Hello and welcome to another episode of the Classic Pinball Podcast. My name is George. His name is Dave. Hello Dave. Hello George. This year we guided listeners through the art, mechanics, and culture of vintage pinball. We did deep dives into ballet and other pinball classics, exploring backglasses, playfields, restorations, repairs, and pinball history. The highlight of the year and our most listened to episode featured Steve Ritchie, the King of Flow. He shared candid insights into his designs, the evolution of gameplay speed, and his game's impact on pinball. So welcome to the show where the silver ball meets the sparkle of the season. From twinkling backglasses to jingling multiballs, the unwrapping of the The stories of December 2025 that will bring holiday cheer to all. Merry Christmas Dave, Merry Christmas Maureen, Merry Christmas John Boy, Merry Christmas Tiny Tim, Merry Christmas Mariah Carey. Mariah Carey you say George? Is it Maria? No, not Maria. You sure it's not Maria? You know, I just saw this morning. Yeah? You did? The... I think it's right here. The global... Solve a problem like Maria Hey, Maria. How do you catch a cloud and pin it down? How do you find a word that means Maria? That song is not the number one song in the world, how's that? It should be. It's not. Guess which one is? Uh, Taylor Swift's Christmas Special. No, Wham! No. Yes. Which one? Whatever their Christmas song is. Wait, you sure it's not this one? Oh, Megan, stop. I hate that song. Oh. Okay. Turn it off. In the future, I just got another notice from our good friends at Spotify. Oh boy, here we go. Oh yeah. It's going to get worse before it gets better. I don't think we can use any kind of materials. I think the AI bots are going to be in full bloom next year. You mean even like a couple seconds worth? I think anything. They're going to name that tune? We're going to do a show. We're going to do a show where we just exploit everything and see what happens. Knowing that it could get pulled. Well, let's test it. You know, I'm sorry to do that to our listeners just a second ago, but as a past corporate boss used to tell us, embrace the suck. You know, so that was that one. That one too. Oh, that one was terrible. Oh, feed the squirrels. Yeah, feed the squirrels. Or even this one. Oh no, stop, stop. That's terrible too, right? But because you and others are so anti-Pariah Maria, Mariah, Maria, Mariah, here's a different twist for your listening pleasure if you'll indulge me. And this one won't be hit by Spotify's bots, I betcha. Let's see. You think it's going somewhere but it's not. Christmas. There is just one thing that I need. I don't care about the present. Christmas tree. I just want to only go. You could ever know. My true. I want a focus. Is. Is. Is. Wait for it. Wait for it. Cue. Cue. You know why? Oh, man. That's, that's Joan Picard from Star Trek. Yeah, and that's really bad. I'm sure the pinball fans will like it. Come on, let's get back on track. Okay. So, I'm going to play the pinball. I'm going to play the pinball. I'm going to play the pinball. I'm going to play the pinball. I'm going to play the pinball. I'm going to play the pinball. Okay. You first. Okay. Me first. In Pinball News, what are we doing? Whatever you, you start with a story. Okay. Alright, how about a Christmas story? I played, I played Santa, Dr. Dave. So, I restored two games just in time for Christmas. I did a power play that I got, you know, I held I pulled the basket out and got that one nicely, you know, and restored that up. And an Evel Knievel, which was come from a client from a while ago. Both these games I restored years ago and they both found me again and I got them back like many years later. I re-restored them and I had two clients come to me almost the same time about maybe a month ago saying, hey, you know, one was from Sudbury, one's from Newton. And the one from, I think the one from Newton I'm looking for a game. I want an old school game. I don't want any of that rampy with the rampy flashy TV thing and video thing I want. It's like, oh, have I got a game for you. His two chime games. How about some, how about a Bally Evel Knievel or Powerplay? And the guy in Newton said, well, Powerplay. I like hockey, but I cannot get over Bobby Orr in a Blackhawks outfit. So that's a no, but I am a huge Evel Knievel fan as a kid. I love Evel Knievel. So I'll take that one. The other one from Sudbury, he's actually originally from New York. He's a hockey fan. It's like, I love hockey. I don't care about his jersey because I'm not a Boston Bruins fan, but I like Bobby Orr. I'll take that one. They both got the games they wanted. I delivered them back to back. One was this past Thursday and then one was Friday. Thank God I got people like Jim I know you're not Jim Rutherford, John Day, but Jim was, you know, real nice guy. I'd say him and John, they're both electrical Engineers both smart as a whip. They both actually know how to do woodworking really well. They both have done their own wood floors in their home themselves. Jim has made his own kitchen, all his woodworking in the kitchen and all this other stuff he's done. It's just amazing. Both these guys, very bright individuals. Jim was there to help me move these games, get them out of my place and help me hook them down and fly to stairs and places they're going to. That was great. The people loved them. The customer with the Evel Knievel, he was like, wow, this thing looks brand new. It's like, well, that's our goal here, brand new. He said, hey, play a ball. He played a ball. It's like, oh, I played enough. This is great. Thank you. You know, so on our way on that one. And Jim's great because Jim, he owns his own, I think he's a consultant, electrical engineering consultant. He's traveling all around California, wherever else he goes. But he really likes the whole customer service schmooze kind of thing and likes to talk to customers and likes to, that whole getting into talking to people. And it was so cool having him there with me because usually when I have just a hired hand All right. Now as people close off today, of course, with all the fun and energy, founder of sodamosoftins, Friends of Save 전ilia-coBoовали, and the project manager on site, You know what I mean? And talking to this customer and really talking all things pinball and our passion for pinball. And I told him afterwards, you know, Jim, a team between you, me and John, we could have a nice little pinball biz of some sort down the road or some kind of collaboration, but it would be fun. So he did that with that Evil Knievel guy and then on the power play, I figured he had to go back to work where he delivered. I said, hey, you're free to go now, Jim, or you're welcome to stay and complete the rest of this journey with showing this person how to put a light bulb in if it goes out or different kind of maintenance items in the game where the fuses are. He goes, oh, no, I definitely want to stay. I want to stay for the whole experience. I say, great. So we did that and had a great time doing that. Let's see. Then I will go to... Okay, I'm going to stop you. Go ahead. You come back to this. Okay. Everybody's heard this before, but I want Dave's take on this. I'm going to call this segment the Festive Flipper List. Can you guess where this is going? Um, that be color clown puke LEDs that people put in their modern ramp games? No. No. I am