Likely not the first time somebody did this mod but here's one I did maybe 10 years ago on my Black Knight to prevent fast balls from flying right back out of the upper multiball lock when it is empty, was really annoying. If a ball is flying far enough up above the switch trough, it glances downward off of this bumper. Has worked flawlessly since I put it in. It's a little sloppy looking with just a piece of 1/2" rubber tubing strapped down with multiple layers of packing tape so it can take the impacts, but it's invisible plus the mod can be reversed.

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Here's my Black Knight, bought around '85. The owner had it in his living room by itself and he might have even bought it brand new (can't remember, long ago) but the cabinet hasn't a scratch so I could believe it. I've never had to 'fix' anything save for shopping it, and the usual pf cleanings, rubbers, switch cleaning etc. when needed. Doubt the boards have ever been touched, I ain't laid a finger on 'em. I did add a #44 socket under the plastics above the shooter lane and next to the top right flipper that can be reversed also, just looked like they should be lit to me. I can't believe it's been 35 years!

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I dunno, mine is positioned just like the one in the flyer (button shifted right vs. the handle) and the graphic is centered horizontally on my cabinet. Assuming the one in the flyer was the original stencil, maybe they changed it later?
I stupidly put the game up for sale years ago and I think the one guy who showed up didn't buy it because the blue inserts were faded to the usual dull purple. Gotta be a rare one where those are still the original bluey-blue-blue.

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Looking at the different cabinets (and mine) I could swear there must have been more than one stencil. On one version each sword handle is centered between the cabinet edge and the coin door (button centered in it), the other they are spread further apart with a much bigger gap between the sword and the coin door. And the red artwork on the horse's face looks different but might just be normal variance? And the black gaps between the horse and the sword seem wide on some, very thin on others, and that's only the yellow so it's not just variance between the positioning of the red and yellow stencils.

My BK has the offset button, transformer is in the head but it has the System 6 version of the power board, serial #462265.

Williams factory management meeting, 1980 - "These Black Knights are sellin' like hotcakes, we'll have to hire a dozen more workers, run extra shifts and make another set of stencils. And the credit button is randomly positioned in relation to the artwork, totally unheard of, needs to be fixed. No kidding, I'm looking at the flyer right here. You're the point man on this, Frank, take the ball and run with it."

How do these color-capped LEDs look when lit? I did a little experimenting too with making my badly faded blue inserts look more like the BK flyer and repro playfields... just dark, smokey blue. I tried blue LEDs but didn’t like the look, too bright, too pure blue, too garish and neon-ish especially since I'm sticking with #44s otherwise. I’m trying various warm white LEDs with no cap (so looks more like a #44 filament) and differing layers of blue & purple cellophane and 2-sided tape to make colored ‘lenses’ to stick on the top of them. Still dialing in the process and color but looks like this. I made the 2X & 5X purple because those are the only ones that are definitely purplish vs. the others on my BK, what color is left that is. Weird thing is on the flyer and repros the two purple ones on mine just look blue (?)
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This white LED/color filter thing I did was a special case because these darn blue inserts can fade so much they aren't really doing anything. If faded badly they are pretty close to gray like mine, so you're stuck with the particular hue of the LED instead of the resultant blue color of the insert itself. I've got an 80s Stern and Bally with really dark blue inserts and I use blue LEDs in some of those where a #44 is too dim for my liking and they look great. Funny how these rather 'blank' inserts get interpreted differently, some people reverse it and light the 3x/4x's purple instead, or make the blue drop target timer inserts purple, all kinds of combos out there.

