits, mirroring Gottlieb design philosophy from the era.

    high confidence · Dave describing the bonus reset modification applied to customer's game

  • Valley Games from the 1970s-early 1980s could not separate special/extra ball awards, forcing choice between points OR free game, unlike Stern's flexibility.

    high confidence · Dave explaining design constraints of Valley Games vs. Stern DMD-era machines

  • CPR reproduction playfields have insufficient clear coat thickness and benefit from additional clear application via roller method.

    medium confidence · George reporting Dave Brennan's reasoning for roller-applied clear coat on Flight 2000

  • Murko playfields experience ink adhesion problems where ink lifts off the wood over time despite clear coat application.

    medium confidence · Dave citing John's observation about Murko playfield ink durability issues

  • Flight 2000 is selling for $7,000 in the secondary market, indicating strong demand for EM/early solid-state games.

    high confidence · George mentioning a Flight 2000 listing in New Jersey

Notable Quotes

  • “they got kind of creative and kind of, it's kind of hack-a-rama inside this game”

    Dave @ early — Describes the overseas import Road Show's makeshift repairs using wrong components and improper wiring

  • “it's like an electric field. And you disturb it... it makes the complete circuit not with two pieces of metal on the switch, but with the actual ball.”

    Dave @ ~5min — Explains eddy current sensor technology to George, clarifying a novel sensor type unfamiliar to the host

  • “As long as you level the play field, he had a CPR repro that he was re-clearing... as long as you put this on wet it automatically self levels.”

    George (reporting Dave Brennan) @ ~60min — Describes Dave Brennan's technique for roller-applied clear coat, emphasizing self-leveling properties

  • “the biggest piece is the preparation... you're going to get orange peel... you will find orange peel somewhere... the big piece in order to eliminate that is to buff it out”

    George (reporting Dave Brennan) @ ~65min — Details the critical importance of preparation and post-application polishing in clear coat application

  • “I don't like all the arduino stuff... it just makes the game not like it's supposed to be versus his way... it's just, I don't really care for it, you know.”

    Dave @ ~25min — Expresses preference for tasteful code mods over Arduino retrofit boards that transform classic machines

  • “Inventory is king. You know what? I mean, you're lucky.”

    George @ ~75min — Reflects on secondary market dynamics and availability constraints in collector pinball market

  • “I'd rather have a flight 2000 up than a sea witch these days”

    Dave @ ~80min — Personal gameplay preference shift away from Sea Witch toward Flight 2000's depth and complexity

  • “I won a lot of games in that. Yeah, I did. I won a lot of games in that.”

Entities

DavepersonGeorgepersonMaureenpersonJohnpersonDave BrennanpersonBill DavispersonRed and Ted's Road ShowgameRolling Stonesgame

Signals

  • ?

    restoration_signal: Extended 7-hour service call on Road Show required adjustment of three eddy current sensor potentiometers due to drift, highlighting reliability issues with this sensor technology in 1990s Williams games

    high · Dave's detailed explanation of eddy sensor maintenance challenges and field work troubleshooting

  • ?

    restoration_signal: Road Show imported from overseas (post-2000s) contained makeshift modifications: tungsten switch replacement for opto flipper buttons, frayed and improperly wired GI circuits with oversized fuses, incorrect parts substitutions due to unavailability

    high · Dave's detailed description of hacks found during service call and plan to 'unhack' the machine with correct parts

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Dave notes Rolling Stones was released with exploitable bonus mechanics that should have been caught; designer likely pressured to release rather than refine, common in 1980 Gottlieb era

    medium · George's observation that early 80s manufacturers prioritized getting games out the door; Dave's software mods directly address this design oversight

  • ?

    code_update: Dave created tasteful code modifications to Rolling Stones: bonus reset on saucer hits (19k→0), multiplier reset ball-to-ball, separate special/extra ball awards, free play mode. Approach prioritizes designer intent over Arduino retrofit retrofits

    high · Detailed explanation of four specific code modifications with reasoning; customer approval of changes

  • ?

    technology_signal: John created custom microprocessor replacement for Gottlieb scoring circuits, eliminating timing accuracy issues in original hardware. RGB lighting added under inserts for game state visualization. Applied to Target Alpha custom build.

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.209

0:00
🎵 Hello, pinball world, and welcome to another episode of the Classic Pinball Podcast. My name is George, and today I'm joined by my co-host Dave. Hello, Dave. Hello, George. Folks, my wife and I had Dave and his lovely wife Maureen over the other night for dinner. They happen to be in my town servicing a pinball machine. So we're going to start the show with Dave talking a little bit about that. We will talk about Rush in a little bit. But first, Dave, why don't you tell us a little bit about your service call here in southern New Hampshire. It was a Red and Ted's Road show, but this one was more of a Red and Ted's Road rash, I would say, because it was hurting. and this is a re-import and overseas back in the day, I don't think they didn't have access to parts or whatever, but they got kind of creative and kind of, it's kind of hack-a-rama inside this game. So we spent about seven hours there and pretty much got it good to go. A couple more opto problems it has, so I got to go back and do some more work on it, but brought it back from the dead anyway. and um yeah this has a you know road show is kind of like sort of like funhouse version two sort of kind of because two heads but two heads is better than one kind of but i don't know i still i think funhouse is a better game but uh i don't know a lot about this game so it's a williams 1990s uh super pin you know wide body for that time frame and it has two talking heads in it and instead of using optos for these talking heads and the ball movement or whatever they use eddy sensors and eddy sensors notoriously go out of range and you have to adjust them a little potentiometer on each of these little boards and they're three boards and uh it can drift over time so they're all they're notorious for getting on spec causing false hits causing no hits so it's uh something going to be on top of i'm i'm i'm perplexed explain to me what an eddy like eddy yeah like eddy right so eddy current and eddy current is you uh you put a the sensors mounted underneath the play field and they drill they trim out a bunch of play field wood and put it right next to a very thin layer of wood between the ball running over it and the sensor a little maybe an eighth of an inch of wood. And this sensor can sense metal or any kind of magnetic object going near it and say, okay, that's a ball hit. It changes state. And this little sensor can feel. So it's like an electrified switch. Yeah, like electrified. So when the ball rolls over the area, it makes contact and trips it? Yeah, it's like an electric field. And you disturb it. I never heard of that. That's why I'm asking. So it acts like a switch, sort of. Sort of, yeah. It makes the circuit, but it makes the complete circuit not with two pieces of metal on the switch, but with the actual ball. That's interesting. Yeah, the actual ball. So it says, hey, something changed. Therefore, something changed. The metal came into the area. It changed. Okay, register a hit.

