Pinball Tips: Color matching

Here’s some good advice on how to paint and touch up your game.

Color Wanted: Start with: Add a little:
Green Yellow Blue
Orange Yellow Red
Brown Red Black
Maroon Red Black & Magenta
Cream White Yellow
Tan White Brown
Ivory White Yellow & Brown
Gray White Black
French Gray White Yellow & Black
Olive Green Yellow Black & White
Pink White Red
Flesh White Red & Yellow
Coral White Orange
Purple Magenta Blue
Gold Yellow Brown
Lime Green Yellow Green & White

More hints:

  • Realize that not all areas of the playfield or cabinet, even if they were painted a single color, will remain the same color over time.  Different areas may fade to different shades.
  • Also note that many paint colors will change slightly as they dry, or appear different if a clear coat is added later, and try to do some test runs to see how the final result will appear before committing.
  • Mix your paint and put some on a piece of clear plastic and hold it over the area you’re going to touch up to see how well it matches.
  • You can pick up a pantone color matching set at most hardware and paint stores and use this to help match colors.
  • Don’t use hot water to clean the paint brush. This can weaken the glue that holds the bristles together and cause bristles to fall out.
  • There sites online such as this one ( http://pinballpal.com/colors/  ) which has color formulas for some popular pinball games.

Working with Gottlieb EMs: Fixing Scoring Problems & Score Reels

I had a chance to spend some time with a 70s era Gottlieb EM machine I recently picked up. This game came to me in non-working condition, mostly complete. For the complete video series with the early “first look” footage see this article.

In this series I spend most of my time diagnosing issues that are relating to the score reels.  I also take some time cleaning various contacts and relays which end up solving a variety of problems from games that never end to problems properly scoring shots and bonuses.   I hope you enjoy as I dive into this game getting it back to playing condition and learning along the way.

Status update

Some of you (ok, maybe 2-3 of you who read this blog) may be wondering why I haven’t posted much lately.  It’s not that there isn’t a lot going on — quite the contrary.  I’m just keeping things under wraps until details are finalized, but with any luck there may be some interesting announcements soon.

Also, more games have come into the shop, and more progress has been made on both solid state and EM machines.  I’ve got at least a half-dozen new videos to post.  Stay tuned for more!   And thanks for watching and reading!   – Mike

TPF 2012 – Complete Jersey Jack Presentation: WOZ status

Here is the complete Jersey Jack presentation at the Texas Pinball Festival 2012, shot in 9 parts in a YouTube playlist. Jack was funny and informative and talked about the trials and tribulations of making pinball and showed off some new game features.

By the way, it says part 1/8 – below is a playlist that will play all 8 (actually 9) videos in sequence.

The New P-cubed P-ROC-based prototype pinball demo’d at TPF

One of the coolest things to show up in the community in years is the P-ROC system, a custom boardset that allows interfacing a computer to traditional pinball games or the creation of entirely new games. At TPF 2012, developer Gerry Stellenberg shows off his new prototype game system called P3 (p-cubed) which incorporates a number of unique and innovative features.

Check out this exclusive video where I talk one-on-one with the principal developer as he shows off the groups’ creation: