i dont like leds in em games at all except maybe in the backbox but look like hell on the playfield too cold/uglyish but worse than my opinion I would caution any system 6 owner from ggoing all or even mostly led for some reason it burns up even the toughest highest wattage fuse..i took most all of them out..problem gone so its the bulbs for sure not sure why it happens butin my case it does if it aint broke don't try to fix...my machine works perfectly w/o leds blows every fuse withthem the reason? I have not a clue but it would suggest they want more juice than the machine can safely supply anyone else have this issue or is it just my machine that does this?
This machine was absolutely resurrected! From horrible battery damage to a wrecked playfield. This game has provided hours of fun and because of your hard work will now go on to provide many many more! Awesome job Ron!!!
Williams registered their 'W' logo in 1962 (PTO S/N 72138685). The first registration of the Motorola M was in 1965 (72803354). They inscribed it in a circle in 1967 (72267966). The More You Know 🌈
DAMNNNNNNNNN I was right! Everybody always blamed it on Williams, I had hunch they were first.... but do we know that W logo Williams registered is the same one we're talking about? They had an earlier stylized W as well that pops up on things.... .HMMMMM, the mystery continues!
I just searched your number, yup, it's the W logo we're talking about... interesting.... My hunch though is neither of them ripped the other one off, they just both thought of the exact same look...
@@LyonsArcade The Motorola logo was done in 1955: 1000logos.net/motorola-logo/ There is even a scan of the original design papers out there on a facebook group called Motorola India Fans. Here is another site: logos.fandom.com/wiki/Motorola Designed by a guy from Chicago of all places, hmmmmEDIT: the Facebook page: facebook.com/FansMotorola/photos/a.434075503396995/1095263917278147/ The first Williams pinball with the logo that I could find on IMDB was Trade Winds from 1962: www.ipdb.org/showpic.pl?id=2621&picno=4382
@@LyonsArcade : wikipedia says about Motorola: "The present "batwing" logo was also introduced in 1955, which was created by award-winning Chicago graphic designer Morton Goldsholl in late 1954." Maybe the same designer did the job for Williams?!.... hmmmm....
Agreed. You can also see some differences, such as the M logo having curved underside while the W logo has overlapping triangles. But anyway, those who say that Williams ripped off Motorola are wrong no matter how it is :)
Yes, the nav lights are Red on pilots (port side) wingtip, Green on Copilots (Starboard) wing tip, White is center/landing light. If you look closely at the playfield you'll see towards the top, a triangle of lights, Red, White, Green.
It looks miles better than when you got it in Ron !! A cool "mod" I did to mine was to add back the flashers sockets up top that the factory stopped installing due to the stand up targets shorting on them. A Bally coil ?!? come on people !
Ron, it shows how well you pay attention to the details, and I have really enjoyed the entire series on the restore. Can't wait for episode 10 - back to it's glory. A good friend has the exact table and I am going to point him to your work so if he needs to get any ideas on what he may need to do if he wants to restore his, granted, his is in a better "starting" position then this one was. Keep up the great work!
Just watched you play the machine! Great job. Sometimes when I am testing my machine to see if I can get all the "specials, etc" I'll play it with out the glass, and manually cheet by hand playing the balls. Fun series of videos!
Motorola logo started in June 1955 the Williams Manufacturing Company, founded in 1943 by Harry E. Williams. However, the company that became WMS Industries was formally founded in 1974 as Williams Electronics, Inc. Williams initially was a manufacturer of pinball machines. In 1964,
Great job Ron!! Your customer is going to be very pleased. The decals make a huge difference. I haven’t played this deck in about thirty years but I remember it being pretty fun. Can’t wait to see you play it.
Motorola started using the stylised M in 1955 and apparently Williams started using there stylised W with the cabinet refresh in 1960/1961. That was the same time that Sam Stern bought the remaining 51% of Williams from Sun Ray. If I recall Harry Williams initially sold 49% of the company to Sam in 1949. Apparently there was an agreement made privately between the Moto and Williams so they wouldn't bother each other over the logos.