Occasionally the first ball into my BK upper lock would bounce back up a little after it bottomed out and then get stuck behind the last switch wire form and not register, so I’d give a little nudge to knock it loose. Turned out it wasn’t the switch pressure - the tip of the eject arm was slightly peened right at the very tip just enough for a barely-moving ball to get hung up behind it. A half-second on the grinder fixed it. Boy there sure isn’t a lot of clearance there between these eject arms when it is at rest and the bottom of the eject hole. : )

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I saw this on ebay, it's a production topper for BK to advertise how many balls it was set to for 50 cents. I think it went for 200 bucks. I wish somebody would reproduce these! I wonder how these were 'got' back in the day. If it was reproduced you could always rivet your own two little brackets on it. Does anybody have one of these originals on their game?

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Heh I just bought a pair from them on Ebay yesterday too so waiting for them. I didn't even know these existed until I saw the auction or anything about the originals being upside down or the clear edge or not or the color preciseness. The first would bug me more than the other two but oh well they weren't really assembly line factory equipment anyway so I thought I'd see how they look without having to buy a whole set. I was already thinking I might end up preferring them not there.

I figured putting them on top would be the way to do it, otherwise all you have is the plastic and I could see them getting chipped or broken by the ball. But maybe not since my EBD clear inlanes seems to hold up fine and plastics are sturdier than back then.

Does anybody know if there is an actual backstory to these prototype plastics? All I have found is everybody just calls them prototypes. They weren't on the game on the flyer. Were they simply included in original replacement plastics sets by Williams and that's all anybody knows, or were they really used on a prototype at the factory and if so, how did they mount them (?) Seems strange that they were even produced to begin with, the other Wms games during that era only had the stainless steel return guides not plastic ones, nor decorative plastics on top. Might be more understandable if BK was the first to use steel guides and they'd put plastics on top to jazz them up but it caused issues so they dumped the idea for good. And then on top of it they print the friggin' things upside down, the whole thing is weird.

Seems like a lot of trouble to go thru just for relatively measly pop and sling scoring that don't have any other major scoring purposes. Even for switch test you can test those without lifting the pf by actuating the mechs manually right? I've never had any problem with the scoring of those on my Wms machine from that era. And why would they bother noting the name of the game on the board, i.e. BK and Firepower so far. Still very weird.

See what it does if you block the scoring switches with that board plugged in.

<<Collecting all three arrows again (while still acting in a paired manner) gets the "I cannot defeat thee">>

It says exactly that? It's supposed to say 'I cannot slay you, you win' when a credit is won, 'I cannot defeat thee' isn't listed in the phrases list in the manual and 99% mine never says that. If it does say that and it never should especially for just a target completion would be SUPER weird. When that happens does anything else happen like an odd amount of extra points or a credit or anything?

If it is a switch doubler causing the goofy target bank behavior it wouldn't still do it when removed. I suppose the switches being doubled like that if somebody indeed did it on purpose as opposed to just a glitch would sort of bypass the problem of one or two targets switches getting real dirty or totally failing, then a player would be more likely to still be able to advance the completions for extra balls and not get all pissed off. That sounds too weird though. And so what does the board do in that Firepower... And the speech phrase that shouldn't happen at that point. Like you said in the vid - weird!

Finished up the ‘correct the faded blue & green inserts with modified warm white LEDs’ thing on my otherwise-#44-equipped BK so they look as close as I could discern from pics to the original hue and with 44-like brightness level. Used multiple layers of blue and/or purple (or only green) cello as necessary, laminated together with 2-sided tape. For the blues (the worst) I cut into disks big enough to block any white light leakage and applied them to 2X brite warm white no-lens LEDs. Green inserts not as faded, 1 layer of green + tape sealed around 1X clear-lensed LEDs brought ‘em back up to snuff. Already had the LEDs, maybe 5 bucks for the cello.

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The LED on it, does it ever light up or blink to begin with? Like when game is on, during play, during diagnostics or when activating the coin switches, see if it ever comes on or blinks or flashes. The thread about the one in Firepower doesn't mention if the LED comes on or not either. Course it's always possible the board itself has failed and why you don't see any difference with it in or out, whatever the hell it's supposed to be for.

