Monthly Archives: July 2021

Rebuilding/Bulletproofing Gottlieb Pop Bumper Driver Boards

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This is a series of three videos covering before, during and after, demonstrating problems with Gottlieb System 80 pop bumper driver boards. There are some basic things you want to do to make them work better and more reliably.

Summary of Pop bumper board mods:

  • First, check to see if you have older, or revised boards and convert older versions to the new revised version
  • Replace 47uf cap with 100-200uf cap
  • Add a 4.7uf 10v cap on underside to help with “phantom pops”
  • Re-flow pin headers and make sure to remove any oxidation from the pins
  • Test the driver and replace with a Tip102 if needed
  • To reduce “ghost pops” you can add a 47uf (10v-16v) cap between the pins displayed below:
Location of optional 47uf cap
Location of optional 47uf cap

Demo of Custom Paragon with all new Sound/Rules

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Here is a short update on the progress with my 1979 Bally Paragon pinball machine with custom rules and sound. The game is close to being complete. Take a look!

I’m now at the point where I’m getting various feedback from players about the content. Most people like it, but some seem to think the music is a little too “mellow” given the theme? I can see that. I wanted to do something a little more stylized and different. You’d probably expect some kind of dramatic orchestral score with the game, and not a kind of funky prog-rock type of music. So I’m torn on whether I should keep it or change it? I’m going to talk with the artist and see if he has any ideas — maybe we might record something specific for the machine? I don’t know, but I do like the idea of using a real band that we’ve actually recorded – so every sound in the game was completely created. Let me know what you think?

Stuck Flippers? Sometimes the problem is not what you expect..

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Anybody messing with pinball machines will undoubtedly encounter problems with flippers. Often they seem to get “stuck”, will stay up and not go back down or behave weird. We often instantly go to the flipper mechanism to look for a problem, but sometimes it’s not there.

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Why do some pinball machines have capacitors on their switches?

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On many pinball machines like early solid state Bally and Stern games, you’ll often see little capacitors on most of the playfield switches. Sometimes they’re there but a leg is cut off. Why are they there? What do they do? And are they important? We’ll talk about that.

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What are these capacitors? Originally they were 0.047 uf 50v. There are various versions you can use. I will sometimes replace them with a 0.1uf and it works fine.

Any .05 or .047 uf at 50 volts or higher mylar or ceramic disc type is fine. Here’s a sample link: https://www.newark.com/vishay/1c10z5u473m050b/cap-0-047-f-50v-20-z5u/dp/57AC4650?st=0.047uf