Dave (answering about Rolling Stones) @ ~35min — Acknowledges personally exploiting Rolling Stones' unbalanced gameplay in arcade setting

Star Trek: The Next Generation
game
Evil Knievelgame
Target Alphagame
Starsgame
Flight 2000game
Sea Witchgame
Williamscompany
Gottliebcompany
Valley Gamescompany
American Pinballcompany
Sterncompany
CPR (Chicago Pinball Repair)company
Mirkoperson
The Classic Pinball Podcastorganization
Poor Man's Pinball Podcastorganization
Texas Pinball Festivalevent
Pentasticevent

high · Dave's description of John's electronics work replacing original Gottlieb scanning circuits with instant scoring/reset via microprocessor

  • ?

    restoration_signal: John performed Stars playfield swap featuring custom jeweled inserts, alien/Martian imagery center piece, modified insert locations, and new rule set enhancement maintaining original chime scoring

    medium · Dave's description of Stars playfield mod as 'rule enhancement' making game 'Stars version 2' without going too far from original design

  • ?

    product_strategy: Dave Brennan (American Pinball service manager) demonstrated roller-applied clear coat technique for CPR playfields via YouTube, citing self-leveling product properties and emphasis on preparation/polishing rather than application method

    medium · George's detailed reporting of Dave Brennan's YouTube video methodology, noting automotive background and professional service credentials

  • ?

    product_concern: Murko reproduction playfields experiencing ink adhesion problems; ink lifting off wood despite clear coat. CPR playfields noted as having thin factory clear coat, prompting aftermarket reinforcement.

    medium · Dave citing John's observation about Murko field issues; George noting Dave Brennan's rationale for additional clear on CPR products

  • $

    market_signal: Flight 2000 EM-era game listing at $7,000 in New Jersey secondary market, indicating collector demand for early solid-state/EM games and inventory scarcity

    high · George mentioning specific $7,000 Flight 2000 listing and both hosts agreeing it represents tight inventory conditions

  • ?

    industry_signal: Observational pattern: games exported overseas in early 2000s (bulk imports in containers at $500/machine), restored/flipped domestically, now cycling back overseas again. Suggests cyclical international trade every ~10 years.

    medium · Dave's commentary on Container loads arriving ~2000-2010, now reversing; notes games keep making 'ocean voyages back and forth every 10 years or so'

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Dave shifted preference from Sea Witch (after restoration work) toward Flight 2000, citing greater depth and 'a lot of stuff going on' in gameplay despite shorter feature list perception

    high · Dave explicitly stating preference change after spending time with John discussing Flight 2000; acknowledging John's counterargument of 'one trick pony'

  • ?

    content_signal: Dave Brennan operating 'Dave's Arcade' YouTube channel demonstrating playfield restoration techniques (clear coat application), attracting pinball community attention with professional-level content

    high · George noting Dave Brennan's YouTube presence and upcoming appearance on podcast; describing specific clear coat video production quality and methodology

