Gottlieb's Close Encounters Of The Third Kind Pinball Repair - The Soundboard, and the Roto Target 

King of the castle! Got my smile for the day :)

Rubin' is racin', bumpin' is pinballin'! Thanks Ron!

Sounds remind me of a cash register at the grocery store. Hahaha Nice work!

@13:23 I like the manual waving traces! they are artsy!

I love the blue displays. This machine captured something really special and froze it in time. From the sounds to the aesthetics. It just drips and oozes COOL!

Hi Joe, glad to of visited Rock Hill the other day, and visit the man himself, it was a pleasure. Keep this content coming buddy.

That was the greatest save of all time Beavis...

Great Game! Fun pinball!

Very fun pin and I like that you saved the original MPU. Thanks!

You guys do such a great job. Another one saved!

I love that sound board, looks like a "project kit". Even in school, we would make things like that. Layout the mask lines and solder points. Etch the board and drill it, insert and solder away. That was a set above the "breadboard" kit because you had to etch the board and traces. Do kids even have things like this anymore? Does anyone else remember these things, AM radios, buzzers, continuity testers, etc.

Kind of interesting to see the transition steps towards solid state illustrated so well by this machine. Also the use of three flashers across the saucer look amazing. Rock on Ron.

Looking so much better now from where this repair started for sure!

Great save of a classic pinball machine !!

One of, if not THE first pinball machines I ever played was Totem. It’s a System 1 Gottlieb and one of the first with their “Multi-mode” sound boards. Still primitive in design like this one but the sound is more advanced. Anyway, my dad bought it cheap with plans on flipping it way back in the 90’s but both my parents and I fell in love with it so he’s kept it ever since. It was the beginning of his collection too, which is neat. Anyway, you guys working on this machine makes me think of Totem and the memories of it set up on the floor in their kitchen with no legs playing it as a kid haha.

The roto target is such a cool thing for a way to vary the scoring, seems fitting I watched this series right after your Masquerade series (also Gottlieb I think) with the cool projection wheel under the playfield that seems to accomplish the same thing. When you said the sound board essentially works by firing one of three solenoids, the first thing I thought of as a mod is losing the sound card and putting a chime box in it. (Hey there is a video on RU-vid of somebody that took a Bally Eight Ball (which used chimes), kept the chimes, but added a music player so that when the game kicked the ball out to the shooter lane it plays the Happy Days theme song.) - While I don't have my own machine watching your videos has inspired me to check out our local arcades - pinball is going strong in the Cincinnati, OH area with 140 machines between 6 arcades. (and that's just pinball) - yes there are some repeats in that but I'm sure at least 100 different games. (So I've been making operators happy by putting quarters into their pinball machines)- I was excited one has 4 Million BC and the 2 player version of Space Odyssey that I've also seen you rehab - can you believe those are being commercially operated in 2022?)

I love your running commentary on your gameplay. Very entertaining! "Aw c'mon now!" being my favourite exclamation I think. :)

It sounds fantastic hearing the ball roll around this pristine clean playfield. As usual Ronnie, you made it an offer it couldn’t refuse. Someone’s gonna love this machine for their home. Thanks for trying to teach us.

Looks great. Awesome job

@43:54 I keep hearing the words "Stick save, Rogie Vachon!" This was back in '76, when Capt. Fantastic was new, and one of my fellow pinball junkies used to say that for every save like that. I never did get into hockey, and only now, thanks to Google, know this guy was a hockey player for the Los Angeles Kings back then. (The things pinball brings back!)

Congrats on the high score

A wheel! Wheeeeeee!

That roto target is super cool when it spins. Also, the machine sounds like it's making a spit-take at the start of the turn.

Great series Ron. Congratulations on the high score.

Nice work looks great.

I designed a chimes simulation board using a decay module I had laying around (long story...) and a single 555 timer, using a latch IC to latch the state of the chimes solenoid lines (so the 555 doesn't "forget" the frequency while the sound is fading away). It uses a 4066 to switch in three trimmer resistors (coulda used 4, but the machine only has 3 chimes). The flip side is that if two chimes turn on at the exact same time, you get a tone that's completely different. With that design you can get 7 different notes (some of which may or may not be in tune) (Reason being - the cocktail table pinball machine, Allied Leasure's Take Five (which if Commodore had made pinball machines would have had the exact same looking MPU board), is supposed to be set up in the lounge, where it mustn't make a lot of noise. And since you can't get chimes to play very quiet and a pinball without chimes just sucks, I designed that board which of course has a volume control)

Cog + Sprocket = Sprog. I like it! My favorite mashup is tomayo, or tomacco if you're a Simpsons fan. Great work as always!