Awesome work. This one was a real marathon, but it looks amazing compared to the way it was. It's a beauty now. I love those new decals too, they look great!
You could but you'd be making a pretty big mess, you'd have to remove the mylar and then scrape away the old artwork, if any of it got under the other mylar that was bubbled up on the side it wouldn't be pretty :) Then if you got it slightly off, the hole wouldn't line up, there just wasn't a clean way to make it look any better in my opinion.
The blue rotating beacon on F-14 Tomcat is for patriotic reasons, for the national colors, not anything to do with navigation. Navigation markers (red for left, green for right, white for aft/stern/rear) DO NOT rotate or blink, they are solidly ON (on aircraft wingtips, they get masked by white strobing "kickers", the landing lights). The red rotating warning beacon on the underside of aircraft is also part of the "landing light" package, primarily as a hazard warning for ground personnel, not for navigation or in-flight use.
Green is to indicate Civilian Aircraft, while Blue is used strictly for Military Aircraft. (Red on Left Side of aircraft - Blue/Green on Right Side of aircraft) The reason those lights are there, is for navigation; so other pilots seeing them can tell your heading. Cool fact, all external lights on US Military Aircraft can be toggled to tactical mode (off) for combat operations.
Though if you're head-on with another aircraft (and therefore able to see both marker lights), red should be on the right. White is only visible from behind, though I guess some people turn on the landing light for visibility too. But more likely it's supposed to be the red,white,blue since there's also a red,white,blue flasher arrangement on the field.
That doesn't sound accurate, where did you learn/observe that? Navigation marker lights (aviation or marine) are ALWAYS nominally green, never blue, _even on military aircraft._ Appearing blue is an accident of green plastic lens covers bleaching out, never by intent. I say this as a US Army vet and airfan/occasional EAA attendee. Blue has NO significance for navigation, which is why first responders (fire department or law enforcement, including Coast Guard) use rotating blue beacons for emergency priority (with or without siren) while responding. Lunar white (which appears blue) marker lights can be used on all sides of waterborne vessels at rest while they have divers out, so divers can locate the vessel.
The guy you got the stickers from (Dreg) is André Gagnon, a guy from Quebec who got his own youtube channel ("Arcade moi çà") where he shows his repairs/restorations from old arcade games and pinballs. Very gifted guy and a very good graphic designer. Check out his channel if you can Ron (most of his videos are in french though).
Maybe I’m old-fashioned but I love the old Lightbulbs LEDs to bright bright I bought a Christmas tree with LEDs It lit up the whole room that’s like overwhelming of LED light I like the old fashion lights
I have refurbished many a machine, nice work! Curious, did you put in a new PF glass. The old glass usually is scratched up and replacing makes a big difference.
Good evening… I enjoy watching your videos and had a slight cosmetic suggestion for the f14 pinball game. When the rotators start on the top, there is a lot of bleed through on the back glass. Could you place a block where the rotators meet the top of the back box to prevent the bleed through?
I personally would add the decals to the 7 inserts at the front ALPHA, Bravo etc As they are the main thing you see right in your face. Personally I’d purposely scratch of the tiny amount of original lettering and add the new insert to not have the letter double up as you mentioned. Just a thought Looks great though
Williams Entertainment 1st Logo (1994-1995) Nickname: "The Gold Script", "The Early W-Shield" Logo: On a purple background with a W-Shield wallpaper from the Williams logo (ala the Tradewest Sports logo), we see a golden word "Williams" written in the corporate font. Below, the word "Entertainment" is orange-colored. Motorola 1955 The logos are just different enough to not infringe. I've looked at old ads and flyers and for sure it was not used originally pre 1943 at least
it looks so much better. Motorola made vacuum tubes with that logo. "In October 1946 Motorola communications equipment carried the first calls on Illinois Bell telephone company's new car radiotelephone service in Chicago, Illinois. The company began making televisions in 1947, with the model VT-71 with 7-inch cathode ray tube." - shown on wikipedia So Motorola used it first. I don't believe Williams used that W until the 80's when that font was more appealing.