    • 4:00
    Hmm. Okay. That sounds like it would go out of spec easier than anything else. Yeah, it can. You know, then, you know, you've got to replace components and any kind. You have little connector pins going to things that they can oxidize, creating more resistance. So you had more and more resistance, which fluctuates. Humidity, heat, blah, blah, blah, can just like throw these things out of spec. And they're very, very sensitive to be where they want to be in order to work properly. So they can be kind of a kind of a headache. But they are cool. They use them in Star Trek Next Generation. and you'll see in the um when the ball the flipper feed lanes the ball goes down there's no switch there there's no opto there's no rollover switch there's the same thing they use eddie sensor switches there in the play field it makes for a nice neat play field and no like nothing there like it's sort of magic you know it goes over it so it's kind of uh it's a neat little trick they do but they stopped kind of they did it for a couple years and they realized it was problematic so they really not that i know of that no one's really doing i don't think stern's doing it anymore i think that's going with the tried and true opto is where people were you know things are these days opto and a micro switch instead of that how long do you think it had been since some tech or person worked on this machine sounds like forever forever he's had it for either over 15 years or so he got it on he got an ebay i think from michigan and there was probably this back in the heyday of the early 2000s when maybe 2010 or so when people were bringing back container loads of pins from overseas and getting them cheap you know maybe 500 bucks a piece or less or whatever a whole container load and it all come back over here and then restoration houses or shop at houses or flip it places we just kind of clean them up send them out and not really do too much to them get them working and make a good profit on them and the funny thing is nowadays I think it's the opposite. Now games are being shipped back overseas again the past couple of years. So they keep, they keep making this ocean voyage back and forth every 10 years or so. Why don't you, I'm going to switch subjects unless there's something else with this game that you want to talk about.
    6:17
    Oh, one more thing with this game. Again, they got, they got pretty creative. I know one more thing. One more. Oh yeah. I think that's your new name. It is. I'm Columbo. One more thing, Dave.
    6:33
    All these type of games in the 90s, a lot of the DMD stuff, Williams Valley, they used opto switches for their flipper buttons. So their flipper buttons, instead of having like a real tungsten switch or a low voltage gold contact switch in the flippers, they would use an opto interrupter. So a little plastic, you hit a button, and the plastic would go out of the little U-shaped opto and say, okay, that's a flipper hit. So I noticed on this game, this game has one right flipper and three left flippers. So an upper flipper, a mid flipper, and a lower flipper on the left side. And I noticed after I spent seven hours in this game, it's like, why are the upper two flippers working? The lower one is not. It's like it was dead. Then I went inside and said, oh, this is bizarre. they, for some reason, they didn't have the parts or whatever, so they threw out the opto switch for the flipper on the left flipper side. They hardwired in an old-school tungsten switch assembly, which is no good because if you're going to do that, use a low-voltage one because it's not going to be sensitive enough. And so I pressed on it, and I got the flippers to work. But I had to, like, totally just micro-adjust this thing just right. And I told the guy, it's working for now, but this thing is no good. I'm going to come back with the correct parts for this game. This game needs to be unhacked.
    8:00
    So, yeah, that was the first time I've seen that. Someone taking the opto thing out and going back to old school, like 1980 technology. What's the cost of an opto for a flipper like that? Inexpensive? Yeah, probably $15, $20. Oh, okay, okay. Something like that. Yeah, they probably just couldn't get it. yeah they probably couldn't get they probably make them they probably you know they they just and another thing that they do with all the wiring and so forth oh there's another hack um they you know it has a bunch of different lighting circuits in the game and so you have like i think six different uh gi circuits general illumination circuits and i saw they did some really hacked wire in the back there they kind of pressed the wires in with and they're all like frayed out i was amazed there was any light at all coming from this game and then i saw some other wires underneath the game kind of with wire nuts not soldered from here to here and so it's kind of piggybacking on another gi circuit that's supposed to be all separate but now they're doing it's requiring more power that's why the guy had a bigger fuse so i was like i just undid all that stuff and i did it the right way and unhook so i just like unhacked already some stuff but it's just amazing how the the overseas games what they did and how they just kind of i guess just like keep having it take a quarter. As long as it takes a quarter, we don't care what you do. And it's one of those deals. Not unseen. We've all seen it before. Let's shift gears for a minute. All right.
    9:28
    You sent me a video, and we talked about it the other night when you were here, the mod that you did to your Rolling Stones. And if you can believe this, I had to go look. That was four shows ago.
    9:42
    It seems like yesterday. That's right. Four shows ago, and actually one of our most listened to shows. So thank you, folks. Why don't you tell the folks a little bit about the mod that you did? I thought it was a good one. I had played the game before you did it. I like what you did. So a buddy of mine, he's really good at all his older code, Ballycode, Williams Code, Stern Code, all that stuff. and uh he know he can read it like a book he's been doing it for a while so i reached out to him and said hey you know i know you're busy but uh pretty pleased this game is such a great game it definitely needs it needs a little tweaking like they kind of released it i wish they the designers had more time the software field more time with the game before they released it back in 1980 and and you know my friend is in the same page as me he doesn't like all the arduino stuff Arduino boards basically can take like a Paragon or whatever and make it into play like a WPC game with all the different music and different hits and different stuff. It just makes the game not like it's supposed to be versus his way. Well, it takes a classic machine and turns it into a resto mod, as I would call it. You're bringing it up to today's standards, sort of, I guess, right? Kind of, but for me, for him and I, it's like, it's just, I don't really care for it, you know. And, but, you know, that's why they make different flavors of ice cream. It's someone's flavor, it's not ours, you know. So he likes the, you know, doing tweaks to software that it would make sense from the designer standpoint. Like, what would they, if they had more time with the software, what would they have done to add more features and more, enhance it a little bit? Just, you know, a couple of things that make sense. Tasteful mods, let's call it, you know. Same thing with tasteful LEDs. You don't want to go too crazy and have clown puke LEDs, right? So what we did is I said, here are the things that this game really needs to make it harder. Because right now, as it sits, the game is you can just get a bunch of bonus up, hit that saucer on the left-hand side, and just keep rinse repeating, collecting all day. You'll be flipping that game over, no problem, over a million points, two million points. If you get a really good ball, you can just keep going. You know, I'm going to I'm going to interrupt you for a sec. I'm guessing it's one of the reasons why this game is probably not used in tournament play because of that exploit. Yep. I would I would imagine so, because if you're a good player, just keep going there and you can exploit it. Exactly. So I want we wanted to unexploit that, make that tougher, along with some other stuff.
    12:32
    So what we did is there's two ways to get bonus on this game. the first one is going those little backstage pass areas, they call them. They're on the little horseshoe loop-de-loops on the left and right side, near the flippers there, up above the flippers. And you go through there a couple times, and it brings your bonus up really quickly, up until 19,000. After 19,000, it stays there. It can't get any higher, and you just get a either. If you throw it in that scoop up there, the saucer up there, it'll score you 19,000 points, but it doesn't reset back to one. So the Gottliebs of that timeframe, they would always, they would reset back to one. So they go, that's a great thing. Gottlieb did. So let's do that. So when it goes in the saucer, reset back to one. So now you can, you know, fill the gas tank up, empty the gas tank up, you know, and it's great. So it's making, it's making you work for the points rather than saying, here's the saucer, keep putting it in there. You get 19,000 points. right and so because once you get the other way once you get 19 000 points you're not going to bother hitting those horseshoe turnarounds anymore because they don't give you anything they're hardly anything they don't get add your bonus anymore you can't get more than 19 000 points so it makes you have to shoot for other stuff it kind of deadens areas of the playfield make you shoot other things um it kind of negates those things so we wanted to bring that so that was that's the that was the biggest bang for the buck in the software mods the next one we did was the two, three, and five times multiplier. On the stock version, you cannot, that holds over from ball to ball. Not selectable. It's hardwired in. Once you get two times, three times, five times, it stays. It doesn't go away from ball to ball. So I want to have that resettable. So from ball to ball, that will go back down to nothing, go back down to one time. So that's a dip switch, right? Yep, you got to earn that again. That's another good mod. I mean, a lot of other Bali games have that, or Bally games have that. What did I say, Bali again? Jesus. Bali, hi.