going to talk about the ten, what I consider, biggest or influential Christmas movies of the season. Oh. You can comment accordingly. But at the end, I want you to tell me which you think would be the best game To be reproduced as a Christmas pinball. Hold on a second, I got a mouse whispering in my ear. What is that? Oh, alright. To that point, I just found out, is it This is Your Life? It's not This is Your Life. It's A Wonderful Life. Yeah, that one. The Wonderful Life came out today, I don't know, 70 years ago. You're stealing my thunder. Well that's the mouse. Be quiet. Hey mouse, get back in the house. Okay. Here are the ten. You ready? Sure. We're gonna start with old and we're gonna progressively move forward in time. That's alright. Sure. So number one. Dickens' Christmas Carol. Classic. This is number two. Thank you mouse. It's a Wonderful Life. Number 3, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. I know that's not a movie but a TV show, you get the idea. Oh Frank, something bass, Rankin Bass, yeah. Okay. Flammation, yup. Okay, this one I'm sure you don't like but it's because of the actor. Christmas Vacation. Not bad, no I don't mind that, it's Chevy Chase, right? Yes sir, it is. Yeah, that's a good one. No longer on regular TV, unfortunately, at Charlie Brown Christmas. Never cared for it. Depressing. Okay. Number six, The Grinch. Not the movie, the cartoon. Yeah. It's a classic. Cindy Lou Who. Yeah. Yeah. Seven, Frosty the Snowman. Oh yeah. Nope, I liked that one as a kid. Sure. Okay. Number eight. I don't think you're gonna like this one either. Polar Express. Yeah, I went to see IMAX years ago when that came out. I was like, I don't know. I think, who was starring in that? What's the guy's name? Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks, a little too close to the kids on the rollercoaster ride for my taste, but go ahead, Joe. Okay. Number nine, Home Alone. Yeah, that's a decent one. Harry and Marv, I think I've told this story before. Grandfather lived next to Joe Petchy. The kids used to peer through the fence and go, will you show us your gold tooth? Mmm. I also like John Candy in that movie. Janos Kiss Polanski and the Polanski Polka Band. What? Where? You don't remember that in the, in the, he's with Catherine O'Hara's in the box truck with the polka band in the back and they're playing all the polka tunes? I don't remember that part. No. Oh yeah. Big one. Okay. I'm a fan of that one. Your choice. What would be, you think, the best? You didn't mention my favorite movie. We just saw it last night for our Christmas movie last night. You missed the big one. What's that? Die Hard. Oh yeah. Great. That's a great one for Christmas. Uh, okay. I'm going to count to three. There will not be a four. Now I have a machine gun. Ho, ho, ho. Oh yeah, machine guns are always very fascinating. Our audience will know. So what's your choice? Out of all those, well I'm going to go with Die Hard, but if I had to go by your list there, oh you also missed the Christmas story, what about that with Messy Marvin with the chocolate milk and the stupid glasses on his face? That one. Oh I did miss, is that the one with the... I'm going to shoot my eye out. You're going to shoot your eye out, kid. You're going to shoot your eye out. I did miss that one. Okay. That's depressing too. I don't like that one either. Okay. A lot of depressing Christmas music. This is not shaping up to be a good segment. You're really ruining it. That's okay. I'm very particular and critical. I was going to call you Grinch. I was going to call you Scrooge. I just did. I would say out of all those, I think I liked It's a Wonderful Life. That's actually a nice uplifting classic film. I don't think it would sell as a pinball machine but okay. Oh, hold on, wait, wait, pinball machine, sorry about the tie-in. Pinball machine tie-in. I would go with, let's see, probably Christmas Vacation. Yeah. I think that's like the number one movie that people like across the United States for Christmas. Yeah. I would go with, even though I have a soft spot for Home Alone, I would go with the Grinch. I'm actually surprised, because you see the Grinch in all kinds of stuff now. Yeah. I mean the Grinch could, you know, the Grinch doesn't necessarily have to be all Christmas. Well, it could be a Dr. Seuss pin with a lot of Grinch in it. It could be that too. It could be that too, but okay, so that's our Christmas list. I figured I'd insert that in here just to kind of keep it festive. Okay, I got a story. Yeah, and I'm gonna let you Want the short story you want the long story? You're gonna hear both so it doesn't matter, okay? Give me a long story. Go ahead. What do you got? Okay, so in our last go or shows I Think I talked about me working on my Mata Hari I was a little bit worried and I believe I said that I was going to replace all the posts in it because they were all orange and I put nice shiny bright red ones in and it looks great. Got all done and it was scoring haphazardly. Get 10 points, get 40 points, get 150 points or anything in between and Okay, go ahead, cut to the chase, I'll give you a chance. When you put the new posts in, the rubbers got stretched a little bit and now your 10 point rebounds were too close and they were going out by themselves. You're there, but not exactly. I guess the question is which one? So I started with the slingshots. I looked at the right hand one and they were all gnarly and not straight. I'm like, okay, this has got to be it. Even though they weren't touching, I'm like, something's not right here. It's the ones behind the drop targets. I'm going with that one. Again, again, you've ruined the story. Again, you've ruined the story. You know what? Welcome to my life with my wonderful wife here. Now, I was going to say this, and I will say it now. I don't do this for a living. I don't do this every day. So for me, it's always an adventure. But I will eventually figure it out. You know, a squirrel will, a blind squirrel will find a nut every once in a while. Well, call me the blind squirrel. I thought it was the slingshots. It wasn't the left hand side. I kept pounding it on the playfield and I'm like, dope. I just kept saying it to myself. I looked over, took the plastics off, looked at the target bank. Sure enough, just a hair off, just enough to vibrate, just enough to drive me screwy. The good thing is I took the whole machine apart, cleaned everything, straightened everything out. The game plays much better than it ever did. So a learning experience I did. I think I did very well for somebody who A brief introduction to a story this FRANCI longueuters has been milliweb, so it's not an Irish girlish equivalent to a cartoon or any other Hispanic turjanian microplane. aspiring interpreter1�� Okay, let's just take the glass off. I don't remember what's in there. Everything was redone. New MPU, redone solenoid driver board, you know, everything was new. Everything was repinned. You know, I'm like, that's not it. You know what it was? What? This is this is I never you probably seen it but I never have I started playing with the coil and the coil stop was just a little bit off I like oh these are the little coil stops I don like those I like the big beefier ones I like the little guys Those are Steve Young I like those Those are good So I took it off and it fell apart into two pieces. So that little gap was enough of a gap