Whitewater missing mountain mod

Been a while since I posted something here, which means I'm busy with a lot of things;
First made some changes to the website. Dropped a few categories from the homepage and other index pages, decided I will not maintain these anymore. These are pinball in Belgium, the agenda of shows and the things I learned (which was updated bi-weekly).

I'm busy shopping my Attack From Mars pinball machine. Playfield has been removed from the game, everything on top is removed. Now have to remove the bottom assemblies and clean everything.
Cabinet has been sanded, ready to  put new cabinet decals on.
I had shopped this machine when I bought it (7 to 8 years ago) and it's amazing how dirty it is and even how worn some rubbers were. The slingshot rubbers almost broke, theywere so thin !


I'm also busy on making a new Whitewater missing mountain mod.

If you've ever seen the whitewater pinball machine, you know there are mountain shaped plastics in different places. There's a large ramp that's on the left side of the playfield which has a U-shaped turn on the top left of the playfield. Underneath there's nothing, it's completely open, showing the back/side black wood of the machine and an exposed microswitch. Not a nice look.
Someone else had made a mod for this years ago, he had made a new mountain plastic that fit inside this hole.
It made the machine look so much better, it really belonged there;

The mod isn't for sale anymore, so I decided to make my own mountain plastic.
Last week made the base shape using modeling clay. Now it was dried out enough, so yesterday evening I finalized it, build up onto this shape adding the details. I tried to make it look like the other mountai plastics, although that was not easy to do, I'm not a sculptor. Now it has to dry again for a few days.
Then I will make a silicone mold out of it and cast a mountain.
That one I can paint and then I'll see how good it is.. (the model now is in white clay so it's not easy to see it shape correct and predict how it will look painted, as the dark brown paint will stay into the deeper parts).

Back from vacation, AFM sound upgrade

Back from vacation.. loved it !
Haven't seen a pinball machine on location.. although in the north of Italy there should be a few at campings, but we were in a fancy hotel in a large town that mostly had an older population.. still had a good time, we had very good weather (the belgian summer has been rainy and cold :(

Haven't worked more on the pinball machines except that I upgraded the speakers in Attack from Mars too.



Here's a picture of the subwoofer in my Twilight Zone..

I did start on a new article about pinball machine photography but as it'll be a very big article, that may still take a while until it gets published on the site.

Medieval Madness sound upgrade finished

Had time to work on my Medieval Madness sound upgrade yesterday evening.

First tested with the new tweeter that had some distortion.. put in the 6.8mfd and 4.7mfd capacitors instead of the default 10mfd, but it didn't make any noticeable difference, the speaker still distorted :(
Even tried adding some resistors. But only when I added 3 resistors of 5ohm it didn't distort anymore, but you hardly heard anything from the tweeter..
So I soldered back in the original tweeter.

Then I tested with a pot on R17, to bring out the bass and get more sound out of the cabinet subwoofer. That really made a nice difference, and I noticed the backbox speakers also lost some of the high notes.
So I put in back the improved tweeter and this time it didn't distort anymore.
Excellent ! Tested a bit and around 8k7 ohm it gives the best setting for my MM with new car speakers..

The cabinet subwoofer still isn't very loud, it doesn't give out a real hard beat you would expect from a car subwoofer.. but it's ok for me. To get a good bass I probably need to add an amplifier, cut out the hole, and remove my spare parts boxes from underneath the game..
but now you hear the game has some added bass compared to the default setup, and you definitely feel it, the cabinet vibrates slightly from the bass.. it's nice :)

WPC sound upgrade parts

Went to an electronic parts shop this afternoon..
(another shop I went to earlier this week was closed because of summer holidays.. how am I supposed to get any work done when I can't get the parts I need ?)
Bought new capacitors to try on the MM tweeter, will check if a 4.7 or 6.8 mfd one will block enough low sounds so the tweeter doesn't distort anymore.

Didn't buy l-pads but did get pots to check if I could plug it on R17/R39 like the ones pinball pro sells. Check the CV sound page at iobium.com btw for more information about this.

I hope to test everything it this weekend, before I leave on holiday.. Italy here we come !

Didn't have time this evening to already test the capacitors as I was home quite late.. went with a friend to an operator. I didn't buy anything (I don't buy or sell games, don't have the room to store them, and even if I wanted to buy a game I couldn't as I crashed my car earlier this week so couldn't transport it back home.. but I went along as I was curious to see what games were left.. I never say no to a warehouse visit). My friend also didn't buy any pinball machines as most of what available was only good for parts (and even then) and he didn't want to fill up his truck with 12 games to part them all out..

He did buy a NOS Bally Monte Carlo backglass for 50 euros. Not a bad score !
Not that he really needed it, but Monte Carlo has nice artwork so it's nice to hang in a gameroom against the wall as decoration.. and a NOS pinball backglass is a rare find..



Don't remember exactly what other backglasses were available;. about 5 other pinball backlasses, mostly of electro-mechanical games (stuff like Capersville, Super Circus,.. ), and a lot (50 or so) bingo backglasses (mostly Bally) and backglasses from other vintage amusement games like bowlers..