    14:38
    No, I mean, some games have that setting. Others don't, but that's a good mod for that game. Any others? A lot of Bally games from this time frame, they all need these particular mods. It kind of goes on all their games from this time frame. They all need, to one degree or another, this kind of stuff.
    14:58
    The other one is a 20, 40, 60 bonus holdover that you get from getting the one through five stand-ups. So you go one through five the first time, 20, and that holds from ball to ball. Then get it again, 40, get it again, 60. And that also gets scored when you go on that saucer.
    15:19
    So we were going to – I have it selectable so you can actually make that reset as well back to zero. So if you have 60 and then you go to the next ball, you go right back down to zero. It's a very harsh one, though. And he even told me, it's like, yeah, I can do it, but I bet you're not going to probably use that one because it's too harsh. It's too punishing.
    15:40
    You're taking away some of the foundations of the original game. That makes sense. Yeah. I think the number one is probably your best, like you said. That's something that really should have been done. Yeah. Yeah, that 19, and that's the one that I kind of, when I did this for the customer's game, and they were very pleased. They didn't expect me to do a software upgrade as well, so they were very happy with that. That 19 down to zero, that's like the best bang for the buck. And the other one that I kept as well on hers is the Valley Games in this time frame, your special and extra ball were tied together, so they're either worth points or they're both worth either a special and extra ball, a free game and extra ball, I mean, or they're worth the specials and extra ball and extra balls and extra ball. Those are your choices. You can't separate them. Versus the sterns of that time frame, you can separate them and say, okay, I want the special to equal $50,000 and I want extra ball to equal extra ball. Valleys a lot of times didn't do that until later on, maybe in the 80s or 81 era, they started doing that. but in the 70s and 80s, they didn't really do it for the most part. So I had them separate that. So the great thing about that is a lot of ballet games have specials on them, a lot of them. So instead of just, you know, in a home environment, what do you need to win free games for? You want points. So we did that. So now the specials are 50,000 points when you get them. And going through that little backstage pass horseshoe thing, you can get that racked up either side to a special pretty good by going through there I think about maybe five or six times And you get 50 points for that So that was another good one Put it on we did a free play mod on it as well And what else do we do on it
    17:30
    It sounds to me, Dave, that in that era of game manufacture, they were more concerned with getting the games out the door and delivered and said, good enough. There's enough features here where most people won't even see. But now that these games have become home games and collector games, people now want a little bit more feature-rich so they can change the game around and have a little bit more say in how the game is played. Well, I would think they should have stopped the exploit back in the day in that saucer so much because if you're a root operator or you're an arcade and someone's stepping up to Rolling Stones and they just play a couple games or so and they get good at it, they can sit there all day and win games. When you flip that game over, it gives you three games. It goes pop, pop, pop. I'm laughing to myself because I'm guessing that you did that back in the day. Oh, yeah, I did. I won a lot of games in that. Yeah, I don't have a lot of time on this game back in the day. So, yeah, I could see, like you said, I think you've said before, you'd build up enough games where you could sell them at half price and go play something else. Yeah, it was great. I got to play all day for free after a while. That was fun. Let's move to what you did yesterday. And kind of, this is kind of a filler episode, folks, because we don't have a game ready to go, but I believe you're getting close. Why don't you tell the folks what you did yesterday what did i do yesterday it's all a blur you know what you did you went to visit our friend ah yeah that's what i did right thanks george no no not our neighbor our friend oh no i know our yes our friend correct yes i need to go i'm working on evil cuneval uh working on two of them actually one's going to be a cpr swap and one's going to be a really nicely touched up playfield protector one.
    19:39
    And they both have the same cracked plastic guide, a clear plastic guide, top left of the playfield, both cracked the same area, high impact area. And I know a friend, John has a bunch of woodworking equipment, all that kind of stuff. And he could easily, and I need to get one of these too. I had one a while back and it broke. I need to replace it. It's a little band saw or a little or a scroll saw kind of thing. So I can cut me on plastics. so I said, hey, can I come over? And he goes, oh, sure. So I went over there and cut the plastics, no problem, and that came out great. And also I brought him – I have a belly tester for solenoid boards that I put a board on a while back, and the board was so bad it blew up the thing.
    20:28
    And, you know, who knows how to fix these things? I have a schematic for them. I even tried fixing it a little bit. It's like, yeah, hey, John, you want to crack at this? I got a schematic, and so I gave that to him. Genius John, he's the right guy to give it to.
    20:45
    He's got a brain on him. He's an electrical engineer, and he makes his own circuit boards. He did his own light strips on modern games. You can put them on the side of the cabinets, and it's like stadium lighting. Yeah, made his own stadium lighting and color-changing stadium lighting. He made his own. He showed me his Target Alpha hybrid, EM solid-state hybrid. I played it. Like, what a great job he did with that, too. I mean, he showed me all about it. We played it. He showed me all the different circuit boards. So typically with these games, with Gottlieb games from this time frame, the mid-'70s, early-'70s, they would just do so many things to kind of scan across and get all the bonus points and get drop targets down. You'd be sitting there for, I don't know, it seems like minutes when you lose the ball. You go, da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da. It's like just going and doing all this stuff. And a lot of times, just trying to do so much stuff, it would miss something, and you wouldn't get the right scoring. And no matter what you do to adjust it and rebuild things, it would still – they just taxed the thing with so many things to do that the engineers could only fit so much timing in a certain amount of cycles, and it wasn't really accurate. So, you know, John of the Rescue, he said, well, I think we can fix that. So he took that whole circuit out from Gottlieb and put in his own microprocessor.
    22:08
    And that does it. And when it goes through, it scores the points right away, drop targets reset right away. Everything's like instantaneous. And then with all different RGB lighting under the inserts to tell you what different status, what different points are worth, what target's worth, what. So he kind of made a nice game for himself. that, in fact, he might want to – we were talking about bringing it to Pentastic. I was going to say, that's the place to have that game be shown. And he's maybe doing a seminar on it. He's thinking about doing a seminar on it. Even better. And I said, yeah, you should. But he's afraid that people say, I want one, build me one. He doesn't really want to make it. He's got to teach you, Dave. He's got to teach you how to do it. Right. I'd need some money for that one. He's certainly not going to teach me. No.
    23:03
    Oh, no. Thanks for that quick agreement. You're welcome. No, he'll probably, I bet you he'll either give the plans away or maybe charge something for the plans. But he has all the stuff that someone wants to do it. He has the stuff that, you know, here you go. Here's how you do it. And, you know, if you're mechanically, electrically, electronically inclined, you might be able to do it. But you got to be really motivated.
    23:29
    Got to see his whole collection. I haven't been to his place in a while. And, yeah, got some. He has did a Stars, Stars play field swap. And it has a new Stars play field and new rule set for that game that you can incorporate together. Pretty neat. Makes the game. It doesn't go too crazy with making it just too far out of what it's supposed to be, but it's like a rule enhancement. It makes it like a Starz version 2. And the play field has these jeweled inserts. It has an alien. It almost looks like a Martian girl that's well endowed on the play field right in the center there. A lot of jeweled inserts, very colorful inserts. They change the insert locations where they go versus the original.
    24:21