that it wasn't going through the whole EOS switch to the end and it was buzzing. So, I had a couple of things in there that were throwing me, but you solved it right away. Speaking of, so here's a tech tip in regards to what you said. I learned something in the day, again, and this is from Jim, my friend Jim Rutherford. We were talking about flipper coil strength and that kind of thing and why does them buzz and this and that and came down to it that he went to, I think, to Expo and there was someone doing a seminar on flippers and this kind of thing. This is actually a physics part to this with EMF, electromotive force and that kind of thing. So basically the coil Stop is integral to how strong your flipper is going to be and a flipper hole and that kind of thing because especially if it's broken, that's really bad. If it's broken off just flying around loose, it's not going to be good at all. When you, when that plunger goes in and hits that coil stop and it's held there, you're actually completing a magnetic force, a magnetic loop right there that's actually helps with holding that flipper up as well as the electric part of it. So you got electric and you got magnetic all working together and the coil stop has to be nice and in good shape to do that, to have this two-part story to why the I'm going to be talking about the flipper's work well. So I didn't realize, I thought coil Stop was just to be a stop for that plunger, but it actually has a magnetic component to it as well and why it helps with the flipper strength. The other thing I learned, I just learned by myself, is working on those two games, Evil Can Evil and the Power Play, and they're both chime games, both ballet games, and I was wondering why does a Power Play have nice sounding chimes when you hit the chime and You know, and you have that aftering that goes and goes and goes and goes. And Evel Knievel, the chimes sound more like, you know, like blunt, like blunt, not that no aftering. And I looked at it, it's like, well, wait a minute, I, I recently did these, I replaced all the grommets on both of them. So that's usually what the grommets and the little metal, the brass thing inside of the little eyelet. Those are usually crushed because people just crush them down like a frickin 500 pound gorilla. The Well done! Thank you. Well done! Thank you, John. You got it. Thanks to you. You got it. I'm going to take it from here. I'm going to get it right from there. I'm going to get it right from here. Yes. I'm going to get it right from there. The power play was made in the beginning. It's not a little, right? No, it's not. That's not a charm bar. No, not at all. Come to find out, I looked at both grommets on both the power play and the Evel Knievel, and they were a bit different. The power play ones, you kind of manipulate them, you kind of hold them and so forth, and they're a lot more pliable, like really like loose rubber pliable. The ones in the Evel Knievel were like a harder rubber. Like you know, they were different. But so I'm thinking, I know I got them all from Pinball Resource. That's where I buy my stuff from. He must have got two different batches over the course of years or whatever he did. You don't think they just dried out? No, no, no, no, no. These are all brand new. I actually even have them in my bag. I got new ones again. I have extras too. Yeah, these are all new. It wasn't the Chime Bar itself though. Nope, nope, nope, nope. We've had this conversation. Yeah, but I proved it. I proved it. I actually took out the hard ones. Now, these are all brand new grommets. All fresh. There's no chipping in them. There's no cracking in them. They're brand new. I took out the brand new harder ones and put in some nice supple ones I found in my stash. Put them in. The game sounds fantastic. They sound just like power play now with the app. Okay, that's something to consider moving forward. Well, he's become a retired. He has. You haven't seen whatcha giddya lookin' on ya. I've done before. And here we go. Meh in the cinema哩 Sü A little tidbit for everybody out there. Actually I want to call Steve Young on it too. I want to say, hey Steve did you know... Oh geez. And hopefully he's sometimes... He's in a good mood? Yeah, sometimes he's like, no no that's impossible, you know. But other times, you're like, oh, well really. But I think you really have to sell him on your... Right, but how long have they been in your... Did you just buy them? Yeah, these are all, they last a good long time so many, but with the past. No, I know they last, that's not my point. The past year. You can buy them recently. Yeah, the past year. Okay. They haven't been sitting around for five or ten years. No, no, past year. Okay, okay, okay, that's fair. Yeah, it's just different batches he got. He got different batches from wherever or different vendors or whatever he did, but I want to tell him that maybe he didn't notice but you have different vendors here and. But how many people have this discussion other than you and me? I know what I know of. I, I, I, I, you know, I mean, I know what it's supposed to sound like because I've hung around with you for a long time. So when I do it, you know, when I did my blackjack, we had this discussion. I pulled all the bars out because they didn't sound right. But now I've got to sit there and say to myself, Hmm, wasn't the grommets might've been, it usually is the grommets, but I, I think your bars aren't cheap. I mean, I mean, if you want to go out and replace the chime bars, it's like a hundred and something bucks. Yeah, Marco has them. You can go with Chimebars. And you've got to get all of them because they're all tuned the same way. Right, right, right. So, okay. Want to hear a quick story? Sure. And then I'll let you tell another one. Okay. Okay. Went with friends to a brewery in Warrington, Virginia called Altered Suds. Nice little place, and they had three pinball machines. They had a Creature from the Black Lagoon, a, uh, what was the other one, a Whodunit, and a Medieval Madness. Oh, those are nice. Those are the three high-end titles. Real good. Medieval Madness, that is a very fun game. I can understand the attraction of why people are excited that they're remaking that game. Yeah, it is a ramper. Yeah, even I had a crowd at the brewery, believe it or not. I whomped on the game. Wow, alright George. So for me, people do an eye roll, so do your eye rolls people. I scored 28 million with a three ball game, which I thought was pretty good. And I validated that by watching a tournament this past weekend. One guy got 40 million in one ball, so I'll put him as the outlier. N Scholar, I'm a fan of the game. I was playing it and I was like, I put two bucks in. He looked at me and I go, do you think I'm going to try to beat you out of a buck? I go, I just want to play some more games. You'll like the place because they accepted quarters. Yeah. Which was a cool thing. I did not play WHO dunnit. And I know we did a show and I know that's on our top ten list. I just don't, I just don't like the look of that game. What's the appeal? That big plastic ramp thing in the middle of the game. I don't know. Just. Well, it's like a 1940s noir detective show kind of thing. And that's the don't get it. Next time I'll play it. I'll give you my thoughts. But I did not play it. I was doing so well on medieval madness. It'll get me to go back to that brewery. So