I purchased a Judge Dredd last month and am having sound issues. When I received the pin, I was getting an intermittent sound board interface error. I reseated all the cables, but that didn't seem to impact the issue. To get a better look at everything I pulled the sound board and took a closer look at solder connections and the ROM chips. I reseated one chip that looked like it might have had a bent pin, re-flowed the ribbon pins (didn't note any broken/cold joints or bridged pins) and took a closer look at all the ROM socket solder joints finding one cracked cold solder joint on U8 with a floating pin. I repaired this pin, though didn't attempt to reflow any other ROM socket pins as my rudimentary solder skills don't pair well with these tiny connections.

On re-connecting and re-booting the game booted right up several times with no issue, but I didn't do any extensive play testing at that time because I also had the Deadworld assembly taken apart to replace the motor.

Now I have the machine fully back together and the sound board still has two symptoms I'm not sure how to address:
At poweron, I consistently get three bongs indicating if my understanding is correct that ROM U3 is not being correctly found. I see no obvious reason that that would be the case (cracked joints/bent pins) If I turn the game off and back on, I get one bong and it boots up fine. When I start to play, the sound is fine for awhile, but then eventually I begin getting super loud static blasts. These often seem to come during multi-ball, though I'm not 100% sure on that. I assume this is because the needed sounds from a bad chip are being called and this is what happens, but I also considered it could be due to more power draw due to more activated flashers and constant flippers - 4 balls out = lots of flipping.

I'm considering two courses of action and wanted to see what others thought about these or other options:
1) Order new ROMs to see if I have a ROM issue (maybe just the affected ROM which I should confirm 3 bongs = U3). I guess if that doesn't fix it, then sending off the board to someone to have a look and try to troubleshoot/repair.
2) Replace existing sound board with Pinsound (nice upgrade and may correct my issue, though not certain of that).

I've not replaced any Caps anywhere so that's possibly at issue as well, though it seems less likely having read about other issues with DCS boards. I'll likely need to replace some caps and rectifiers on power supply anyways as they appear original so maybe this is good next step (having good solid power never hurt anything and Pinsound + possibly color DMD in the future will call for rock solid power).

Thanks in advance if anyone feels like throwing out ideas based on their knowledge/experience and thanks everyone for the really helpful community, I'm learning alot and figuring out the thought process others use for diagnosing and addressing this kind of stuff has been especially useful.

Anyone have any opinion of Pinsound with Judge Dredd.

I performed a diode check and got results similar enough to those presented to convince myself that those two chips are not likely the issue. While I had the board out I pulled U3 and straightened and cleaned all the legs and the socket and then re-seated and went back over all the solder points. For at least 5 boots now, I don't seem to be getting a soundboard interface error and no loud static during any games since. There are some questionable looking though not obviously compromised solder joints on the sound rom chip sockets so if the issue re-surfaces again I'll likely send it off to be gone through by someone with skills and knowledge to make it fully right. Probably have them replace the caps while it's out. Thought I'd update to document what I found for others in the future.