    And it still has chimes. Who makes this play field? Don't know. Doesn't matter. It's out there. I want to say Mirko, but I'm probably wrong about that one. He's in the news again, but we'll steer clear of that. I guess he's going to Texas Pinball Festival. I think he better bring an armored suit. there's a lot of people uh i think uh that want to have a little bit of a talk with him yeah he so john was approaching that too he said yeah murk i must maybe it's beehive pinball made this made this play field i'm not sure but it's out there but he said that he's thinking the murko fields and that kind of thing or is they're having a problem with the ink adhesion to the wood for whatever changed it's and no matter if you put clear coat on top of it that's great but over time the ink will actually lift off that's the problem is is um with these playfields now i have a couple of merco playfields i haven't done anything with them yet but sitting there they're fine maybe when you install them and start i would have okay this is a good lead-in i would have those probably re-cleared if there's an issue with the adhesion but again i'm no expert would a clear coat even prevent that from happening i don't think so because a clear because it's the lowest layer right yeah the clear is on top the lowest layer is the no i understand but that leads me to unless unless there's something else you want to talk about i want to talk about what i watched on youtube yesterday all right there's a gentleman i don't know if you know him i'm familiar with him a guy named dave brennan he uh i know him because he's uh been on uh the Poor Man's Pinball podcast. He's a collector. He's actually the service manager for American Pinball for the last two years. I mean, that went by very quick. I remember when he got the job. But he was doing a clear coat on a Flight 2000 yesterday live. But here's the kick. he was doing it with a roller application.
    26:39
    Sounds kind of dicey. I don't know. No, actually, the guy, actually, Dave knows what he's doing. What he was saying is as long as you level the play field, he had a CPR repro that he was re-clearing. We won't go into that. Just let that sit. okay the the play field itself was warped so he had to level it and what he said was and everybody's going to ask me what's the product he used i he didn't show it again but he'll be on in the next couple days so i'll report back but he said as long as you put this on wet it automatically self levels. I'm like, okay, that makes sense. And he said, the biggest piece is the preparation, which he did with nap the, you know, he basically send it or scuffed it all up. So it would, you know, take adherence. And he said, then it's all the polishing afterwards. He said, I don't care how good you are with laying out clear, whether it's by gun roller or anything else. He said, you're going to get orange peel. He said, go look at your car. He said, most finishes, you will find orange peel somewhere on your car because the big piece in order to eliminate that is to buff it out or apply another level of clear and then buff from there. So when we talk about clear coating, I think the thing that people don't understand and they might learn something from this guy is how the process works. And it takes, to do a really nice play field, we've talked about Bill Davis many times, it's how many coats of clear you need to put on and the sanding and preparation in between each one of those clear coats in order to get a really nice play field. It's laborious. I think this is the inexpensive way to do it, but let's face it, If you could get 90% or 95% of what a bill would do, that's a pretty good – I mean, it was all easy to acquire stuff. You had a paint tray. There was nothing complicated about it. I'm like, okay, that seemed pretty simple. What was the product? The results will be when I see when he's actually sanding it and how much more goes into it. But I think it's going to come out okay. But what's the purpose of – he's trying to get rid of a warp by adding more clear? No, no, no, no, no, no. He just he just thinks that the CPR play fields have such a thin clear on it that they should have more clear on it and it'll give a better looking play field. I think he's worried about over time the wear of the coating that's on a CPR right now. Well, I'll tell you the wood. The problem is, but is the wood these days, if you look at the wood of a play field. No, I only mentioned that because, you know, the whole idea in doing it with a roller is you have to have a level play field. If you don't, the product will run into that area where it's not leveled. You understand, right? The thing is, if you don't use a two-part clear, it's not going to be nice and transparent. A one-part clear typically, and that's what he sounds like he's got, is not going to be – We're going to find out. I'm not poo-pooing it until I see it. I'm just saying if you're looking for a low cost method, let's face it. I mean, again, you do a lot of business, but, you know, to the person who does it once or twice. I mean, some people get up to a thousand dollars to do a clear code on a play field. I mean, you put that on top of an eight or nine hundred dollar play field. That's a very, very expensive play field. Yeah, I I'd still like to get it. I know you. I get the professional one. I'm only bringing it to your attention because we talk about all this stuff all the time. And here's it's it's just an alternative. I'm not endorsing it and I'm not saying it's it's bad. I'm just saying, hey, here's a creative way. This guy is a collector. This is no this is no somebody who just came into the hobby. This is somebody who's got automotive background. He seemed he seemed to have a pretty, you know, a pretty extensive background. Plus, he's the service manager of a pinball company. Let's face it. That requires a lot of patience and knowledge.
    31:00
    True. That's very true. So, anyway, I mention it and you're not going to be happy. Guess what the name of his YouTube channel is?
    31:12
    Dave's Arcade. Oh, boy. Well, you know, it's a popular name. He's part of the Dave Club. Okay. That's all right. So I only mention it because, you know, I saw a Flight 2000 for sale. I think it was New Jersey. Did you see that one? $7,000. Wow. So was it nice? Yeah, it was a nice get. Okay.
    31:37
    But $7,000 nice? Yeah. Right. It's like I said to you, I don't know, about a week ago. Inventory is king. You know what? I mean, you're lucky. Right. What, you want to go there now? Well, a little bit. No, speaking of Flight 2000, I was talking to John about that, too. I spent all afternoon with him over there. It was a great time reconnecting and so forth and playing pin and all that kind of stuff. Talking about Flight 2000, because he doesn't like Flight 2000 at all. He doesn't get why people like that game. And I said, well, after having my Sea Witch up and doing my thing with it and making, you know, I made it really, did like a reshop on it.
    32:18
    I don't know. I just wasn't feeling the love for Sea Witch. It's like, you know, I'm going to, so I took it down. I'd rather have a flight 2000 up than a sea witch these days, you know? And he didn't get that. He didn't think he just thought flight 2000 was a one trick pony, but I don't know. I just, I like that game. I like how it's there's a lot of stuff going on with it. So. Yeah. I don't think we've talked about this, haven't we? We never did a show on that game. So at some point in time, we'll, you'll have it set up and we can play it.
    32:50
    I'd like to talk about our other friend, Mr. Stone. Mr. Stone? I think I told you the other day I'm turning on Twitch, and lo and behold, a new feed comes in. And who's on but Eric.
    33:07
    And I'm like, okay. The name of the site was Batcave Pinball, and he was playing the Batman 66, another crane game. I think we talked about, what crane did we talk about? One of them in one of the games. It seems like there's quite a few of them now that have that. But the problem was I wanted to talk to Eric. He didn't have any texting. He had no way of knowing who was on and who was trying to communicate with them. So I didn't get to ask him any questions of whose site is this? What are you doing on, et cetera, and so forth. So I know we talked briefly that you had spoken to him. I'm guessing he's okay, right? You didn't know anything about this, did you? I didn't know. No, he's planning on doing the IFPA World Championship down in Florida, his own backyard arcade down there. So he's planning on hitting that. You know, I was talking to John about, you know, these different pinball functions and different tournaments. And, you know, there's a huge league that, you know, they go, the whole New England league, they go all the different main, Rhode Island, whatever. That was starting up again. And, you know, besides you got to show, you know, proof of whatever, instead of the regular proof, you know, you know, we're talking about that your papers, please prove they're also now requiring proof of Ukrainian support. So that was an interesting thing. Stop. We don't need we don't need to go there. So, yeah, it was it was good to see Eric. Hopefully the next time he on he he able to communicate and we can find out a little bit more about what going on in the world of Eric stay tuned we figure that out let me see what else do I have on my list here Dave oh we were talking about tournaments let's talk about shows three of them coming up and you and I talked about this the other night over dinner you're still planning on going to Pinbrew Fest even with the even with gas prices approaching five dollars uh not going to be an inexpensive trip by any means yeah and maureen's like we're saying as you were kind of thinking of like bowing out a little bit maureen's thing which we bow out to you know because it's you know more wear and tear