For Amusement Only Em And Bingo Pinball Podcast

I spent a bit of time tonight looking at my new Night Club project.  I began shopping the units in the head, and have finished a good portion. This is what is needed to get the game going.

I finished replacing the control unit motor on Gay Time, and the game roared to life! I only had two items that needed tweaking, then the game started playing perfectly. My first test game, when I wasn't really trying, I got a 5-in-a-line!  I've been unable to replicate this feat thus far.

Bally actually made it very easy to swap units in and out of a bingo.  Today I talk about how to remove a control unit motor from a Bally bingo. I have a couple of photos of the removal up on the Facebook/Instagram/Twitter pages.  But it is just about how you might imagine it. Once I have the new motor installed (hopefully by the end of the week), I will likely have a working game!

Bally thought long and hard about how the player would approach and play their bingo games, but they also thought about the poor guy who would have to maintain them! Learn some of the secrets of working on a bingo in this episode.

I finally made the trip up to NJ and met Vic in person. Vic spent the whole day with me and shared his amazing collection and variety of gorgeous bingos. We talk about the day, his truly fantastic collection and the unique and wonderful bingo gameplay of the games in his collection. The best part: I drove home that night with two new bingos in my van - 1955 Gay Time and 1956 Night Club!

Special guest host Fake Nick Baldridge joins us for a walkthrough of the 1973 Jubilee that he owns. FNB does an excellent job describing the features and gameplay on his game.   Hopefully FNB comes back for an episode in the future - thanks FNB!

Charles Rowland is a local (to the Richmond, VA area) operator who has been in the industry since the 1960s.   Charles has fascinating stories about running bingos and EMs on location during their heyday. He currently runs Games People Play, a shop that sells to home game enthusiasts and runs games on location. Games People Play is on Dabney Rd is in the near West End in Richmond, VA.  

Flip Flags are a unique feature found on only 3 Bally machines, beginning with Wizard! in 1975. The EM Dungeon did a treatise on this topic all the way back in episode 6 of the Spooky Pinball Podcast. A fun feature that was obliterated with the rise of solid state.

Bally reintroduced the world to multiball through Balls-a-Poppin in 1956. They continued to produce multiball machines throughout the remainder of the EM era.

Bally's innovations continue with the Chicane Lane, a feature that slows the ball down and wiggles it back and forth to draw the player's attention.  Amazingly simple in execution, two stacked plastics!

Another Bally invention, the mushroom bumper is a really fancy target that feels very satisfying to hit. How they work and common problems.

Originally known as 'Flipper Zippers', this feature allows the flippers mounted on the playfield to 'zip' together, closing off the outhole. The feature is pretty simple under the hood. One of Bally's innovations during the EM era, pioneered by Ted Zale.

How to take apart a flipper and change them. The same basic rules apply to any EM pinball machine with flippers.

Flippers have undergone a bit of change since the beginning of the flipper era (1947). Different designers had different techniques for using the flippers, and they certainly changed the face of pinball. I also discuss the basic pieces of the flipper mechanism.

What is a transformer?  What purpose does that heavy thing do in your game? These questions and more answered!

Wanye Neyens was a prolific designer through much of Gottlieb's woodrail and metal rail EM production. His career spanned at least 179 machines (according to the IPDB, 177 machines made it to production). He is 97 years old today, July 29, 2015.  Happy Birthday, Mr. Neyens!

Some of the basics about how to construct a circuit, how the circuit actually functions, and how to measure and calculate the values of Votage, Amperage (current), and Resistance.

How to use a multimeter to troubleshoot various aspects of a game.  A bit of a small electical/electronics crash course in how current flows, what to expect, how to change your settings appropriately, and how to zero out your meter.

The final set of switches on the control unit govern the search process.  Everything from the release of the search disc to the lockout of footrail buttons happens here. The control unit is complete - from switch stack A to switch stack ZB!

In our next-to-last episode detailing the workings of a Bally bingo control unit, we examine the switches necessary for the operation of the payout. When a winner has been determined, the machine has to have some way of stepping up the replay meter in the backglass.