Restoring a 1967 Gottlieb “Hi Score” pinball machine

Posted on 2020-10-20 by admin

This is a “first look” and an overview of what I need to do to get this interesting old pinball machine working again.

Announcing a new series: Pinball Features – Episode 1: TILT!

Posted on 2020-09-03 by admin

As more and more people discover the joy of playing pinball, I find myself getting more basic/general questions, and this seems like a good time to launch a new series I’m calling, “Pinball Features”. Each video will focus on a certain element of pinball and offer some basic information on this feature/component of pinball. While this is geared for laypeople, I hope that regardless of your skill level, you may find it informative.

The first episode is dedicated to the Tilt Mechanism. I go into how it works, why it’s there and the different types of tilt devices found in pinball machines.

Should You Buy A Pinball Machine? A guide for beginners.

Posted on 2020-07-26 by admin

Lately I’ve been putting some of my games up for sale, and I get a lot of people who have never owned pinball machines contacting me. They have a romantic idea of setting up a game room for their kids and remember pinball machines fondly and want to have one at home. Sounds great right? I agree it can be very rewarding… but you have to know what you’re potentially getting yourself into. A pinball machine is not like a regular modern amusement device. Let’s go over the pros, cons and pitfalls of owning pinball machines, and while you think your kids will enjoy it, are you sure? Let’s dive in and talk about it!

How to break down a pinball machine for storage or shipping

Posted on 2020-06-07 by admin

If you have a game you are looking to store temporarily, or ship, here are some tips on how to break it down and store it to make sure it stays in good condition.

Pinball flipper doesn’t work? Here’s a checklist of where to look.

Posted on 2020-05-14 by admin

As soon as I thought I had the game operational, I waxed the playfield and got ready to put it back together only to find out one of the flippers was out. This was a rather tricky issue that took a little bit to figure out — not your typical flipper problem, so I thought I’d do a video of it and go through the process of diagnosing why a flipper might not work (on a Bally-35 early solid state game).

Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” – how to disassemble the coffin and service the pop bumper underneath

Posted on 2020-01-31 by admin

I recently had a pop bumper bracket on BSD break and I realized this wasn’t an easy fix. To get to the top of the pop bumper you have to almost completely disassemble the coffin assembly, which isn’t obvious. So I made a video on this process. Enjoy!

Below is a time-lapse of the process:

For the third part, here’s a nice video on how to rebuild a pop bumper assembly. There are some tricks to this and many times people put these things together wrong.

Pinball Stories #1: My first game, “Genie” by Gottlieb

Posted on 2020-01-16 by admin

One of the things us pinball enthusiasts love to do is tell stories about how we acquired games. Each game has its own unique provenance and history, and there’s almost always an interesting story behind them. This is the first episode in an ongoing series were we talk about the stories behind the games and how they came to be. I start the series off with the very first pinball machine I purchased, a Gottlieb “Genie” – before I knew anything about how to repair and restore games. It was the game that got me on this path. I hope you enjoy the story – be sure to subscribe on Youtube! Thanks for watching!