on the car uh gas prices and so forth it's going to be expensive going out there although the accommodations are cheap everything else is really very reasonable yeah it's not new england i mean hotel i mean i booked the hotel i think it was like a hundred dollars a night it was 85 bucks some of that plus tax right i mean with fees and whatever it was like under 100 bucks like that's cheap and you know the only expensive part really is getting there um which isn't crazy i guess if you really think about it some more money each way i'm guessing probably anywhere between 20 and 40 in gas, which if you're going to go, it's actually nickels and dimes when you really think about the whole trip. I think it's more than that in gas. If you get like 20 miles per gallon, I get 30 some odd miles per gallon. Yeah, not my car. You're right. Well, I'm saying for me, it's not too bad. Right. If you drive a gas pig, yeah, it's going to be probably considerably higher. I'll see. I'm still fencing on that. It looks like a really fun show. And I don't know if you saw the thread. I guess Chris Franchi is coming to the show. Not that that would mean a hell of beans to me, but it was nice to see somebody, you know, from the art world there. Yeah. Maybe he'll do some kind of cool design for something too out there. It'd be interesting if he does something. Yeah. I love his t-shirt that he did for, uh, for fantastic. So we'll Very controversial. I would think that that's probably part of the gig, but we'll find out. And then we've got two more shows coming up in early May. We've got Pin Fest down in Allentown, and I'm probably going to end up going to that. I had fun last year. I know you're probably going to go as well. Oh, yeah, I'll go. And then at the end of June, we're back to Pintastic again. I said to myself, we just did a show on that. Are people going to listen to us pontificate? But that seems to be a show people like to listen to when we do our games coming to the show and our review of those games. People seem to like when we do that. So stay tuned. That's upcoming.
    37:42
    Yeah, that'll be fun. If we hit all these shows, that's one show a month. Oh, yeah. We've got instant content. That makes it easy for us. it's everything in between and i was thinking i'm like oh i was reading on pin side this morning somebody lamenting yet again that uh they had a burned out embryon and i'm like you know this has been discussed so many times i'll ask you we really haven't talked about this i'm wondering if anybody is going to do a hard top a decal to go over the burned out area and that you know bonus ring up top or i doubt anybody will ever do a play field for it just because it's a wide body i don't hold out hope for that what do you think or even a playfield protectors they don't want to do too many wide body playfield protectors either because it's a whole different uh right but i have artwork missing i need some you know i need some help underneath i know you know that could be accomplished but i really would like i mean if you could find one i'd really like a nice play field but i'm not holding out hope and actually i sold one for sale recently i thought it was pretty reasonable uh 2 500 bucks for one and it looked it looked pretty nice it wasn't all burned down i'm like well it's not a bad price for that game i don't know how much interest there is but that's one of the games that you and i need to do we did we attempted to do it early in our career and i cringe when i went back i cringed when i went back to listen to it oh it was all It was awful. Awful. We're not perfect, but I think we're a lot better than early parts of our podcast. I'll just say that. I also have the same person who did my software mod for my other ballet games. He did an early software mod for my Embryon that when you have two balls out, two ball, multi-ball, you're getting double playfield values.
    39:43
    But it's not even anything I shoot for in that game. That's like if it happens, it happens. See, that's what makes it good because in Fathom, you get when two balls are out, it's two times play for the value. When three balls are out, it's three balls. No, I understand. I'm just saying I'll be honest with you. If I play 10 games, if one of those games has an extra ball, it might be it. And I'm saying playing a good game and going through the thresholds, et cetera. I usually don't play the game that way. That's not something like other games where you want the multi-ball. It's not something I'm trying to obtain. It's a weird game that needs a certain appreciation from someone that would like this kind of game. Because the problem is in the middle of that game, it's a big blocking tackle there. You're basically shooting left and shooting right, but you're not really shooting center. You're always shooting left and right at things versus other games you're shooting up the center a lot of times. You do it in this game, and you could be asking for trouble. It's going to go right down the middle. So you typically don't shoot the brain shot. You're kind of going left and right, I find, on it. I would agree. You don't want to hit that center target until you've gotten enough bonus or have gotten to a comfort area, and then you'll start hitting that thing because there's nothing else to really do on the game. It is. It's a big waste of space, I'll just say it. And it was a controversial game back in the day, you know, Embryon. Oh, yeah. I think it's not... Let's put it this way. I don't think it's a family-friendly game. No, not really.
    41:20
    Yeah, the evolution of life probably doesn't go very well with a lot of people. Yeah, there's other certain games, too. Like, you know, what's the one from... Devil's Dare, Gauntlet, System 80. That's not family-friendly. A big, huge devil in the back. Big devil head.
    41:38
    And not like a nice, friendly one, like from Fireball Classic or something. It's like, okay, it's kind of cartoony and it looks like a friendly just up to some mischief devil. Now this devil looks like he's about to eat your heart and freaking stomp on your soul or something. Yeah. Satan's not a big seller. Not a big seller. Well, some people love the guy. We've kind of postponed this long enough. Let's get into the meat today. All right. you've heard folks before that dave is in the process of having a rush delivered to him well i'll let the cat out of the bag dave was contacted by his distributor and in the next couple of days we're recording on sunday in the next couple days dave is going to take possession of his game So I'm going to let Dave start and talk about what we planned on doing and if he's still holding true to what we discussed the other night. So the floor is yours, Dave.
    42:44
    So I was talking to you, George, about this and also was talking to John about this. And you clued me into certain things that, you know, some people are having various things they like to have modified on the Rush pinball machine that's having some issues. And they, you know, so the scoop, you know, it's always getting banged up and the stern keeps trying to. Pinside is on fire. On fire talking about this particular item. I don't think I've seen anything. Well, yeah, there have been other controversies, play field controversies, but this is the latest and greatest, I would say. Would you agree? I'd agree. And I think they have a valid point. I looked at pictures after about a couple, you know, 10, 15, 20 plays, like, oh, already, you know? So it got me kind of like, yeah, instead of like having a little unboxing and playing a little party and play the crap out of it, I'm thinking, first you and I were talking I was like well why don't we just like roll the box in and be like Indiana Jones at the end of the movie and you roll it back in the catacombs until it's ready to play you know when everything's all worked out in software and manufacturing here's some cliffy protectors for it and blah blah blah and I was talking to John about it and he says oh you know what you still should do it just don't play it leave it virgin just you look at it or maybe you know you can kind of test it out a little bit but no you could restrain yourself from that well i you know what i would at least do they make they just released a playfield protector for it so i think i'm gonna i'm gonna install one of those in this game i'm gonna install a playfield protector i didn't know that no that would be but continue because i know somebody came up with a fix that seemed pretty reasonable that you could put on and then when a really good option comes up oh yeah yeah okay so Oh, yeah. Right. So there's all different options. You know, Stern's option was like putting two big shoulder pads on the side of the thing. What is that? It looks like piss ugly. I look like it looked like a what did they call him? A tackling sled from the NFL. These big. It's terrible. What a hokey fix. Bad. Someone on someone on Pinside made a great comment on it and said, I want to thank Mrs. Fleischer's third grade class for coming up with this.
    45:12
    I'll say it even more succinct. You don't go out and buy a 12 or $13,000 machine to have that as the fix. No. It's kind of insulting. Let's just say it's not elegant.
    45:27