Is it possible it's related to how a game can't start if the cpu doesn't see all three balls sitting in the trough(s) so this thing somehow bypasses that in case of dirty switch(es)? Board age is only 2 years older than BK and Firepower and that switch thing would kill earnings, those are notorious for being glitchy even after they have been cleaned. Firepower, same thing where it has to see all three balls, and it was their first solid state multiball. Goofy idea, all I can think of.

I’m going to keep the ClassicArcades ones I got this week of the ‘prototype’ lane guides. Yeah these don’t have transparent edges but the green vs. the tiny bit of green there is on my original plastics looks the same to me, and honestly since I put them on I totally forgot they were even there during play especially since they aren’t backlit. Every version has something 'wrong' with it - they either look dumb upside down or the art is non-original because somebody flipped it. If Williams had printed them correctly but still not used them or they had used them on some first run games, even upside down, THEN I’d be obsessed with getting those exact ones even if I had to buy a whole set. And nobody seems to be sure exactly how these were planned to be mounted... like this, or stacked above the guides on posts, or without the steel guides altogether and lit. They are a nice touch though.

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Wish there was a way to prevent fly-thrus in the ball trough when a thru-the-flippers drained ball comes in so fast and at the right angle that it ends up in the shooter kicker or even all the way to the shooter, without triggering the outhole switch for a sort of free 'extra ball with bonus memory'. Doesn't happen very often at all though, gotta be same issue with other Williams games from around then depending on the layout. Oh well at least it's a freebie as opposed to gipping you.

Mine doesn't any mushrooming there at all but not a lot of mileage on it. Is that just the result of balls shot towards the target bank and glancing off the rubber? Mine does a tiny bit of hop there especially if the ball's really moving, I bet they all do but not enough to prevent a flipper shot or hopping all the way over it and down the ramp. I've always used white rubbers, might be a little skinnier? Where your guide meets the rubber doesn't look dinged at all so maybe you can slightly adjust that end of the guide upwards a teeny bit via the screw holes or the red post or something like that. Maybe if the guides screws are loosened you can push upward while retightening and get a little higher positioning on it.

Did you verify exactly how much is the 'scoop' effect and how much is just it hitting the rubber by pulling that end of the rubber off and flinging a few balls down there real fast with your finger?

Two weird things happened with my BK in the last two weeks for the first time in 30 years of owning it.
#1 - Something actually broke. CPU started locking up in the middle of a game sometimes but would never malfunction in attract or diag tests and always booted fine. Reseating things and replacing the old caps on the power board and the one small electrolytic on the CPU board didn't help. Then one game the solenoid fuse blew even though when it occurred there were no coils erroneously firing off or locking on. Read some repair tips and figured out it was just a diode on an upper flipper that had totally exploded, just the insides left flopping around but the flipper still worked. Read a tip that a bad diode can cause in-play resets. Solved!
#2 - I was playing after it was fixed and the ball lock was empty but lit, and was trying to hit the lit ex. ball switch with the upper right flipper and managed to lock the ball from UNDER the trough. It was so weird that at first I was like 'what the hell just happened?' I bet I couldn't do that again on purpose in a million more years.

You can tell BK is an early speech game not only because of the limited vocabulary but how they had to 'cheat' a little bit. Like how when he says "THREE ENEMIES" the 'three' is really just 'the' with a soft 'th' and an R sort of stuck in the middle so it sounds more like "THLEE". And 'against' sounds like 'again' with just a little bit of 's' at the end. Would be interesting to know exactly how the software assembles all the syllables and consonants in some of the words like fight and right if the word 'knight' is on one chip but F and R are on another, is it somehow chopping the KN off and putting L or R in front instead?

I'm not really into toppers but lots of folks are and I saw a ton of these things on Ebay. Vintage AM radios that looks like a knight in armor. The one on a horse even has a feather on top. On the 'head' one you could move the large shield to the bottom half so it would look even more like the BK. Stick a couple of red LEDs in his eyes. And they already have speakers in 'em so could wire that to the game's sound. I wonder if it's possible to extract only the speech track from the sound/speech board, since it is able to control the volume of each one via the volume pot on the board. Run that directly to a separate volume pot and then to the radio's speaker, or snip the IF of the radio and run it to its amplifier section. Hey nobody else wants these old things so might be a good use for them.