For whatever reason they’re tied to the various flashers around the play field and one will light when the others do. So every time a flasher lights, one of those six does too.... not sure why!
Hey Ronnie, I know, and completely understand, that you avoid talking about what you charge, but do you have any advice for someone who has been following you for a long time now? My background in electrical/electronics lent itself perfectly to this and I got hooked on fixing machines up. Mostly because of what you have shared. I finished up a disaster of a Bally's Eightball, and am now working on a EM Gotlieb Egg Head 'Wedgehead' 1961. What advice can you give about some guidelines you look at for doing something like what you did here with the TomCat,. and also what you take into consideration when figuring out your price? Of course without telling us what you charge for repairs? I have been getting some inquiries for repairs, and just am curious to get you input? Any help would be greatly appreciated sir! Also, thank you for the great content! I haven't missed a new video for over a year now.
On this particular one the parts alone were a lot of money, the parts were around $900 so that might give you some kind of idea. The prices are really all over the place, it basically just depends on how much of your time you think a particular job will take, then I typically just do all the little minor stuff for no charge. So for instance you might decide that for $50 you'll pull the soundboard out, put some caps in it, reinstall it, and test it... Now whether you take 30 minutes or 4 hours to do that is up to you, but it's not really fair to charge the customer for 4 hours to do that, even though you may take that long if you go slow and enjoy it. Since I'm filming the stuff, that slows me down so I can't really charge by the hour, I just charge by the job. I discuss it with the customer ahead of time and try not to go over what we talked about, or even be a little cheaper so everybody's happy. If I run into something that's going to make it higher, I call them and let them know and see what they want to do. If somebody brings me something that just needs a particular thing done and that's about it, the price might be as low as $150 out the door. It can't get much cheaper than that because we have to unload the game, load it back up, spend time testing it, etc. So anything I can do in a couple hours or so I usually do $150 or so on, then it starts going up from there. The cosmetic stuff takes the longest since it's basically all custom... if you're working on a board, you ultimately have a set price that has to equal less than what a new board would cost (plus the time to put it in)... if you're doing cosmetic stuff, it's different everytime because you are going to run into different issues all the time. So this particular one was very expensive to do (in my opinion) largely because the parts involved cost so much, and then it just took so much time repairing boards and cleaning the playfield, lots of little issues to track down since it's a pretty involved game. An EM would be much, much cheaper to do the same work to, because although you have all the relays, you don't have any pcb's to rebuild or the associated connectors, and you don't really need to buy many parts. So we've done complete rebuilds of EM's for $400 or so.... We couldn't really do the full playfield thing on this one, because a replacement playfield would be a grand at least, plus hours and hours of work to swap everything over to it, that alone might run another $800 or so, I mean it would just take a fortune to put a new playfield inside this game and the game wouldn't be worth an extra $1800 when you finished it. There is a gentleman on Pinside advertising at the moment that he does playfield swaps for $750-$1000+ , whatever parts are. He does a great job... but obviously this is some pretty high end stuff. Most of the people we deal with don't really want high end cadillac stuff, the price is just crazy, most people are just wanting to get the machine working and looking fairly decent, it just comes down to what is that particular machine going to need....
Hi Ron! Given the somewhat reasonable(?) assumption that this video series was posted some time after all the repairs/refurbishment was complete, and given the before and after condition of this machine, what was the customer reaction upon seeing the finished product?
They were very happy with it, I haven't had anybody disappointed yet... we usually kind of go over it with them ahead of time to get their expectations sussed out and then try our best...