if you're in the area, good place for beer and a good place for pinball. How far away from you is it? Fifteen minutes. Oh wow, you're finding all kinds of stuff around you. Yeah, I'm digging around. There's stuff. I'm trying to find some people to play pinball. I have one guy, I think I told this in the last show, neighbor came over and said, oh, I want you to find me a pinball. I'm like, I'm trying to find me a pinball, get in line. I'm not sure if I would recommend it, but I saw out on Pinside nearby, an hour or two away, a Silverball Mania. Doesn't do anything for me. Me neither. Don't. Don't. But $1,500? It's not bad. It was pretty good shape, too. Can you put that new board in there too, the new daughter board, I forget who makes the thing but it makes it like a... Yeah, one of those deals, you know... What's his name, Bev or something like that? Yeah, and I have a customer, a client down in near Mohegan Sun or Foxwoods, he has an Airbnb down there and the pinball machine is in the Airbnb and it's not working right and he emailed me a couple months ago and I said, well, you know, it'll work whether you don't I don't use that Arduino cycle. Well, it kind of does, but it's having a problem. It's like, listen, I don't know who did what to that game. It's going to be more than a couple hundred. Plus, I have to drive down there or whatever. So basically, I worked out with him. It's going to be this kind of- I'll stay. I'll stay. Yeah, so I can stay. He's going to let me stay at his Airbnb, stay over, so we can go there for a day, maybe two days for free stay I'm going to be over there, work on this game, get paid for it, have a nice little, and then we wake up and work on the game and go home or whatever, you know. So, I'm going to plan on doing that sometime I think in January along with, I am so, so far behind in pinball work now because of, you know, various, I don't know, crap that's gone on, delay, delay, nothing but delays in life, his life hands you sometimes a, http://www.patreon.com.au I was a customer. I said, hey, do you want free ball? Do you want free play? Do you want three ball, five ball? So he wanted three ball and he said, can I put it, can I just use quarters? I said, sure. So he wanted to actually use, he has a whole bag of quarters. He wants the real experience of putting a quarter in the game and trying to win games. It's like, all right, bravo. I like it. So. It's a good bank. I set it up for him. When you open the quarter, when you run out of quarters, you open up the bank and you restock and start over again. And I like the thing that, you know, I'm going to play as long as I can. I got a couple quarters in my pocket. I'm going to play as long as these quarters last. I better win some games. Otherwise, I got to leave the game for a day and come back later. That's why he's trying to challenge himself like that. I thought it was pretty cool. All these customers who want the old school games, they're definitely our age or a little older, probably. And they want a piece of their childhood back. So I gave two nice examples and they both were floored by it. One, the guy in Sudbury. He just redid his whole basement. Nice house, whole basement all redone. Big screen TV. He's going to have a foosball table, an air hockey table. In his garage he just bought a brand new You're watching a brand new ski ball machine, professional from the ski ball manufacturer, that's sitting in his garage. They have to come over and install that in his basement. Those are not cheap. No, I don't know. Those are really big. Like five grand, ten grand? You need to have a, I'd say at least five, probably more. Okay. For a brand new one. Brand new, it's brand new. I don't know, I was shocked. I'm at some point in time in the last year I went out to that website and I was surprised to see that they actually sell brand new skeeball machines and they come in different themes and whatever else it's a big thing yeah so he he's gonna put it he said okay put the game there the skeeball is gonna go next to the game over here it's like okay so he's gonna have a nice little and I think he has a bunch of grandkids so I think I see I see what you're doing you want the grandkids to say hey we want to go back to You know, Nanny at Poppy's house again, you know. So, the great kids will always want to come over. My grandchildren are not there yet. Okay. Soon to be. They'll be here today, but I think we're gonna wait until Christmas and we'll unleash them downstairs. Oh, so they haven't really, have they played your games yet or no? The older one. Okay. But not recently. We'll get down there this week with them. Do you have another story because I know we're... Oh, let me see. We're kind of getting... We're getting close here. We are getting close. We have... how much remaining? Seven or eight minutes? Four minutes remaining. Okay. So I could tell... what? What? The two calls you did. No, I'll tell them the tales of Woe. I'll tell you a Tale of Woe about that 8 Ball Deluxe LE. Remember that one from last episode? Yes. Except they're heroes. Remember he was getting shipped off to Illinois? Yes. Okay. Well, the good folks at NAVL seem to have... Oh no. Oh no. ...seem to have...yeah. They seem to have had a little problem on the way. They dropped the ball. And they not only dropped the ball, they dropped the game. Oh. First question. Yeah. Insured? I said, hey, do you want to insure for the full amount of what it cost him? It's a big number. You know why? I found out why. You know why? He's an insurance. He's an insurance salesman. If anybody would know, it would be him. Exactly. Good thing he did. Good thing he insured for the whole amount. Have you seen a picture of- Oh, yeah. Right when it arrived, he showed me. I mean, it's like... Send me the picture. I would like to see it. Okay. Not, I mean, not now, but I'd like to see it. The front right leg was bent badly. So it got, it fell off somewhere. So they dropped it on the corner. Yep, dropped it right on the leg. They reabsorbed it. It ripped out the corner. No, it didn't rip it out. Actually, the corner held. The corner held. It's just their leg got bent. Otherwise, it looked good. That's it? The leg's bent. That's it. Now, he, and then, so I said, okay, that's Canyon Dallas.328amation양uai통12 bss perceiver So what did you do? It's like, well, I'd say you can make a note of it. You're going to do insurance claim on it. You know, you bring it in the house, you know, I'd say accept delivery, but with these parameters and you want to make sure it's going to work right. You brought in the house and he played it for a couple of days. It worked great. It's like, wow, cool. It took a hit and took a licking, kept on ticking like Timex there. And then a couple of days later, Hey, I'm having a problem with the game. It's not booting up all the way. I'm having some issues like, okay, well, ding, ding, call your insurance I'm going to go back again and say you have other problem. This thing took such a big hit that there's a connector loose or something going on with it that this game was perfect before it took the hit. You guys hit it and now it's not right. So, you know, it's not on me. And this guy knows. He's not blaming me. So, is he going to ship the game back to you? No, no, no. He's basically found a tech out there because last time I sent him the Knight Rider, that must have had some in travel something