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What alternate power are you applying and to where exactly? That's lamp row 4, are lamps on that row the only ones affected, or all of them? Have you reflowed that connector's pins on the board? Do you measure/see good contact on that pin 4 between connector and board, and from the connector pin 4 and those lamps?

You can set adj. #27 to '00' and then the special will award a credit instead. For me the special is already hard enough to light on the default bonus ball timer setting and only available on a multiplayer session to boot so if and when I hit it I want a whole free game. Besides, 'special' always means free game in pinball parlance. But I can see where if it is set to award more bonus balls and the bonus ball time is set liberally enough, it would be challenging to try keeping the bonus balls going and going.

Except looking at my BK and the circuit diagram, there are three connector pin positions - 1/2, 5/6, & 8/9. On mine it's 1, 5 and 9. So you would need a span of at least seven pins where it would still work. This one looks like the three wires span only five positions. Unless somebody screwed with the old board's pin wiring including the n/c pos. 4 so it could work with only five but that would be weird.

Got fed up with my worn-out unreliable drop target switches (clean and adjust, switch begins failing again, rinse and repeat etc. etc. for 30 freaking years.) The blades and points are just shot. So now replacing with modern rollover microswitches with the plastic mounts that are used on new games. Don't need to modify anything on the drop banks besides dumping the old switches, they fit the existing screw holes and I’m reusing the stack screws too. Actuator wires will be angled as shown so they won’t interfere with the reset bar and tweaked for open/close positions etc.
Need to use right-sided switch mounts on the top two switches on each bank so as to avoid things like the reset bar nut, and each other. Left-sided mount for the remaining switch. A tiny corner of some of the switch mounts may need to be snipped off to clear bracket edges to ensure they will mount flush. Fit and operation checks out so now I’m in the process of converting them all.

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Correction - top two switches, left mount. Remaining switch can be left or right.

You could do it with the older, smaller much less common mounts where the microswitch is situated exactly where the old one was and with a flat actuator, but would need to use screw-on switches that fit them. And likely the actuator would still need to be tweaked for this particular application (BK's switches mounted at an angle) for length and throw, and making sure the switch has low enough pressure for these targets. I went with these rollover ones as they are very low pressure (more throw), I can tweak the wire actuator in any direction vs a flat one and the switch and mount are universal parts where if one does fail you can just swap the actuator onto a new switch and pop it in. I'm sure others have used various methods for doing this changeover.

The wireforms are actually messy looking the way I have to form and tweak each wire by hand, none of them turn out the same. Wish I had a machine that could do it precisely since it's only two different versions. But now with one bank finished I should get a little better at duplicating them. I think a right sided mount would work for the third switch too, but with a left mount it is sort of a mirror image of the others as far as the angle.
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Correction - the two top switches in pic are left mounts. Remaining switch can be right or left.

Drop target conversion finished. Now I won't be cleaning them for the umpteenth time and then playing it with that aggravating thought in the back of my head, "When is one of those sons a' bitches going to go south on me again?!" It's a total drop target game so just one acting up can ruin the fun.

I was experimenting with the wireform angles as I went and got better at it but the one circled I think is a good version. Stays clear of reset bar up or down but at an angle so no fear of it ever falling off the edge of the target... maximum distance to work with as far as between target edge (corner) and the reset bar. So they are not consistent looking nor pretty but anyway they all stay well clear of the reset bar and are dialed in as far as opening/closing. For the switches on each end, wireform needs to avoid the screw heads. On the solder lugs I needed to replace a common wire or two on each bank that were now too short for the new switches' positioning. Also the corner I snipped off the switch mounts needed to be trimmed a little more to maximize the leeway in the exact positioning of the switch before you tighten it down.

