Making some decent progress on Playboy I recently picked up. I was just going to touch up the original playfield, do some new drop targets etc & call it good.... but somehow one thing led to another & it has taken on a life of it's own, with way too much time (& $) consumed.

The cabinet was faded pretty heavy & that's where it all started.... I decided I needed to fix that....

So I stripped the cabinet & back box to bare wood, touched up the corners etc. Repainted with Classic Arcades stencils which cost me 3X more time than if I had a set of Pinball Pimp's... new stainless side rails, new nails, polished all the coin door trim & hardware, new coin door skin, gutted the coin op mechs, new shooter rod, new flipper buttons, flipper switches etc. Bead blasted the legs & did them in gloss black as a personal preference to match all my other Ballys, polished the leg bolts, new levelers.

Backglass was extremely nice original, but had some funky staining on the front of the glass, which no chemical would touch, ended up spending hours polishing it with rubbing compound to get whatever it was off. Polished lift trim, along with any & all other metal on the game...

The original PF was not horrible, but I wanted something nice(r) So bought a spare roached PF & stripped it to bare wood, all new inserts etc. Then bought an OLD mylar overlay off of eBay, at least 10-15 years old made by a company no longer in business. I liked the colors on it better than the Classic Arcades vinyl overlays that are still avail on eBay.... The blues especially on the new ones are way too light for my taste.

So installed overlay, fit about like a typical overlay (not perfect, but what are you going to do) & put 4 coats of clear on, wet sanded 600/800/1000/1500/2000/3000 rubbing compound & good wax job. Pretty happy with it for an overlay. Colors look sharp.

New CPR plastics, new targets, pop bumpers/caps, LEDs, rubbers, flippers, all new Faceted Posts. I prefer the look of the faceted posts to the original ribbed posts, but of course this game uses 1 1/8" posts & faceted tall posts are avail in 1 3/16", so had to trim 1/16" off of top of every post to make it work.

Now just down to transferring the electronics on the underside of PF & getting it back to playing condition. Hopefully should be all finished in another week or so..... I'll post more pics when it's all done & playing.

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Original PF that was in Game (NOT the one I installed Overlay on, it was too nice to do an overlay) Along with overlay results on the roached PF...

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It's going to find a nice home in between my Nitro Ground Shaker & Mata Hari in "Bally Row" in my pinball room, where I have 7 Early Bally SS's lined up (Mata Hari, Playboy, Ground Shaker, SuperSonic, Six Million $ Man, Night Rider & SilverBall Mania)

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The issues I had with the Classic Arcades stencils, multiple... the backing paper, the release paper & the vinyl are just all inferior cheaper product. & all 3 cause issues. The backing paper was'nt "thick" enough & would want to warp the stencil as you are trying to release it & lay the vinyl down. It was too "floppy" it wasn't thick enough to maintain shape. The vinyl didn't have enough adhesion, & really have to go back over the vinyl edges HARD after the front release paper is off to get a good seal to the wood otherwise it would bleed. & the release paper, my God had way more adhesion than normal & would try to lift the vinyl as you were removing it. Again, making the issues listed above even worse.

No alignment "squares" to help align the 2nd & 3rd layer of vinyl.... just had to spend a tremendous amt of time getting stuff perfectly lined up, a lot more time than you would with a higher end stencil. & even then, especially on the final black coat, if anything was off by even .030" you'd see the white on the edges, like around the girls hair, & had to go back in & do a lot of touch ups on the black to cover the small imperfections of the edges of the whites. what you see in pics, didn't look nearly that good after releasing the black vinyl stencil, that is after a lot of extra effort. I will say, that Playboy is a very highly detailed cabinet to do... it's not exactly "basic" like a lot of cabinet art. All the sharp thin lines etc, if any of those are off by any amount, it will really show. Plus the Keys on the front of the cabinet etc. Can't wait to do a cabinet more basic like Lucky Seven or Night Rider after this one!

This is the second overlay I have done & have had great results clearing. I attached a pic of my SuperSonic I did with a Classic Arcades overlay. I use Spraymax 2K & just go light on the first coat for sure. Gave it a light coat, about half hour to cure at 75 degrees, then medium coat, half hour, medium coat, half hour & then Heavy final coat. Sat for 72 hours @ 75-80 degrees before sanding. That's what i've done on both, & have had excellent results both times, with no ghosting etc.

Mylar around the pop bumpers/slingshots I am debating. I don't play my games that much... If this game gets 100 plays a year, that would be A LOT. (I have 15 games, so.... play kind of gets spread around) I have no mylar around either on SuperSonic, & so far have not noticed any issues. I'm definitely not going to put any mylar over the center of the PF, even though that is where all Playboys get torn up at. Again, I plan on owning this for rest of my life, I don't really sell or trade games... so I will probably leave it as is.

SilverBall Mania resto is next in line after Playboy & it is getting an overlay as well, since I can't find a CPR PF for it. Lucky 7 after that, luckily it has a nice PF that will clean up with some new inserts, elbow grease & clear.

Of course, the week after I finish the overlay on this, CPR puts Playboy back into production lineup.... Just my luck. LOL

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All back together after a lot more hours of work this weekend..... played a few games tonight just testing & looking at typical lamp socket issues & switch adjustments. Just needs a little bit more fine tuning & is just about done..... Then on to SilverBall Mania.

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Just got a couple lamp sockets to sort out & she's done....

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MOST people would say it's too dark......... every PB you see is more of "hot pink" But when I pulled the Factory side rails off this game, there was the real color. I bought at least 4 different paints & sprayed them on extra wood I had laying around until I found one that matched perfect. I'll get the name & brand of it tonight & post. I have some left over...

I think it looks awesome... again everyone else is so used to seeing faded ones, that they think they should be more "pink" it's actually more of a Magenta.