else as well like a connector came off or something. So he had a, he has a tech out there that came out just for a couple hundred bucks whatever just kinda got Knight Rider going again because for some reason it didn't travel well or something happened to it, something minor. Right. Same thing with this, so it's the same tech, the tech's gonna come over soon, a day or two, maybe this weekend and look at 8Ball Deluxe and it said it should be something simple because everything's been done to that game. Right. You know, whatever they did. But the customer doesn't have the experience to do it himself so. Right, right. And it's on, you know, obviously the insurance company's... It's on the insurance company, yeah, they're paying. They're footing the bill for it as they should. Yeah, there you go. So that's...but I was like, oh, my heart sank. Like, my poor game. You know? Well Dave, we're back. How'd your delivery go? We have not talked about this machine yet. This is a Stern Lord of the Rings. Now, before you continue, they're familiar with the background. If they listened to the end of our last episode. If not, you're going to hear Dave do a quick recap of this bowling alley machine that looked like it was coated in coal. See my little Christmas reference there? I saw that. Well done. Are you on the good side You really on the bad side You know why You were a naughty boy in the first part of this show I was Yeah Oh how naughty was I I went to tell my story Oh it true I kept stealing your thunder. We fumbled with the Mariah Carey thing. That didn't come off anywhere near like I thought it would. That's all part of our charm. Oh, my Mata Hari, you, we went through that. Something else. It'll come to me. Yeah. I called you Scrooge. I called you Grinch. I'll call you it again. Okay. I can take it. That's okay. So, uh... So, Lothar. What's that? I actually... Oh, Lothar. So, here. Let's pitch first. If you want to see this in its entirety of 17 plus minutes, go to your YouTube channel? Yes. And tell them where that is? Dr. Dave's Pinball Restorations on YouTube. So I actually watched part of it. I got to the ballrog and then I was like, okay, I've seen everything I need. Okay. But I have a question. Yeah. You can continue with all the other repairs. Sure. But that bagatelle thing on the left-hand side. Yes. That's what I would call it. What would you call it? A maze? Now, it's kind of a bag of towel. It's kind of reminiscent of like a Gottlieb top score. Pins and rubbers on the pins. Yeah. So, was this game in such disrepair that that bottom one inch or three quarter inch rubber, whatever that is at the bottom, didn't exist and that's why it smashed the plastic underneath it? That didn't exist because that wasn't part of the original design. The original design, that little post wasn't there. It was kind of wide open. And it's by, I don't know, a feature, I guess by what Stern does or did is just have so the ball would sometimes land on that plastic and land in the VUK. It seems like the physics are not there for it to work properly. No, it didn't. Half the time it would land in the plastic and not break it until maybe the 100th thing. Thank you. If you have any questions about the show. But I have to have it all clear. I'm just making sure because that was the one thing that stuck out when you did your little explanation. Yeah. I modified it. I modified it. That's again. I didn't know that. Yeah. Dr. Dave style. I basically took this plastic post there that's on the lower right side that doesn't So, I took that, drilled a new hole in the center, put a little rubber there, a little three-quarter inch rubber, clear rubber to guide the ball so it never hits Bob Libbe Tyler in the face anymore because, you know, that would be a lot of toxic masculinity we don't need, right? For that, George. Well done. Thank you. I like that. I like that. Thank you. See, that's a good fix. Yeah. That's the right question. You did. Yeah. So, that's my fix. That works great. Okay, so this game originally came to me. This guy had four early 2000 Sterns that were in a bowling alley and the bowling alley is in the process of renovating so he wants to have, you know, this guy who... That bowling alley caught on fire. That game was horrible. Oh, I mean, no maintenance really done on it. Just, you know, maybe some... I think open the coin door and take the quarters out. That's what I was just going to say. Now this guy also had a big buck hunter there as well as a couple claw machines. He goes, all those things are great. It's like, yeah, open the coin door, clean the glass and rinse Repeat. Pinball machine is a whole different animal. And then you got little kids in there going flip, flip, flip, flip, flip all day long and hanging on the shooter rod and whatever else they're doing. So he has four games from the early, like Pirates of the Caribbean, Lord of the Rings and a couple of the ones I can't remember off the top of my head. But eventually he was going to... Listen to our old shows. You're talking about... Right. He's going to bring them all to me, you know, one by one. And we had a little, I guess we didn't talk about enough what it was going to take when he brought it to me kind of thing. But, you know, we kind of worked it out in the end, a mutual beneficial situation cost-wise. But by the time he got, you know, I told him what I did, he kind of got sticker shock because I was, wow, it's not really what I thought at all. It's like, yeah, you just said it was going to be a flipper problem, which it was a flipper problem, but there's a lot more than that going on. I'm a fan of the spinners. I've never seen anything quite like that before. It was as if you took a drill bit and drilled the holes for where the spinner wires were supposed to go. Yeah, it spun, it's got that much use, it spun so much that it kind of wore out the holes and the spinner went missing at some point. You need the spinner on that game to make the ring magnet turn on so it grabs the ball and goes up the ramp. I'm going to ask you, that's a lot of money for that hunk of steel. I'm See what else do we do? I put in the RAM in it because I had battery damage of course on the main board and the driver board had to fix all that Put all warm white GI LED in it some red and orange LEDs in it and we know we typically we clean the inserts from underneath Instead of like some people out there. They just put a really super bright LED and just blast through the dirt. We don't do that here We actually clean the lenses and you put a regular light. It looks great in there. So that's what we did I'm trying to keep the cost down as much as I can for this guy, but forget it. But he's got a really collectible game and it's certainly worth the investment. I don't know why the number is sticking to my head. I'm thinking of maybe the wrong game. Did they make 5,000 or supposedly make 5,000 of these? They supposedly made 5,000 and then they did a couple other small runs afterwards. That's a lot. Yeah, they probably made maybe 7,000 or 8,000 all said and done, I think. Sun Moneyza.com DOGGHกWLunch I'm going to show you how to make a pinball with flipper power. It would keep the hold power on too long and that would wind up heating up the flipper coils. We wind up getting flipper fade and wind up getting weak flippers after playing for 20 minutes or so. You wouldn't be able to make your shots because the