If you only have one or two switches that are worn out and are always bugging you, this would be a relatively easy, reliable replacement. And anybody could do a nicer looking job than I did! XD

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Awhile back my flippers were working fine except out of nowhere the MPU would sometimes go off the rails in the middle of a game and it blew the sol. fuse once. Then noticed one flipper diode looked like it had practically exploded but it was still hanging in there enough to allow the flipper to work, new diode fixed it.

The sticker on the apron, and some or all of the troublesome lock/trough switches were replaced with more reliable microswitches.

Can't imagine there'd be any noticeable difference in performance between the exposed EM relay or the enclosed one they used later. The older one has two high power switches in parallel (which are simple to clean/redress) and I imagine the newer one has that as well. But never saw inside one of those. Mine is an early one with the sys 6 power supply but never felt like the magnets are underpowered but have never played an LE. When I fail to catch a ball it's almost always one zooming fast right for the outlane (where I'll be slower getting to the button too) and not right over or near the magnet... not ones that seem 'catchable'.

Does it do it every time, consistently?

Check the operation of switches in the lower trough and shooter lane using the switch test in the diagnostics, if they show open and closed correctly in the test then check them for being gapped too close, or their actuated blade is adjusted too loose and switch is bouncing closed again after it opens. Game can get confused by the switches if they have an issue and think it still needs to serve a ball even though it did already.

I was contemplating converting my BK troughs/kick holes to use the same JJP wire rollover microswitches that I put on the drop targets. Checked things out and pretty sure it would work using the factory screw holes with some tweaks. But I decided to buy some brand new leaf switches and install new IN1004 diodes instead.

These are Williams type ‘slingshot score’ switches that are gold flashed, have the necessary diode lug and gapping blade for the short leaf, and are not heavy sprung. I'm proceeding this way:

— Snipped the end of long leaf to match the length of the old one.
— Snipped the old long blade in half, straightened it out, and inserted it into the stack right behind the new long blade for additional pressure on the wire actuator so it’s not so 'floppy’. You only need to remove one wafer from the end of the new stack to do this, but you’ll need to do this anyway to reuse the old fishpaper blade or install a new one. Not a big difference in pressure from the old switches, just beefs it up a little to reduce switch bounce. Or you can adjust the long blade tighter against the wire actuator but I wanted to avoid bending the new ones.
-- Reused the old fishpaper blade as mentioned above.
— Remove wafer on other end of the stack and flip the diode lug over, if the old switch’s placement requires it.

My originals' gold points were shot from 40 years of play and over-cleaning/over-adjusting (like the drop targets were). If they ever act up I’ll revisit the microswitch thing but I seriously doubt that will be needed in home use. On the saucer, trough kicker hole and shooter lane I'm thinking of simply inserting the old actuated blade (with the spacer on it) into the new stack on top of the new long blade. Additional pressure from it should be negligible with the weight of the ball on it.

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These switches might work for the drop targets as well. The contacts are positioned about 1/4" farther out on the blades than the originals. But if you reused the old blade with the plastic actuator and inserted it into the stack on top of the long blade anyway, that wouldn't matter. Not sure if the drop targets could still easily close the switches with that extra switch pressure, but probably. I got these at PinballLife. You would need to reuse the old fishpaper blades.

Yeah but for the JJP switches idea for the troughs I just felt like trying something different and which employed brand new commonplace switches instead of hunting for parted-out switches which might already be getting worn/glitchy, or harder to find switches. But decided to just put in new regular switches anyway. I might try one of these microswitches in one of the troughs just to find out if it will actually work out.

So where do you get new gold points to put in your generic switches?

Oh okay, thanks. I could have tried that for the drop targets but the leaves themselves were all bent up and trashed too so I started from scratch.

