I've searched high and low but couldn't find any official (or knowledgeable unofficial) information regarding the font used on the inserts on Bally's 1979 widebody, PARAGON.

I'm restoring a very worn playfield which may lead to replacing some, or all, of the inserts. If so, I'll need to redo the lettering on them. I "cut out" some letters using Photoshop from a scan of a NOS playfield and uploaded them to http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/. The font that matched most consistently across multiple tests was Sydney Serial Bold.

http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/softmaker/sydney-serial/bold/

Here's a comparison between the original letters from the scan and those from the Sydney Serial font:

SydneySerialBold.png

And here's a mockup of the font used to replace the inserts on part of the NOS scan:

SydneySerialBoldTest.png

What do you think? A good enough match or does anyone know what the actual font used was called?

Hi, Neo, but you already sent it to me last week! That's a snip out of your scan. Thanks again, BTW, it's been invaluable. Such a good reference.

Can you recommend what you use for creating the water slides? I've done them before using an inkjet printer for other modelling hobbies I have but I'd assume that an inkjet wouldn't created a dense enough print for something that is going to be backlit?

I'm in the process of doing the same thing but simply scanned my playfield for the water-slide decals. The original color screen was way off the inserts.

Woah! Those letters really were way off centre! Nice to see someone else tackling a Paragon with playfield wear nearly as bad as mine. Please post more photos (or do you have a blog?) as you make progress as I'd love to see the results.

Here's what my "bonus triangle" of inserts looks like:

BonusTriangleInserts.png

Thanks, Jim. Coming from a CPR artist I'll take that as a BIG compliment! The originals were "lifted" from the scan by CMYK channel splitting and then inverting the black channel. They have that nice, aged, embossed effect from trying to up the contrast to get the edges crisp for the OCR at http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/. I think the Sydney Serial font could be made a little "fatter" to match using a touch of soften/blur/dilation and appropriate resizing. Smithsonian purists would want the real thing but I think it's great for the 99.9% of us lesser mortals.

BTW Jim, I did contact CPR about doing the artwork for a Paragon playfield. I know CPR gets a bazillion emails a day saying "Can you make xxx?" but I noticed that Kevin Wayte and David Fix had done/are doing Paragon plastics and backglass respectively and wondered if there was any interest in doing the PF? As you can see above my PF is very worn. I'm a web designer by profession so using Photoshop, PSP, Inkscape, etc., is my bread and butter.

I'd love to know a little more about the process you're following to do your restoration? You seem to have cleaned off the grey wood, then primed with white but how have you recreated the image around the P-A-R-A-G-O-N inserts? Is a transfer, hand painted or airbrushed? Looks really good, I certainly can't see any difference. I hope my PF comes up this good!