flippers would get too hot. So they redid all kinds of firmware and timing settings for that. So I put version 9 in there. I rebuilt the flippers. I put special Lord of the Rings coils, the high power coils that sell at Pinball Life. I'm going to use Stern. You see my fingers and quotes. Notorious for flipper fade after time played. Yeah, in general, yeah, that's what they say. It's all about their, they have pulse timing on their, the way they do their... I'm just wondering if it's over, you know, if you've oversaturated the flippers at the beginning only so you compensate 40 minutes into the game. Oh, I see. Yeah, I see what you're saying, but what they did in software where they have three adjustments now, and I had to go look on Pinside and see what, what do they, they don't, I'm going to show you what the adjustments are. There are three adjustments for flipper power and timing and how much time does a flipper stay energized at full power even when it hits the end of stroke switch to go low power. It gives you a couple of milliseconds of high power after the fact and all these different things. So I basically kept adjusting, adjusting, and adjusting and I adjusted them just right and it was still a little too powerful. So what I wound up doing after all the software adjustments, I went and did the old school way. I widened out the end of stroke switch gap Film text belly are still narrating The Response speaking If the filmAY.comcimento So in this game, this has MOSFET driver chips, transistor chips that drive the flipper coils. So one was blown... Did you burn those out? Oh yeah, there was one I already burnt out and I burnt out a couple more trying to figure out what the hell is going on here. I kept blowing flipper fuses and diodes and so I kept chasing my tail and someone in Pintide said, no, just replace all that crap all at once and start fresh. So I did, I replaced all, you know, and I started fresh and it was good for a couple flips and then all of a sudden, boom, the flipper went straight up and wouldn't come down again on the left side. So, okay, there's something beyond this. There's something additional. So come to find out, it's called the HCT 230 driver chip that drives the MOSFET. That was faulty internally from whatever. I think I put the wrong coil in there years ago with the wrong diode or I don't know what they did but they screwed that up. So, replaced that chip on the main board and the MOSFETs. This time I had Chinese MOSFETs. I said, no, I'm going to use real American-made ones because they're stronger. So, for somebody like me who's going to go, no, just get me a new board. Oh, you're going to pay money. Hit me. Oh, you're going to be hit with like a grand. Yeah, you don't want a new board. I'm a fan of the pinball. Oh. Yeah. And your customer was grousing? I mean, okay, I can do it or... Well, he doesn't really understand... I understand. I understand. It's the point between you, me, and the audience. Everybody knows that I say that kind of crap. Yeah. Sometimes it comes down to me, I got to educate the customer. I got to educate them on what it takes and what it needs and it's not just what you see, it's what you see under... You don't see under the hood what's going on. Merry Christmas. Yeah. Yeah. You get presents all year, don't you? Yeah, I do. Um, what else did they do this freaking thing? Gap, uh... Were you prepared to talk about this? Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, I mean, pretty much. That's all the, I mean, there were so many hacks in the game. The vertical upkick switches, they had missing screws on the upkick solenoids, so they weren't right. Someone put some crappy connector spade hanging on with bubble gum tape. I'm not sure if you're going to take this. No, but what I'm asking is did you have another itinerary? Was there something else you wanted to talk about? Oh, besides this one? I figured you were going to talk about this. Oh yeah, this one here, yeah definitely, that's that. I mean pretty much that's it. I mean the game came out great. Okay, so. Although I will say after I put the game out, I got people just saying, you know, hey great job on that Lord of the Rings, that's awesome. And it kind of, I need my Lord of the Rings fix too. I'm getting Lord of the Rings people contacting me now. Oh no, the cycle's gonna start now? I think so, yeah. I think it is. Those are like commercials out there. Yeah, they are. They're little commercials. Right. Hey, you know what, just hot off the press, help with the paddles. They call flippers, they're called paddles by the way. You know that? Oh, I've got a story. You wanna hear mine? Sure. So while you were doing your thing, I got another delivery from our good friends at Pinball Life. Check this out. Okay. Can you read that? Hold on, wait, wait, let me go to where you are here. Let me go here. Oh yes, there you go. Merry Krampus. Do you know who Krampus is? I do. He's for the bad little boys and girls. Oh, that's correct. Yes. That's correct. So you were talking about paddles. So I took a flyer. I shouldn't have done it, but I did it. I needed some, well, you call them paddles, I call them flippers. They're supposed to be flippers. I got traditional white molded white flippers, right? Well, hold on, George. They're not all the same. Let me see inside that flipper. Go ahead. Go ahead, George. You're going to do this again? I probably will. Okay, you go. You go. Okay. Just give me a second and then you can go at it. You go ahead. So, I did a repair. I didn't do a repair. I did a replacement on Centaur. I did a flipper replacement. Now I have a couple of things we need to talk about Centaur. We're going to revisit this for the upteenth billionth time, but I own the game, so you know it's going to come around again. So I did a successful flipper transfer, but when I took off the black flippers, I said, oh, these are really roached. I mean, you know, those Allen screws were really into the posts. I'm like, no, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this right. Well, they didn't have on Pinball Life black ones, but they had these other ones. Man, they're not even close. This is which game now? Which game are we talking about? Check out how thin this thing is. Which game is this for? It was going to be for Centaur. I don't know what I'm going to use. No, they gave you a Williams flipper. It's a Williams flipper. They didn't give you a bit. What did you get? From Pinball Life? It's not their fault. They don't advertise it that way. I forgot who the hell I ordered the black ones from. It's not that big a deal. I just, you know, I didn't know. You know who has them is Pinball Resource has the black ones. I was doing an order with Margaret. You know, it's just easier. Sometimes it's easier doing business with Margaret than it is with... Okay, Steve Renio? I got that. What else did I get in here? There's a flipper rebuild kit and some, oh, you probably don't like these, but they were cheap. Check these out. Black flipper rubbers, right? Oh, boo, boo his. Right, but they were 70 cents each. They're okay. They'll look nice on a game. No, they're, This movie has lost the cast criticwierks. It was just barely in there and just enough to rattle it. I'm holding up the coil stop. Yeah. So Centaur went well, but I have a question for you. Yeah. Dumb me. Are you aware that there is a difference in the flipper bases on a Centaur