The center saucer took a little more fiddling because the blades needs to sit a bit higher to clear the plastic saucer surround. Changed the top wafer to a skinnier one and added a fat one on the bottom to raise it, and added the old actuated blade (with the plastic tip thing) under the new blade in the stack and it works perfect. But the ideal way would be to reuse the old stack the way it is set up, take it apart and swap in the two new blades.

The new 4004 diodes should be an improvement too over the old 4001s. 4004s are rated at much higher voltage and much better tolerance.

Yeah I figured mainly the better tolerance and being brand new would be an improvement. Seems like everybody uses either 4004s or 4007s now, 4001s were the 'cheapies'.

Mostly I bet it's over-cleaning of the switches that's the problem with BK's locks, troughs and saucer hole. Never had a problem with any of my rollover switches *except* those, any of which when they fail will likely hang the game up and bingo, it's gonna get cleaned by somebody (including me!), perhaps too harshly and adjusted tighter sometimes too. The others probably lived a mostly untouched life and were rarely cleaned.

For balls flying thru the upper lock and coming out the bottom, I attached a little piece of rubber tubing with mylar tape under the metal plate that is mounted under the plastic. The balls entering super fast glance off the bottom of it and are slowed down so they can't shoot out the bottom, works flawlessly.

Found out this worked okay for the lower trough. But when I got to the upper trough, found that the slant is much lower and the extra pressure from the doubled up blades totally hangs the balls up, no good. So I put the upper trough's top two switches on as is and adjusted the long blade a little to tighten up the pressure on the wire actuator. Same with the lowest switch and inserting the old blade with the plastic actuator on it next to the new long blade. Too much pressure on the ball, hangs it up, ball doesn't want to sit at the bottom of the trough and stick there. So will figure out how to put a plastic actuator on the new blade.

In the lower trough I put in two new leaf switches but went with one of those modern rollover microswitches on the trough kicker hole. Using same screw holes as original switch. You have to keep trial fitting it and tweaking/trimming the actuator wire to get it dialed in but once you do it works beautifully.

The switches Williams used here and on the saucer where the ball just sits on a leaf switch with the plastic spacer on the end, I just don’t like 'em. A little too much pressure and the ball floats around on top of it, causing no closure, multiple closures, ball might not sit all the way down where it's supposed to etc. These microswitches are light as a feather and won't get dirty.

Also replaced the shooter switch with one. Removed the old switch and wire actuator, tapped two holes for the new switch. That way I could use the rollover wire as is with only a slight downward tweak to take into account the ball rests a little lower, in the shooter channel and not at playfield level. This is another switch involved in the game locating of balls and if isn't working right it can cause an extra ball to shoot out or won't allow a game to start.
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If you tried cleaning the points with a snip of business card or clean paper and it didn't help and/or they actually look worn, I just replaced several of mine with these. You only need to snip a bit off the end of the longer blade. They are nice and light and work well for these rollovers.

But first make sure the points are clean and that the long blade is not adjusted too tight against the actuator, which could be contributing to the ball getting hung on the wire, and not allowing you to adjust the shorter blade enough for adequate closure motion. You should be adjusting the switch blades themselves if they need it, not the rollover wire.

https://www.pinballlife.com/williamsbally-slingshot-score-switch.html

Bottom line is the ball should not be even *close* to getting hung up on that or any of the other rollover wires if the switch is adjusted correctly. If it's getting hung up, the switch blades have been overadjusted or the actuator wire has been futzed around with. Or the wire is bent and catching on the edge of the pf slot.

That ramp switch has never failed to register once on my BK in 30 years and I don't think I've ever even cleaned it because it's so darn hidden under the wires up there, so if you're only getting 50% I'd bet that your switch is simply dirty, or worn and needs replacement. Of course it could be a weak connection somewhere as well or a cold solder joint on the switch or diode.

Trick Black Knight trivia question:

There is one particular circumstance where you can legitimately start a game in attract mode and play it *without* having to plunge the first ball. What is it?