Great video Ronnie, Love those early sounds on those games. You guys did a great job on cleaning up this game. It sounds like I am at the checkout at the grocery store. See you on the next video.

This was my first pinball game. It's sitting about four feet from my right. If fact, I think I need to go play a game or three.

That is a cool game. You have to have a lot of respect for the designers. They knew how to make the game easy but difficult. These guys don't get the respect they deserve. Using switches, solenoids and some very complex mechanical design, they came up with some crazy stuff. Really cool. Every time I hear I was robbed! I think of the movie Kingpin! Makes me laugh every time.

I love the System Ones also. Good to see this one running so well.

Thanls! one more pinball beautifully saved. Please can you explain the logic behind the roto wheel scoring? it seems freaking interesting to know how it recognizes what you hit according to four fingers and some rivets.

outlanes are brutal on this game nice that it hasn't been adjusted. much more enjoyable this way. never understood why people say the rototarget is bad, they are fairly easy to maintain and clean.

The dude on the playfield looks like a ghost when the lights are out. It would be creepy if not for the big smile.

Very nice example of this game. This System one is a fav with Sinbad, Cleopatra=Pyramid em Joker poker and Genie

Man I love this! man i want that Fire Power lol

I wasn't a big fan of the early SS sound systems........Then again, when I was playing pinball, it the systems already had theme music and talking. The beep-boop sounds primitive.... I think I'd prefer chimes. The games I played the most were.....Cyclone, Elvira and the Party Monsters, and Rollergames. The local pub always had 1-2 machines. I'd get a few quarters while waiting for them to make dinner.

Good! As long as you get the batteries away form (and below) the boards, almost don't matter what kind of batteries you put in there. I dig the rotary target! And at least the sound board is made with IC's - and has 3 sounds... I guess.

I call that sound board, "the Walmart checkout scanner"

Ronnie you have a light that is flickering on the right side

Great job. Glad you beat that punk’s high score. ;)

Any chance of brightening up player 1's score the way you did #4? Or, in real life, do they look much more similar?

When I look at the layout of this game I wonder if they started designing it as an Electro-Mechanical game, but then converted to to solid state part way through its design. Even the sound board is EM-like -- it just has three different beeps instead of three different chimes. I know there were some games produced in both EM and SS versions, was Close Encounters one of them? I just looked it up (do my own research? I know, weird huh?) and according to pinside, "An electromechanical version of this game was also made by Gottlieb in fewer numbers".

beep beep boop. Bee bop a boop. Take me to your leader.

Could the beep, boop, bop board be adapted to operate a set of chimes? I prefer the old EM sound... :)

22:06 "Price check on register 4 please...."

No bleep bloop on the spinner? That seems like an oversight. Spinner target is scoring, right? Huh, no, on further review, it’s inconsistent - sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. Was there something in the rules card about when it hits and when it doesn’t?

could be such a cool game, but there seem to be so many drain areas‼️®™️ 😳😳

Is that Jack Skellington on the Spinner?

I was really hoping you'd kinda elaborate on how to fix the Roto Target.. You mentioned it "was a pain.." to fix? I've got a Gottlieb SPIN OUT where the some of the Leafs on the Roto have come loose. And one of the Leafs was "fixed" by the previous owner, and doesn't work that great.. What would be the best way to fix a problem like that?.. I can't find a Roto Target part to replace it, which I assume means I'll have to find some other solution?

JOE CLASSIC, when looking at various pinball mechanisms, how do you tell what is considered the COG and the SPROG? I'm not really sure what is the differences between a gear compared to a COG/SPROG so i'm confused what you're considering a Cog/sprog in pinball games mechanical mechanisms. You mention something about the solenoid drive transistor doing something with the grounding for the gottliebs beep soundboard, which the solenoid driver transistor are affecting the grounding for the gottliebs beep sounding board causing grounding issues?

Tilting is trying

Honestly -- the game doesn't even play the opening notes from the movie's theme?!? What a crying shame! There was an opportunity lost here just to sell my record singles with the main theme from CEo3K! Too bad there isn't an audio chip upgrade for the game that includes samples of the music and dialogue from the movie! Nobody does custom audio chip upgrades for old games?!? There's a lost opportunity here!

Do you guys ship pinball machines or just local pickup?

This video was very entertaining. My only disappointment (which is with the game, not your video or the work you did), is that the theme music from the "Close Encounters" movie didn't seem to make it into the game.

Doesn't look to have muck miles on the clock... All three sounds..beep beep and not forgetting boop

Hello Yodelayheehoo

if your watchin the backglass you aren't watchin the board.

playin in the dark does not let one see whats happening