versus other games? No. No. No. I wasn't. There is. Alright. There are two tabs and the center part of one end is removed. So look at my fingers. It looks like a goal post. Yeah. And the reason they do that is there's lights and some other crapman. Oh yeah. You know, I have seen that. Yes. So here's my question. Yeah. Is that the only game they did that on? No, they didn't. I've seen other ballet games with that same thing, but I forget the titles. They make room. So what does one do if they don't have those? You've got to modify? Well, no. No, all you're going to do if you have...so on your game, a left and right... I don't have to. I'm just asking for the audience. I'm saying, alright, so in your game, the left and right bases, they both have that cutout, right? They're both different? They're both the different style? They're both the same. They're identical. Left and right, but they're the same thing. Yeah, so those are interchangeable. You can take the right and go to left and left to go to right because there's brand new holes. If they're tapped. Not all of them are tapped. No, you re-tap them. They tap, the black screws that come with the game, those are tapping screws. Oh, they're self-tapping? Self tapping the black one Did not know that Yeah so I do it all the time I bring new life into a Okay so there two things now Yeah We bring content Sure we do We bring good tech tips for people Okay I kind of bummed at these What would this be like if you put this on a game one of these Williams John Day would love it He takes all the belly games and put those He didn answer my question He put those Williams thing all the time He didn answer my question Yeah What would I do Is it any good or Does it feel different Yeah it feels different I don like it It feels different You playing a Williams game Okay I'd go get the right one. That's the answer. Okay. Okay. Here's another little ditty. This little bumper piece. Oh, that guy. Yeah. For a modern. Yeah. 81 Valley or beyond. Beyond. Yeah. 80s. 80s. Subtitles by the Amara.org community I have so much stuff, it's like, oh, I got that, oh, I have that. I don't have to order stuff typically, I overorder, so I have so much stuff. With those, with those bally, those 80 bally pop bumper bodies, you know, from the factory they put this little clear ring around the three tabs. I get rid of that ring. That ring is supposed to be so that the cap doesn't come off, but what it winds up doing is puts extra tension in those tabs. When you do get the cap... You break them off so you have to buy another one. Yeah. And you want to remove the cap to replace the bulb when it goes bad. So you, so yeah, I throw that ring out. You don't need it. What's the break all the tabs and you get to get a new one? Oh yeah, everything used to be, you know, regular screws and bolts and now it's all these newfangled, you know, tabs and crap, so you can get them on easy but getting them off. Yeah, you know what? $500, $500. Yeah, yeah, yeah, case in point, in my Volvo. We have Volvo stories again? Yeah, we got Volvo story. I spent, this past year I think I've spent $11,000, $15,000, I don't know, I think I've spent $15,000. Yeah, I think I've spent $15,000. I think I've spent $15,000. I think I've spent $15,000. I think I've spent $15,000. I think I've spent $15,000. What's your favorite movie? I love the movie, but this past year I think I've spent $11,000 in that car. I used a 10-year old car. That's crazy. You're crazy. I know, but you know, I can't get a V6 anymore turbo in this car. So it's like, you know, got $125,000 on it. It's still going strong, but it's like, yeah, I'm putting the money into it. So I had to get the battery replaced recently. That's a whole other story. But the problem is, is that when they put the battery, it's right near the firewall. It has cut— Oh yeah, you got to take off 19 things to get to it. Yeah. Look at because the I'm going to take them off myself. Screw it. Here. I'll put them on later. Well, if you don't have anything else, I'm, uh... Well, I do have a Christmas present from Australia here that I opened up. Oh, that's great! Good thing you said something. I almost forgot. So, well, wait. First, let's clear things up. Grant. Ten days without internet. What's the deal? Well, I didn't hear about that. I haven't been able to get an email to him in ten days. Oh, you know what he did? He emailed me back after I emailed him on all three of I was reading through the mail and one of them hit and he got back to me. I thought he was hating on me. I sent him pictures, I sent him all kinds of crap and I'm like, this is really weird. Is he like okay? You know, I know there's a lot of crap going on over there. Is everything okay? Oh yeah, there sure is. And then you're like, hey, did it bounce? News Time. http://www.gmail.com.com.html http://www.gmail.com.html http://www.emasartzoom để đăng lại completed contempor שק ту involvement of self-aa aquí�� khai'te nouvelle Okay, so I was really made here is the here's the box right And the only thing you had taped down with with with some a little scotch tape and the corners Just little scotch tape not industrial strength like packing tape and it made it here all the way from Australia without being opened up I just easily Broke them open the problem weird. Yeah, so I don't know I worked out Well, you know what? They did way better on this than they did with my 8-Bowl Deluxe LE with the bent leg. But, you know, and all the way from Australia, Mike. Yeah, halfway around the world and around the corner. So I am opening it up. Okay, well, you go through. You just show me as you go. All right, I'll show you as I go. All right, so. So for those of you, while you're looking and grabbing, for those who don't know, Grant has become a good friend even though Dave and I have never met him I'm a little bit shy at first to come on. Not now. Not now. Now he wants to come on. Now he's got to pay the price. Right. He's got to pay the piper. Right. So here's that there. Okay. It says, to Doc and Maureen, a little gift from Grant and Sue. Have a great Christmas and New Year. I'm going to do the same thing to George and Janice. Okay, so you open yours if you're going to open it. Yeah, so this will be, yours is going to be the same stuff. And I'll get mine when, like in July? Yeah, whenever I'm going to see you. May. May, I think. April. April. April? Yeah. April? April? April? Okay. I'm going to do the preamble. While you're peeling, you got something to do, shall we? All right, sure. Okay. Yeah, I got an opening up here. Let's see. All right, so first we got, hey, oh, this is cute, a Vegemite ornament for your tree with a little Santa cap on it. Very nice, Grant. Well done. That's great. That'll go nicely. Love it. Love it. I like that. That's good. Love it. What's up? I love it. And we got a victory bitter beer. Oh, no kidding. He was able to... No, don't... Oh. I don't know if you're supposed to be doing that, but awesome. Yeah, it's awesome. Oh, wow. All right. So is that an IPA? What is this thing? That's Victoria Bitter, man. What's that like? What is it? I know what it's like, but... Well, you want me to save it for us to drink this together when we see it? We have to drink it together. We'll save that. We'll drink it together. Unless you're going to send me my package and then we can do it. That's true. I could. We're not discussing that now. Okay. All right. That's