I added "in attract mode" late so I'll count that as right. From attract - turn game off with three balls locked, turn on, then press credit button. One ball will kick out with no sounds like it going to drain but game will start in a couple of seconds.

The start of multiball version works even if you don't tilt but sometimes it kicks a second ball out of the lock. Free 2-ball multiball!

How's come the slingshot GI lamps don't appear to be on? Or maybe it's just my eyes.

When I found out about the teeny plastic that Williams nixed from the prod game I said ohh, I gotta get one of THOSE since I'd already put in the proto flipper rail plastics. So I did but it has to be the least dramatic plastic ever, proto or not. Tucked in a black dark corner and behind a rail, size of a skinny postage stamp, unlit, angled away from the player. Makes sense that they dumped it. You could make one by printing the art on paper and mount it on clear plastic and nobody would ever notice the difference. But meh, I'll keep it.

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If they hadn't painted the end of that rail black, yeah, for the last 40 years everybody would have been asking, "Isn't something supposed to GO here?" Actually the side of that rail (or the two pieces of rail) would look better painted black as well IMO, just looks a bit unfinished. All of the rest of the upper pf rails are bare too but are covered by plastics.

Are there any known benefits from upgrading from rom version 3 to version 4? Or does it just change the order of adjustments in the menu, stuff like that? Mine is 3.

When the three targets are knocked down, do their lights and the sound effect indicate that they were all indeed hit? Do they reset after their timers have run out, or do they totally stop resetting, period?
BK is known for having problems when the switches being dirty or simply worn out switch points, on the drop targets and the upper lock trough & lower trough switches which *could* be causing these two problems. I.e. lock shots or drains not being recognized, ball not being served, game not starting, and drop targets not registering. If you haven't cleaned/adjusted all these switches I would try that first and see if anything changes.

On mine the upper right length of the plastic rides on top of the edge of the ramp, raising that edge up higher than where it would normally rest. Doesn't seem to be enough clearance for it to totally fit into that space between the side rail and the ramp. But in 30 years I never even noticed it until I just now looked so I don't see it as a big deal.

Also at the start of the bonus ball.

Wouldn't affect operation other than the cap is there to reduce arcing on that switch.

My pf is too nice to really do anything to it, but I did finally pull all the arrow inserts and straighten them with heat and reinstalled. Game's spent it's whole life in home use but the inserts still warped over that time. Ball was beginning to make that hippity-hop sound when rolling over the sticky-up ends. The round ones are cupped a little bit, not bad, I might try doing the UV resin thing to them at some point to level them.

I taped a piece of rubber in the right spot under the steel plate that sits over the upper lock, with mylar tape (simple and not pretty but you can't see it anyway). Balls that are really flying glance off of the rubber and stay in the lock, never had a ball get past it since.

Seems like a part that would be easy to reproduce since it's just a flat piece. Or make it out of clear Lexan instead, then try to squeeze some new GI under there to light the plastic. Of course then the piece of rubber thing would have to be ditched for the other methods.

I'm pretty much a 5-ball kinda guy. When I was a kid that's virtually how all the games were set up out here in So Calif. When it comes to my games though I do like a few games set to 3 depending on the rules available, what rules are fixed by the game depending on 3 or 5 etc. (like Black Hole).

BK I prefer 5 ball, lock turnaround on but lock memory on as well. If was 3 ball (assume that is factory) yeah then I think I'd nix the turnaround setting. With 5 ball I like that little extra effort needed to start the locks, it's one shot and it ain't that difficult. Drop target timers about medium.

The bonus ball is cool, once in a while I play both players just so I can take a shot at it and hey, unfortunately it's the only way you're ever going to win a special but it's not easy.

Probably most helpful on BK with the drop target switches which really take a beating and can get very flakey compared to the rest of the switches. And I believe they can only register once per drop anyway even if the switch did bounce, since the software keeps track of them being up or down.