Bingo machine backglasses are something I'm really not interested in myself so we left them there in the basement.. there was also another room with a lot of bingo backglasses from parted games.



Just checked ipdb.org and the super circus backglass is already 50 years old.. and has quite nice artwork too.. maybe I should've bought it ? maybe next time..

There were a lot of neogeos (with 4 games) and some mortal combats (ultimate mk and mk2/3 if I'm not mistaken) also available.. not in mint condition, all faded, came off location.. but still interesting for some people as it's a popular game.

Today I also searched a bit on rgp and other sites about the door flasher mod on Twilight Zone that's also I intended to do for a looooong time now.
Last year I parted out a Funhouse, and kept the flashers that are underneath the clock so I could them for this mod.. only have to test on how to connect them exactly..
Did anyone buy the pingizmos door flasher mod (they don't exist anymore ?) and want to tell me how the wiring is exactly ?

WPC speaker upgrade

Started this week on another project that I planned to do for many years now but just never did: upgrading speakers in all of my pinball machines.

I've read Tony's guide a lot and will follow it.. especially the schematics at the end of his instructions are interesting.

I don't have everything I need yet - I do have one pyramid crossover, and last week I went crazy and bought about a dozen speakers in all sizes.
I don't have l-pads or rheostats yet so I'm waiting for them to complete the upgrade and do all rewiring necessary.



What I already did was replacing the original speakers in my Medieval Madness pinball machine with better ones. According to some posts on rgp, just installing new speakers without rewiring anything may also make a big difference on some games, but the final result depends on the game and speakers used.. one just has to experiment, you don't know in advance how successful you'll be..

In the backbox I replaced the left speaker with a much better quality car speaker of the same size, and the tweeter on the right with an improved one.
Best results you get if you put 2 of the same type of speakers in the backbox, but I just did not want to drill/cut the plastic speakerpanel of my MM.
I did buy speakers with built-in tweeters too that can fit in the backbox, but will use those for another game with wooden speaker panel.



I put a large subwoofer in the cabinet (the biggest size that I could fit in there, the troll assemblies just don't touch it).



Results (without installing an lpad to change the balance):

The cabinet speaker can't be heard at all.. the volume of the backbox speakers is too high in contrast.. so an lpad is really necessary for a new subwoofer to make any noticeable difference.

The tweeter on the right distorts sometimes. It's annoying. Don't know how it comes as it doesn't do it all the time.. I'll have to experiment to lower its output.
It shouldn't do it in theory as it has more than double the watts of the original.
I'll install the tweeter into another pinball machine too and see what it does..
Maybe they're of less quality than I think they are, or maybe it just doesn't go well into the default configuration on Medieval Madness.
I hope it's the second as I intended to buy more of these tweeters as they have a good size.. I want to install them in my Attack from Mars, Cirqus Voltaire and Safecracker pinball machines.

I first replaced the left backbox speaker and tested this setup.
That actually sounded the best ! The speaker was clear enough to let me hears sounds I never heard before (what - there's actually water flowing ?! glass breaking ?!) The result really has to be heard to believe, only now you realize how crappy the default pinball machine speakers sound !
It also had enough power to give out a good bass you could feel and hear, but would not overpower the other sounds.

So I'll install an l-pad and see if I can fine-tune it so the pinball machine will really sound very good. If I can't get it right then maybe I'll just return to the default wiring and only keep the left backbox speaker.
But I'm pretty sure I'll get it working with an l-pad. Last year I heard a friends Medieval Madness with only a new subwoofer in the cabinet and a pinballpro l-pad alligator clip thingy in the backbox and the improved bass also made a huge difference to the feel of the game..

Orbitor 1 speaks

My Orbitor 1 speaks !

Sterns Orbitor One pinball machine was designed to have a speech board, but not every game had this one installed.. like my machine. It only had a soundboard.

Last year I had already bought a speech board from a Flight 2000 but I had only the board itself, and not the flatcables to connect it to the lamp driver board. And I had once read on rec.games.pinball from someone who also wanted to upgrade his machine, that there was an additional connector needed in the wiring loom which wasn't present.
So it wasn't a matter of just plugging it in, therefor I never put any time in it.

Last week however I acquired a Stern Freefall. This game also had the sound and speech board installed and had the complete wiring in the backbox. Its condition is too bad to repair (very worn playfield, ..) so I was going to use it for spare parts.
Now I had a full set of board and the complete wiring.. so this week I worked every evening on retrofitting the speech board in my Orbitor One.

I'll make detailed pictures and write an article for my website in a few days..
but the good news is that it was much easier to connect the soundboard than I thought it would be, as the missing connector actually was present in the wiring !!
It was just very well hidden :)

Update: here is the article on about adding a speech board into a Stern pinball machine.

RFM third saucer mod

And another new article posted.. this time a modification for Revenge From Mars: add a third saucer with flasher and leds to back of the playfield.

I had some articles submitted by people, just didn't have time the last weeks to translate them all.. so the next days/weeks I'll do some updates to the site, it's been too long..