also a possibility too. That's true. Okay. That's true. Let's see. Oh, look, an Australia Gilligan cap. Oh, bucket hat? What's it say on it? Hi little buddy. Oh I like that. Yeah. Big melon though. Australian, that's cute, I like that. That's very nice. Very cool. I'll wear that right now, take off my Dr. Dave hat. I might have to wear that at Fintastic. Yeah, it's a great idea. I like it. Then we got Cherry Ripe. Now what is this? What is this? Luscious cherries. Cherry, he sent those last year. And coconut. And coconut. Cherry and coconut. I remember eating these last year. Oh, I do. Oh, they're by Cadbury. You remember eating these last year? Those are the bomb. Well, you know what, Cadbury, foreign Cadbury is better than American Cadbury. No question about it. That's a great candy. Okay, cool. Thank you, Grant. That's awesome. Thank you, Grant. What else we got? We got some more stuff here. Let's see. All right. I'm a little Merry Christmas. Must be a card. Victory Bitter. Oh. Victory Bitter is you get beer with some cookies and you get some milk and you got cookies for Santa. All right. So he leaves a beer for Santa? Yeah, beer for Santa and some cookies. Okay. Let's see. Oh, a nice little card. Alright, let's see. So it's a little Merry Christmas card. Okay. And it says, have a beer on me. This is, this is, I was, this is a Victorian beer that is very popular. To Doc and Maureen, Merry Christmas. Best wishes from Grant and Sue. We hope you both have a fantastic Christmas and New Year. Best thoughts with your health, Doc. I hope that this next year is a beauty. I'm hoping so too. That's what I'm saying. Grant and Sue. Grant and Sue. Thank you. I think I got more stuff too. Oh, and some down under underwear. No, not underwear. No, it's actually napkins. Okay. Cocktail napkins, very nice. Well, that could be underwear for some people. It could be underwear for some people. And boy, they really went all out here. And we got... We got the Aussie swag again. We got swag. Oh, we got Australianboomup.com. Cable car, what is it? Subtitles by the Amara.org community I'm in. Oh. That's nice. Cable car, Australian Arts Center Spire, Melbourne, Shrine of Remembrance, Flinders Street Station. Oh. So they're in summer right now? Yes. The other day, it was 103 I think I read. Okay. 103? 103 Fahrenheit. No, not Celsius. And we got more. Now we got this thing here. This is to Doc and Maureen and you have one as well in there. I'll open this up too. This is, looks like maybe some kind of calendar maybe? Grant, you've outdone yourself. You and Sue have outdone yourself. Oh, we got it pretty close. Let's see. Okay. Well, let's pull this together at the end here. We are right. Oh, we only have five minutes left. We're good. Okay. A Victorian 16-month calendar. Oh, there you go. I'll put that up in my workshop. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I'll put it in my workshop too. Very cool. I feel like I'm there. We're right there with you, Grant. Thank you. That's awesome. Well done. Both of you. Grant and Sue, thank you. Well done. You get two times up. Okay. You want to hear a quick couple of questions? Christmas related? Sure. And we'll close out? Go ahead. Okay. Do you on your Christmas tree have any electronic ornaments? There's one in particular I'm thinking of. Uh, no, but I got a- Do you have the Bugs Bunny Christmas ornament? No. No. Okay. Okay. Go ahead. I was going to take a picture of mine and show you. Okay. You want to hold the thought or you keep going? Yeah, I'm going to keep going. I'll keep going. Okay. Your Christmas tree. Now you can do this. Elegant or eclectic? Eclectic. Okay. We'll come back to that. White House or Jersey? Neither. What's it? White House or Jersey? What does that mean? Like all white and or Period ofihuare mail slow Description relief date map. Lew Emirium video clip. I have the Bugs Bunny one, I have the Rosie the robot one, I have the Harlem Globetrotters one, I have theBeverly Hillbillies one, and I have some country artist with a phonograph that actually works. That's cool. It spins around and sings a song. See we used it and we had a real tree like 7 foot 8 foot tall tree, we had all that stuff. Now we went simple. I'm going to take a quick picture and show you. First tree that we have had artificial in all our years together. Okay, while Dave's taking a picture, I'm going to say the following. Next year, we're going to continue to bring you technical repairs, listener mail, trivia, Pinball shows, pinball locations, breweries and our much requested animal stories. So, stay tuned. Dave is showing me a picture of his Christmas tree. Oh, that's definitely White House. Yeah, that's more green. That's White House. Pencil tree. Alright, pencil tree. And then... My tree is Jersey. We have Christmas ornaments from when Janice and I were young kids. Oh, we got those too. They're in the basement. They're in the basement somewhere, socked away. Oh, no, no, no. This is, it's probably not the right thing to say, but ours is the garbage tree. You name it, we got it on there. And when you look at our tree, we even have a tube of toothpaste. And people are like, why is that on there? That is from the first Christmas party. We had a bring your bring an ornament Christmas party because we didn't have any ornaments. So my crazy friend brought a tube of crest toothpaste and it's been on our Christmas tree for 40 something years. Wow. Is it is it fluoride? Yes. I'm sure it is. Want to see my favorite? My favorite. So we definitely have what I would call the garbage jersey tree. It is. It's a wild tree. Alright, check this is my favorite one I bought this about a year or two ago. Let's see. The hell was that? Superman? No. Spiderman? No. I can't tell what it is. It's Bruce Willis from Die Hard. When he says now I know what it feels like being a TV dinner. He likes he likes it. He's inside his is inside one person to discuss this movie. Exactly, but everyone else will know, the audience will know, it's Bruce Willis inside the air ducts lighting up his lighting his lighter says, come to the coast, have a good time. So people will know that, but that it's an awesome picture of Bruce Willis with a lighter and a little a Sucrettes candy container. Someone put a picture of Bruce Willis inside it. David, you're dating yourself. Sucrettes? Sucrettes, yeah. That doesn't even exist anymore. It must because the container is still here. They use the container all the time. Metal container, secrets. No, no, I recall. That's a good one. Wow, that's digging deep and back. Yeah, you know, call back for, you know, that kind of thing. Right now we have less than one minute. Okay, say goodbye. All right, well, I wouldn't say goodbye. We'll say farewell for now and Merry Christmas and a happy new year to all and a happy and healthy new year to all. Thanks to our audience for listening, those new and old. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and whatever else you celebrate. Stay lit and tilted. Until next year. Until next time, peace out. Oh, we are the boys and chorus, we hope you like our show. We know you're rootin' for us, but now we have to go. Who do you call when you want your pinball machine restored? Dr. Dave! Dave! Who? Dave, D-A-V-E, yeah Dave! A-right. George, you don't know what you're saying. You're under their control. George, we've had it with you. Say no rodeo, bro dad. Hasta la vista, baby.