You are correct, I mistakenly thought they did on mine. Doesn't even remember that you dropped a target if you pull it back up and drop the other two before the timer runs out, even though the timer started with the first drop. No wonder they are so problematic, worse than I thought. I retrofitted my totally crapped-out switches with microswitches and no more problems.
I must've gotten it confused with my Stern Lightning which I've been doing a lot of work on, which does keep the drop status in memory.

The Gottlieb-style pop bumper looks like somebody did a weird mod.

I'm not into mods much either but I did do all of those lighting add-ons too awhile back, except under the knight plastic I used one socket with an extra-bright warm white LED. A #44 there didn't do much. It is a very dark plastic, but I like how now you can at least see him and his evil, glowing red eye.

You sure it was unused? On my original pf, that hole is where the wires come up which go to the three top-mounted GI sockets under the long plastic. There is another hole that is unused a few inches farther down but it's right where the first socket is - where you routed your LED strip wires.

Happens on mine once in a blue moon, yeah skips the trough switch. It's when the ball happens to be traveling really fast and at just the right angle into the trough. My game is set to about 5 degrees, it might happen more the higher you have the game cranked up like a lot of folks do.

Heh your excuse is better than mine. I've had my HUO BK for 30 years, it has all three of those plastic covers but I never noticed that sticker either until now. Hell I wasn't really sure if the covers were *there* until I went and looked. I probably set it to free play when I got it so I've never touched the coin mechs or coin switches.

I'll take factory stainless over paint any day of the week but since the title is Black Knight and the base color is black, I kinda like the whole black out treatment on this one, it doesn't stick out. Would be different if everything was painted red or yellow or whatever.

Don't want to remove mine to scan it but here's a couple of pretty straight photos if you can use them.

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For starters, take all of the balls out of the troughs, then test the switches that are in the same row and column as the credit button in test mode and see if they all register and are not stuck on.

My guess would be you're good to go, give it a try.

So is the credit button still not registering in switch test mode?

"YOOOU... WILL... SIT... ONNN... TH-E-E-E... BLACK... KNIGHT'S... FACE... "

Actually I think it would be hilarious (if nobody has done it before) to take whatever vintage pinball voice you wanted like Gorgar, BK, Centaur, Xenon etc, synthesize it with the correct enunciation and word spacing and everything perfectly as if the game was saying it including any echo or reverb it has in the game, and then make it so you could type into an app whatever you wanted to hear the voice say like dirty words or your personalized phone mail greeting etc.

The whole stop bracket would probably need to be badly magnetized for it to hold the plunger in. If that was the case, a few good strikes to the bracket with a hammer (removed from the machine of course) could demagnetize it enough to fix the problem.

Same here, I retrofitted the drop targets on mine with the factory microswitches that are used in new pinballs where the body snaps in/out of the main base since I could use the existing screw holes (had to bend the actuator wires so they'd work in each particular spot). But I settled for new leaf switches on the troughs and the saucer. Except the shooter lane switch where I was able to use one of the microswitches.

The bottom switch in the upper trough is a bitch since the ball simply sits on the switch blade spacer like under a saucer, just a little too much pressure and the ball can get hung up behind it. That trough has very little slant on it, probably works better if you like your games with the rear feet really cranked up. And the kicker arm shoots right thru where that switch is, too. I really wanted to do that one with a microswitch but they just don't have enough 'throw' for that spot.

I posted some pics in here back then, here's one. I used either left or right-handed switch mounts depending on the position on the drop bank, and did some slight snipping of one corner of some of the plastic mounts so they would be clear of the metal ledges on the bank and allow more leeway for adjusting the position of the switch mount.

Since I was figuring it out as I went along, if I did it again I'd make it prettier by coming up with the two basic shapes of actuator wires needed beforehand, and that assume the screw heads at either end of the bank will be there.
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I wonder if any coin lube at all should (or shouldn't) be applied to the spring blades since they slide against the metal bar but I don't know what Williams recommended.