    That would be an understatement. And it's not. And it makes the shot even hotter on the left side to shoot up. There's a little narrow place to shoot. It makes it even narrower to shoot that long shot up the left. So I like another guy. So people were saying, oh, we need to get a Cliffy or a Mantis Protector, but they're not making them yet. People are still, you know, they're hoping they do, and they probably will. But this other guy said, you know, I have this vinyl, clear vinyl film you use on cars when you're going to put it in the front of the car to stop for stone chips and that kind of thing. Right. You know, and I had the materials. I put some in my car, and it's nice, thick mylar. And I'm thinking you could just, like, form that over that whole little scoop area there and have it all, you know, inside and around it so the ball is never going to hit wood anywhere around it. It's going to hit this vinyl. And I'm thinking that might be a nice little fix for it. And it'll look good, too, you know. yeah no i i studied those pictures and i think i might have been wrong when we had this discussion the other day is the wear inside the scoop or is it around the surround of that scoop protector both and are both of those scoops joined together in one spot yeah i really took a long time looking at it and i'm like first of all why would you put two scoops together like that well two scoops and then when you look at the manufacturing of those scoops they look pretty chintzy i think the designer was a fan of post raisin brand has two scoops in every box but i'm bummed oh another dad joke oh my god it's brutal but you know so yeah two scoops one is south facing and one is east facing all in the same area right there and the one in the front the designer he did the same thing on the new kiss game too the thing is in the same area and it gets beat up the same way the same size scoop so So I think the way out of it is that clear vinyl. I'm thinking right now until these other things develop. But I don't really want to play the crap out of it anyway because I want to replace all the black rubber. I can't believe they're still using black rubber on these games. It just causes dirt and looks nasty. They must have bought a million pounds of that stuff. Oh, sure they did. Yeah, it's junk. It's not even silicone. so i'm going to put on uh on clear silicone rings and colored posts and some colored flipper rubber on as well and a playfield protector and and and and and then i'm looking for all the different mods people are doing for a little tasteful mods like they're doing a little dalmatian with the uh lit fire hydrant that's for the signals album and then a little bunny coming out of a lit bunny coming out of a top hat that's the presto album so little things like that are cool so there's some mods that they come out that I like other ones like, nah, I don't need it. That's kind of hacky. Um, but there's other, um, people keep coming up with different things. So I have three mods I want to talk to you about. Okay.
    48:48
    First one. Are you going to buy a Tibetan breeze? I was just looking at that. And I might, you know, I think I, I installed it for a customer a while back for one of these stirring games.
    49:03
    Um, that was, you remember when we first talked about it right where we almost died no why don't we remember we're driving to lake winnipesaukee and the guy swerved in and that's when we were talking about yeah pinball monk pin monk right isn't that who makes it yeah yep that's that's one mod so okay so you're you're thinking about it the second one which i thought was a great mod did you see this bezel mod for the area with the uh the light bezels between the two flippers there's an area i i don't remember the nomenclature there's a couple of planets and then there's like four or five different light bezels they created a a mod i guess underneath i don't know there's some kind of electronics it's not just a light board or maybe it is a light board again i when you get your game i want to look at some of the things because i really don't know the insides of a modern stern other than when you were repairing that lead zeppelin um but for 30 bucks or 35 bucks this guy made a light bezel where you can put really colorful lights in there to make it look and it stands out a lot nicer you can go out i think it's a i don't know who makes it it might be a it might be a pin monk but it looked pretty good so basically it lights up your flipper area no there's bezels there that tell you to do certain things and the way he described it is i put colors in those bezels so when you get to a certain mode you can do the equation of oh that's the red one because they're kind of pale go out and look um okay i'm probably not doing a great job describing it but when you look at it you go oh yeah that's a pretty good and a cheap one i mean something that you don't see but i thought that was a pretty decent mod for the game when you say something i would look at when you say bezel though what is what's what bezel are we talking about like the light um you know where light shines through and it says oh you need to do x or you just performed x and it lights up oh oh you mean like a insert lighting like a light insert right okay same thing okay all right okay sorry inserts wrong words okay so he's basically saying the light lights up it only has an rgb light in there that will light up a certain thing go out and look at it we can talk about it again but i thought that was a good one the other one that i saw uh i didn't write it down but i remember it was uh did you see the drumstick mod somebody came up with i did it maybe i saw version one but i didn't care if it looks like it's tie wrapped on there and a couple drumsticks and call it done is that pretty much what it is or is some i'm missing no it actually he made a um plastic you called it a wrap um it you know two half circles that come together and you can mount the uh a pair of drumsticks in there that i guess neil what his last name perth uh pierre the drummer pierre so people say neil purpose pierre i think okay whatever um so you can mount the style drumsticks he had um it's a holder it didn't look bad it's not it's not a zip tie it would look horrible if it was zip tie but this was something didn't look too bad because you can buy those neil pert signed drumsticks pretty oh yeah they were like 15 bucks 15 bucks they were cheap i thought it was a cool looking mod i mean it's not like guns and roses where you know the ball is traveling like a lane guide um but i i thought it was you know it gave a little authenticity to the game i guess do you get the sticks as well with the mod or just no no you gotta buy no he's not giving them away either those two little plastic pieces were like 35 bucks i don't see the value yeah it was expensive for what it was but for 40 or under 50 bucks you could put a set of you know a pair of drumsticks on your play field not a bit not a bad mod tempting i i like the how they incorporated in um guns and roses how they did on that one was pretty cool um right i think that's i'm sure they couldn't just do a straight off copy they could have i guess but they could have why not right um yeah it would have been cool to have more uh drum stuff in it like that but um but yeah it's not a bad idea i will think about that one yeah we kind of went a little long on this and folks sorry you know i guess you're gonna have to wait until dave sets the game up and does some mods but you were also talking about some inside art blades i'm guessing uh the game also comes with side uh what do they call those things that go around the flippers side armor is that what that's called oh yeah come to side armor that's already on there uh i mean the game pretty much oh i know what i forgot are you going to put in the pin woofer thing that looked pretty i have that dials on it so i guess you can dial in the sound on it. Yeah, I already ordered that. I got it right here. Yeah, I'm going to install that. I got my own subwoofer as well to add to it as well to have it sit below the game. So plenty of rock and sound coming out of it. Yeah, the person who did that write-up on the game when they unboxed their LE, I thought they were very honest in their opinions. Yeah. he didn't crap on it but I don't think he gave it a ringing endorsement I'd say a strong B plus A minus yeah some people love the game and it's the best game ever I'm just you know I'll reserve judgment to actually play it but I do like the band and it looks pretty good from what I'm seeing so far So, you know, I'll definitely play it. Everything I've listened to, everybody seems to be in the same camp. If you're a fan, you're probably going to like the game, as simple as that.
    55:23
    Yeah, I think so. I only have one other item on my list, unless there's something else you want to talk about, Mr. One More Thing. Oh, yeah, Mr. One More Thing. Let me see. Did I write down any ideas here? Oh, yeah, I got one more thing. Let's go back to Rolling Stones for a second. So when I set the Rolling Stones up at the customer's house after I had it for a while, it was their game, and went through it, restored it, came out great, play tested the crap out of it. And every time I, you know, for days I'd be playing it, it'd be great. Then I'd go back to it one day and it's like, oh, this one little thing, like the flipper would stick up. I was like, why did it stick it up for? And I realized what that was was a couple of iron filings when you're filing some flipper contacts. even though I was really careful about having it clean they kind of dropped down after a while from playing it so much that it caused the flipper to go up because it was sort of shorting out a little bit so I fixed that, delivered it and while I had it on I was talking to the customer about things all of a sudden I heard the game just like shut down and reboot and come back up, it's like oh come on I can't believe this game and I rebuilt the whole transformer assembly and everything, I rebuilt that you didn't even give the game back right away you wanted to play it I want to play it. I want to play the – because I don't want – when I deliver a game, I want it to be totally fine and no issues, and I want it to be done. You don't want to come back. I don't want to go back. So – and he's only like five or ten minutes away from my shop. So we're talking some more, and then I say, hold on a second. I rebooted it, and it came back, and I did it again. And then all of a sudden, it wouldn't turn on. It wouldn't boot. It's like, you know what? And I brought boards with me just in case these things can happen. You never know when your game's traveling. You might bang it a little bit. I brought other boards with me, and I even tried a new solid-iron driver board, and maybe there's a 5-volt, and that isn't quite right. Nope, it was not getting – But – What? But did you have the right board? No, I did not. So what I did is I took – the 5-volt solid-iron driver did not fix it. So I said, okay, multimeter, let's go check the transformer board. Am I getting – yeah, I'm getting all the Voltas except for – I'm not getting my five volts that powers the NPU. It's not there. So it's like a bad bridge. But these bridges are brand new. So I say, okay. Was it a brand new board?