@@LyonsArcade Oh, I have no doubt that they were happy with it (I didn't mean to imply otherwise... :-0) I simply meant that considering the rough condition the machine was in when it arrived (which is like saying the surface of the sun is a bit warm..), and comparing it to the finished product, one can only imagine the level of appreciation upon receiving the results of your efforts, regardless of how expectations may be set.. :-)
The only place I could get them was Ebay, planetary pinball was out of them, but the guy on ebay is the same guy that makes them for planetary pinball. If you mean the ones on the top plastics, those were also on ebay...
According to ipdb the beacons were originally white but changed to colored because they were blinding. Yes like ships the lights are red white and green like planes and ships
Damn fine job, sir. Looks great! By the way, any tips on setting the bats? I use the gap tool, but I think I'm missing something, because I've been having a stuck flipper issue on Diner. New EOS in cabinet and on flipper mech, new bushing.. feels weak and sticks up. Coil cleaned, etc... Thoughts? Thanks 🙂🤙
First thing is to make sure it's not getting caught on the EOS switch blade (you can visually check this by pushing lightly on the EOS blade and seeing if it frees up) Next thing is to make sure the barrel spring isn't getting compressed/caught on the fiber link (newer links don't always play nice with barrel springs) Last thing is to make sure you have about 1/16" of up/down play on the playfield bushing.
@@litz13 Mech moves perfectly during manual operation.. no barrel spring - return spring, used gap tool and ensured space in between bushing above and below.. I'll have to check for play.. thanks. 🤙
You said you cleaned the coil, pull out the plunger and see if the end of it is mushroomed at all, you can file the end down a little bit to get it nice and rounded on the edges so it doesn't catch on the sleeve, put a brand new sleeve in it while you're at it, and also make sure you don't have any mushroooming on the coil stop, same thing, you can file the edge of it down a bit if you do. Once those things wear, you can reshape them a little bit with a file and keep using them, but if they wear a lot, you'll start having buzzing issues because the plunger isn't seating flat against the coil stop and at that point it's probably better to replace the plunger and the coil stop. I personally don't replace them as much as most people, but it just depends on how you feel about it, it's not a ton of money. Sometimes the coil stop will get magnetized too.... Everything Jonathan mentioned is correct as well...
@@LyonsArcade I rebuilt the entire thing. The only thing I haven't done is put in a brand new EOS/Cap because the one in there looks like it's been replaced very recently... So, definitely no mushrooming on the plunger or coil stop. Maybe it's the sleeve, which is new but slightly shorter than normal.. 🤷
I had something similar happen on a sega Frankenstein pinball. the problem was that the coil connection solder job was a little suspect. the flippers got stuck in the up position until I double hit the buttons and all kinds of weird reactions and just making a better connection fixed weak and stuck flippers.
Motorola sold the first "Motorola" branded car radio in 1930. Harry Williams was co-founder of United Manufacturing in 1942 and went on his own to form Williams Manufacturing in 1943. So, Motorola came first... but, to be clear, the two logos, while similar, aren't actually the same if you look close. They are as similar as an M is to a W and beyond that, they have subtle differences.
He did the instructions in English, but the last word was a French word that meant "Here you go"... so I was just saying the French instructions should end with English saying "Here you go" instead of Voila, lol
Regarding the williams and motorola logos, apart from the fact they look similar but upside down compared to each other at first glance, there are substantial (though subtle) design differences that might have been enough at the time to avoid any possible lawsuit. If you have the curiosity to put them side by side you'll notice that the "branches" from the 2 V forming the W in the Williams logo are overlapping with each other while they are not in the Motorola logo. Also the inner arches from the W are pointy on the williams logo while they are all curved and smooth on the motorola logo. The black circle surrounding the logo is also a smidge thicker on the Williams one. As i said....subtile but maybe substantial enough not to have one of them being claimed a complete rip-off :=)
ive found that system 6 especially dont like leds they tend to blow general lighting fuses and the heat is incredible I changed them all back out problem gone so don't use them or use 4 4 seems to be the upper limit of the rated fusing of the game why bother taking the chance just dip reg bulbs in the desired color and save your wiring and solder joints..simply p[ut they werent designed with leds in mind at all