Gottliebs by far I'd say (especially if we're talking about style and play, although my all-original 1974 Williams Strato-Flite is HUO and one of my best players and is my go-to game a lot of the time now that it's working. Factory flipper coils still installed and feel like brand new, honestly), Gottlieb's are also perhaps the easiest to work on as well. I like their steppers. Don't like the 70's style match/0-9 units (more of a relay) and much prefer the older style that looks more like a duplicate ball count unit or player unit rather than a tiny little piece. Bending those tabs that hold on the wiper piece is annoying and I already broke one. Also, the units in the head of my 1969 Gottlieb Airport can tilt down 90 degrees if you need to work on the mechanical section of them, just by removing one pin. I was astounded by this design once I noticed it and thought it was an amazing feature and was very very useful for when I needed to go through those. Super easy, love that feature! Don't like relay banks when I come across them. At all.

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I worked on a Bally last weekend and the one before for a public pinball business, and the head layout is pretty nice. The reel switches are super easy to access and "open", as opposed to things like Decagon units. Found this to be nice as most of them needed adjustment on the 9 position switches. As for inside the cabinet, no complaints I guess. I'm just naturally a Gottlieb and Williams guy in terms of ownership and gameplay, so I don't own any Bally's, which of course means I rarely work on them but not because they're hard to, just because I don't prefer to own them for other reasons. Easy enough to navigate. I'd definitely work on one again, it wasn't too bad.

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My Williams is okay to work on. Steppers are mounted on sideways in the head I think, which would make things a little bit trickier without removing the whole unit but I never needed to even tweak it as those worked fine when I bought it. My Williams Strato-Flite has an extra 14 or so relays mounted on the bottom of the playfield due to playfield features (in addition to all of the relays in the bottom of the cabinet and in the head), and although this is a ton to look at, it was manufactured very neatly. It's a whole bank but using full sized relays, reset with an 115V coil. If I had to access any switches or sockets under there, it might be a pain, don't remember how low the bank sits from the playfield itself. Every relay in the game has pretty big blades and whatnot, too. Nicer to work on and clean those for anybody I suppose, although I don't have much trouble with the other ones from other manufacturers.

http://mirror2.ipdb.org/images/2398/image-12.jpg

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However, I really had to try hard to write this. The basis of it is, they're all kind of similar and sometimes it's even hard to pick out big differences. Different features and some different styles of doing things, but all in the same ballpark. Score motors would probably just be the one big difference besides reels and their systems, and also steppers, but even then it's the same kind of general idea just in a slightly different form factor (for both, really). I don't think any EM by another manufacturer of a similar era is too hard to grasp at all. I went in and repaired that Bally for pay, and that was my first time even looking inside of one. No struggle at all and hopped right in there and got it done that day, even wired it up for free play in the best way possible (commonly used across all 3 manufacturers, no silly wire cutting or anything, still counts up and down when needed) without a diagram just by observing the credit counter when credited and when there were 0 credits left.

If you're good at Gottlieb multiplayers you'll do fine with the others, I'd say. Any differences and new knowledge needed would likely be picked up without much difficulty and even if it was difficult, you certainly wouldn't have to relearn *everything* again.

My first pinball machine was a Chicago Coin and I had no clue what I was doing. I still have it, it sits un-setup in the garage with 2 other machines that don't work yet. (Solid state, busy repairing arcade games but they'll get their turn eventually this year)

Back then I didn't have the space for it I do now, so I slept next to the damn thing in my room for a few months. It smelled awful. Pretty sure it had mold on the bottom. Creeped me out just to look at it in the corner of my eye while I was in my room on the computer (decades old dirty machinery in your room is kind of daunting to look at constantly in your low-lit bedroom, it was kind of looming haha), so it mostly stayed covered up until I finally moved it in the garage where I kept my arcade games about 2 hours away and then eventually it stopped working, I attempted a repair by removing the bonus unit spider to adjust it, put it off, lost it, and I just let it sit while other machines came in, then when I started needing more space I took it apart along with the other non-working ones and voila. Eventually everything got moved into the basement besides those non-working ones and one I wanted to keep up there, but I think it's next to bring down finally.

The gameplay is pretty awful but I have the room for it now (and probably wouldn't make back $300 I paid for it) so I'm just going to enjoy having it around and see how many points I can rack up on it. I try to have that outlook with any game I play somewhere that isn't very good. No matter how empty the playfield is, trying to keep going for that high score is a great way to enjoy any game, awful or great. Going to bring it down sometime this year and pop in a new-used bonus unit (and then I'll have a spare) and add it to the lineup. No shame. I never got to work out a few little issues with it and also tried to swap a reel with a 4th-player reel after the coil melted stuck to the metal shaft so I'll get to fix up that hackjob, I used no solder or connectors, just a jumper wire to take tension off one of the coil leads and tied the rest of the wires to the PCB.

Should be a fun project, even if they're notorious for being awful. I'd feel bad about it (and wouldn't do it) but just converting out the weak points to something like Gottlieb or Williams parts and retrofitting them would be interesting.

image-4_(resized).jpg
(From IPDB)

EDIT: Come to think of it, I could just retrofit a Gottlieb (or others, but I like Gottlieb) bonus unit in. That spider felt awful, very easy for it to come out of adjustment. It was just a very thin piece of aluminium or something, with no pressure or anything to really keep it pressed against the contacts besides the nut in the center holding it on. I'd rather stay original though. It's a cool thought though. I have my eye on a cheap CC original one on eBay that I'll be picking up when the seller returns, says he is away.

Didn't realize it was such a big deal here. Added it in, though.