No alcohol.will strip paint.get fine toothbrush.make sure it is fine bristle.make sure everything is removed from playfield.then get liquid lysol and dawn dish liquid.a little (color safe bleach.just a drop mixed with water).if real dirty around kickers ect.after that then use novus and mothers carnuba wax mixture.never use alcohol or anything petroleum products.check label of wax.

Also to recolor spots.use permanent markers.sounds like playfield is fair confition.if so using permant marker on old gottlieb is allowed in this circumstance.please post pic of results.

Alcohol will not strip paint.

Mother's will have petroleum distillates in it to soften the carnauba so that blows that part out of the water too.

You can lose paint with alcohol if you use ME with it but it's the ME not the alcohol.

Why would you use Lysol and dish detergent on a playfield?

Good Lord...

To the OP. ME and alcohol are ok but go easy. That's ancient paint on there. Easy with the Novus. Do not use any water based product. Go easy and slow .

I beg to differ on an original 50 playfield.i know myself ,it did tremendous job on my old gottlieb that had ground in dirt.i do agree thats old paint.thats why I said stay away from alcohol or petroleum products .either way good luck. ( maybe if we seen playfield ,i could give better advice.).did not expect everyone to agree since everyone has there way of cleaning playfields.might make good forum thread though.ha ha.if not already posted.

It wasn't the alcohol i can pretty well assure you of that. I've cleaned 50s playfields with it and no issues.

Read vid's guide on playfield cleaning and waxing. Novus has water in it. After vacuuming you can start with naptha and a soft cloth. If there is crud you can't get off with that you can put naptha on magic eraser as a next step. Just go easy and do small spots to test everything is working out. You can test under the apron.

It's cool,just you here a lot of different opinions on the matter here and there in other forums ,so I never used anything that so called harsh.ha ha.ive seen some of your resto work pics online and I must say very pro.im half a newbie now.ha ha. I been working on machines for only couple years ,my oldest is gottlieb 67 model.it still has a couple of fine dirt stains below surface ,but I decided to live with it for fear of removing paint.

There's really no paint under the apron.

I have a 1950 Gottlieb Spot Bowler. The play field had been varnished and yes with a brush. I did use denatured alcohol to strip the varnish --- very carefully, without using magic eraser. And I did get some light paint damage. But considered it a fair trade to get rig of the varnish. It also left a white haze on the blue paint that took some time of repeated light cleaning and waxing to remove. I wouldn't use alcohol to just clean. I would start with naptha with a microfiber cloth, NOT ME, in an inconspicuous place to see how it does. Believe for any EM that is the safest deep cleaner. And a fellow pin head gave me some good advice on play field cleaning - get to what you think is about 80 percent clean, then stop. It is in trying to get that last 20 percent where you run the biggest risk of damage.

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I know but somewhere there may be the game name stamped either under the apron or at the top of the play field that's not visible unless it's stripped. I was referring to testing on that but if that's not paint I rest my case.