    57:43
    No, but it's a rebuilt board. I rebuilt it. No, right. Okay. All brand new bridges. I'd be more incensed if it was a brand new board. Yeah, and John was telling me that, too. He said you can get brand new boards for those – transformer boards for like $60, including brand new – used to be even cheaper i mean but try to find one there some some manufacturers have them a lot of them have been sold out like i think i talked about uh the weebly board they have one and for the longest time you couldn't even all you could buy was the blank he didn't even have all the components for it i don't know if that's changed andrew um but he was the least expensive i think you could buy it shipped in to your house you used to be able to buy it for like 45 or 50 bucks built you didn't even have to build built that's that's cool yeah right in my life is like 60 bucks go out onto some of the other websites i won't say they're closer to 100 bucks or more wow they're in short supply right yeah so so what i'm so what i did it's like you know i'll be right back because i know i have i i keep a whole freshly rebuilt transformer somebody for these bally's games i always keep one extra one it's rebuilt good to go so i knew i had another rebuilt one so i went went back home and i feel like it's kind of like a julia child moment you know julia child you know she did the thing she put the little souffle into the oven over here and about two seconds later she goes over the other oven pulls it out and it's all done and as a kid it's like wow it's like she has like a magic oven she puts it in here and over here fresh baked souffle comes out it's all good to go in like two seconds so i thought i kind of felt the julia child moment there it's like oh i have a freshly built transformer board let's throw that in there and boom the game came up now so now here's the here's the head scratcher i i and i rebuilt all the connectors too on these things too so it wasn't a connector thing i brought the transformer back home the one that rolling stones wasn't wasn't happy and put it on my bench and tested it and all the voltage are there they're all they're all there the five volts is now that now the bridge is saying oh i'm fine now so basically i think it's like a flaky bridge or something so i'm going to be just taking that out anyway because i don't trust you enough component just yank it and throw it yank it throw it throw another one in yep that's what i'm gonna do right that's what i would do i don't trust it okay i i have one last thing unless you unless you have more to add to that yeah how about um pinball machines in the future what about a warrior's pinball machine all right you don't like that one how about motley crue i don't even know what that is you know warriors warriors come out and play a you know from the uh 80s uh it was basically from the 70s no we don't remember that okay no you want to look up that you need watch that movie sometime. I watched a couple of movies this week.
    60:43
    Some better than others. The one that you probably have watched, I don't remember watching it when it came out, Network.
    60:52
    You know what? I've only seen bits and pieces of that movie. Not a bad movie. Yep. So no, I'm not familiar with Warriors.
    61:03
    Although Wag the Dog is a good movie, especially these days. Oh yeah. that's that's on the list well i have one last item let's uh let's end with this are you familiar with the town pigeon forge tennessee that sounds familiar somehow it should and why is that george because it's the home of dollywood ah speaking of which I gotta go work on a dolly and put a playfield protector in out west sometime soon oh cool I would like to own that game but they don't seem to come around too often this guy has two of them I think we talked about this before he has two dollies and I'm gonna be restoring one up for him the other one is like a nice beautiful one he got museum piece that wasn't played at all that he wants me to put a playful protector on where it sits out there so i'm going to go out there and make a run do that at some point and then he's going to bring me his his ratty dolly machine and i'm going to restore up for him okay so we're going to have a opportunity at some point in time to play it anyway oh that this This story isn't about Dolly. It's actually about Guy Fieri.
    62:25
    He's opening a giant arcade bar and restaurant in Pigeon Forge. That's sort of the story. Have you ever been? I'm guessing you've never been to Pigeon Forge. I haven't either. I've been close, but I've never been.
    62:45
    Why is he doing it there for? Arcade Mecca of the United States. It is. How do you know that? No, I have no idea. I said, question mark, it is? Oh, it is, question mark.
    63:00
    I went out to do a Google search. I'm guessing there's four or five arcades there. Now, my guess is, I did see a picture of a pinball machine in one of them.
    63:13
    But your guess is probably what my guess would be. that these arcades are probably kiddie gambling halls. Yes. Yeah. I would guess.
    63:26
    But I found that interesting. At least, hey, at least there's arcades. You don't see those too often. No, you do see, like, barcades, you know.
    63:35
    And that's one we haven't visited yet. The one that Mitch runs, what's it called? Bullseye, Bulls Run, Bull S. I think it's called Bull S. in bevereville it's something like it's got something to do with darts they got 15 new sterns i think oh and they have beer on tap so we should we should make a pilgrimage there at some point in time it's a possibility so that's that's all i got i mean for something that i didn't think we would fill 20 minutes with we went a little longer than normal but uh we tend to be a little verbose at times.
    64:17
    Yeah, we should, after you do a little cutting and splicing and whatever you in George's magic tech area. Yeah, I'm not going to I'm resigned now unless you say something or I say something.
    64:33
    It's for the most part freewheeling. I'm done trying to super edit this stuff. And I've heard, I know you've heard me say this time and time again. I see some of our pin podcaster brethren are starting to do the same thing of, I don't really give a crap. I'm just going to let it fly. So maybe we are making an impact, Dave, even with our small band of pinballers. We're trying to change the world one pinball person at a time. Early on, remember I said, other people have podcasters, your show prep has begun remember well there's nothing to talk about i mean you know we alluded to it with the with keith when we did the uh the last broadcast with barry ausler and then uh and then uh what was it the oh the p3 multimorphic game uh god i'm not drawing a blank the guy who does the song parodies oh my god i can't believe i'm having a brain uh it is uh hold on hold on it is um what the frick is his name i see oh i had it what the frick is a guy's name weirdo yeah weirdo so that's not what everybody's talking about but it's a real shame what i heard with barry osler you probably didn't hear this they basically said he was working for deep root and his he had been going through i guess cancer treatment for the last seven or eight years his uh benefits were cut off and he didn't have any medical benefits and the guy ended up dying really pretty weird yeah why would why was it cut off for well because Deep Root went deep six I know you don't follow all this stuff but the long and short of it is the guy that's a horrible story but we didn't know it just happened when we started talking about it happened like that morning the night before nobody knew anything about it so yeah that's a shame so that's sorry to end it on Debbie Downer but that's well let's we'll go well speaking of weird al oh okay so i'm not familiar with this what song is that based on riding dirty by flow rider that's why i don't know it okay the flow rider don't know how to spell florida so he calls it flow rider Yeah, that's okay. Okay. Everybody's got to have a shtick. Yeah. Okay, Dave. Say goodbye to everybody.
    67:34
    Goodbye, everybody. And until next time, this is The Good Doctor, Dr. Dave and George. Bye, everybody.
    67:55
    To be more than a conqueror You have to learn to enjoy the pain If you want to survive In jail You can try to defeat me You don't know it's the pain that'll feed me And I'm gonna take back what you took before Cause I was born for that All the bones that you're breaking You pretend you're the one that can save me Now I'm taking it back, it was never yours I'm fighting for my focus Get the pain up close Like the fire inside, I feel it come alive Show them what I'm made of Victories for the brave ones Never bow the knee when it's do or die One more time Survive in the game I can be unstoppable And I won't do hell to shake the world Survive, survive in the game Living the impossible I'm a champion indestructible Survive, survive Survive in the game Thank you.