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A golden rule in pinball restoration is to always get the machine 100% working before you spend hours making it look pretty. I was recently reminded of why this is so important during a visit to Argoed, just north of Cardiff. I was called out to look at a Sega Baywatch pinball machine. The customer…
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The Jersey Jack Harry Potter Wizard Edition is an absolute masterpiece of pinball design. It is packed with interactive toys, multiple ramps, and incredible detail. But that density also means that when something goes wrong, it’s rarely an easy fix for a home owner. On Wednesday, I received an urgent call from a customer in…
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Pinball machines are incredibly complex machines, and when a mechanism suddenly stops working, it’s easy to assume the worst. A burnt board, a shattered custom bracket, or a ruined motor. Recently, a customer from Redditch reached out to me regarding a classic Williams The Getaway: High Speed II. The issue? The iconic supercharger ramp mechanism…
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While pinball playfields dominate most of my callout schedule, taking on a dedicated Defender arcade repair near Shepton Mallet was an exceptionally rewarding bench-and-field project. The client’s cabinet had two debilitating issues preventing gameplay: an unstable CRT monitor suffering from severe raster jitter, and an entirely dead sound board. Diagnosing the raster instability pointed straight…
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Tackling spontaneous game reboots during heavy play is a classic WPC troubleshooting scenario, and this Twilight Zone pinball repair near Gillingham was a textbook example. The client was in the frustrating position of having to hold only one flipper at a time during intense multiball rounds to prevent the machine from instantly blacking out and…
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Taking on a Fish Tales pinball repair near Frome was a great reminder of how several small mechanical faults can accumulate on a 90s classic. What initially sounded like a switch problem turned into a hands-on mechanical troubleshooting session across three distinct areas of the cabinet. When I arrived, the autolauncher was operational, but the…
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When it comes to Stern MPU-200 troubleshooting, intermittent issues are the most frustrating to diagnose. This week, I had a board on the bench that gave me a real headache with ghost errors.. The board would sometimes boot up, but other times the diagnostic LED would just flash twice and lock up. On this era…
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Working on classic electromechanical (EM) pinball machines is always an adventure, but sometimes the biggest issue isn’t age—it’s previous “repairs.” This week, I took on a Bally Wizard repair that had a very strange bonus unit issue.. The bonus stepper unit was completely jammed up. It would start counting at 5,000 points, max out abruptly…
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Buying a pinball machine at a general auction is always a massive gamble, especially when it comes without keys. But sometimes, fortune favors the brave. Recently, I was called out to Newport to tackle an Elvis pinball repair. The owner had bought the Stern machine at an auction as a surprise for his father, who…
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A recent service call took me to North Bristol to work on a beautiful, modern machine: Spooky Pinball’s Looney Tunes. The owner is considering selling the game and wanted to ensure it was running flawlessly for the next potential owner. The main issue was that the switch at the rocket was failing to detect the…