Here's some gameplay of my Black Knight. Just got it finished before taking it to the Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown 2016.

Its a "ball and chain" weapon... just hangs there and gets drawn in when you activate Magna-Save. The ball jumps up and smacks it once in awhile, too, which hits the glass and swings around. Its just a nice little effect. The ball ramp on the lower level is to start the game on the lower playfield instead of the upper (I wanted to make a more difficult version of Black Knight). So, you have to first get up to the upper playfield before you can start locking balls. The upper "gate" was moved down to the lower level and the ball can now go back down the shooter lane and pop out the "chute" above the magna-save. Just one more way for the ball to get down to the lower level. Its a lot tougher version of Black Knight and the people at the show seemed to agree and enjoy it because of that.

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Here are a few more. The shooter lane feeds to the flip/flop ramp and goes across the playfield to the left flipper return, which lites the Mystery center ramp for a "Mystery Skill Shot." Because the upper gate is no longer there, sometimes the center ramp shot feeds directly into that tunnel, down the shooter lane, and pops out the chute. If you have a magna-save lit, then you can grab the ball right as it comes out of the chute and drop it safely in the right lane for a spinner shot. I've added some switches and altered the wiring so that Magna-Save is dynamically controlled by the player (like Pharaoh) instead of just holding the ball for a pre-determined amount of time. This is handy, not just to speed up the game, but when multiple balls get stuck on the magnet you can flutter them off safely instead of always dropping one accidentally down the outlane. Lots of mods and changes throughout. Really fun and challenging.

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Not sure if I have any on hand. This game and Barracora came back from the RMPShowdown in Denver and went right into storage until we get into our new house. What a pain, don't want to move again until the kids are grown and out of the house. Yeesh.

The vertical "flip flop" shooter lane ramp is repurposed from a Gottlieb "Monte Carlo" machine, along with parts of the skill shot ramp. I cut out the sections I needed, formed my rails and welded it all up, then powdercoated everything in "black diamond" coating. After doing all this its incredibly fun and challenging but I don't want to go this custom again for awhile. It was a tremendous amount of work.

Here's a video walkaround of it lit and unlit that I made a few weeks ago.

https://www.facebook.com/ryan.grant.5205/videos/10153675542027029/

I can't recall but alot of the older games use solenoid drivers to cue the speech from the sound board. The solenoids not firing could have some reason that the speech board is never telling those phrases/words to play back. You can look up the transistors in the manual to see what they fire and work your way back from there.

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Alright, just looked into it. The system 3-6 get triggered that way, not System 7 like Black Knight. Here's what the pinrepair guide says:

When System7 came with Black Knight, driver board transistors were no longer used to trigger sounds. Instead the System7 CPU board had an additional PIA chip at IC36 which triggered the sounds (this freed up the driver board transistors for coils instead of triggering sound). The sounds were still generated by the same sound board in the same manner though, using the same pinout. Grounding sound board connectors 10J3 pins 2,3,4,5,7. Just this was now done by the CPU board's extra PIA chip at IC36 (and a new connector on the CPU board at 1J8). Here's the system7 CPU connector 1J8 pins. Note this connector also handles commas for the score displays:

1J8 pin1: Comma for displays 3 & 4 (Brown/White)
1J8 pin 2: Comma display players 1 & 2 (Violet)
1J8 pin 3: Key pin
1J8 pins 4-7: No Connection
1J8 pin 8: Sound Select 4 (Yellow) to sound board 10J3-7
1J8 pin 9: Sound Select 3 (Green) to sound board 10J3-4
1J8 pin 10: Sound Select 2 (Blue) to sound board 10J3-5
1J8 pin 11: Sound Select 1 (Red) to sound board 10J3-2
1J8 pin 12: Sound Select 0 (Red/Yellow) to sound board 10J3-3
With the sound board connector pinout info, some (not all!) of the individual sounds can be triggered by momentarily grounding the sound board Sound Select pin. You won't get all sounds this way (many sounds are triggered from a combination of pins being grounded), but at least you can do some prelim tests on the sound board. Also helpful is of course the sound board test switch, which should fire off most of the sounds at any time.

Did you do the fuse mod on the bridge rectifiers? Its not related to your issue at all, but if one of them shorts then it'll try to burn your house down. Since you're in soldering mode anyways, might as well do it.

No, thats completely normal. You can just splice the fuse holder inline, using the existing soldered-on wire to the bridge rectifier. Sometimes they soldered them on, sometimes it was lug connectors, sometimes it was soldered-on lug connectors. Just get it done however you must. I've seen photos and heard the stories of the games that don't have this done and its NOT GOOD.

1. LEDs really come down to personal taste, so thinking EITHER of those pre-picked kits could get you a look you're happy with for years to come would be an impossibility. A sampler pack of LEDs (usually around $15-$30 from any LED supplier) would be a good way to do your color and style selections. There are plenty of LED suppliers and parts companies that offer a great product like Comet LED, Nifty LED, PinballLife... all bulbs are not created equal.

2. If you like the classic look of the original then no better reason to try and restore the HV section. Upgrading to LED isn't a necessity if your original displays have life in them. Great Plains Electronics and Big Daddy Enterprises both offer rebuild kits for that section.

Yes, I did for about a week. It just came down to being an annoying work-around for the difficulty. You must go through the horseshoe to light the lock. Normally, a qualify-lock shot would be a welcome addition but this one doesn't feel right. So, you end up starting at the top, coming back down, then must make the horseshoe and go back up to lock the first ball.

Yes, I understand that. My personal game starts gameplay on the lower level, but thats a bit of an extreme mod just to mix up the gameplay. ADJ#37 just never seemed like a satisfying offset to make the game harder. Locking the lower ball first or something may feel like a better compromise, or knocking down the lower drop targets before lighting lock... something with a bit more reward for the risk.

Thats at the old house while we had it on the market... it was an entire game room filled end to end with games and wall decor, mirror ball, posters, and on and on. Had to take it all down to "open it up" for people looking to buy. Got the games set up downstairs in the new house but its a shared gameroom/family room" area for the kids to watch TV and play console games. Soooooo..... haven't gotten crazy with wall art and whatnot.

http://mirror2.ipdb.org/files/310/bkmicroswitchkit.pdf I have yet to retrofit mine. I need to if I take it back to the Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown again this year because that upper trough was the main culprit of the weekend.

Have you thoroughly, thoroughly, thoroughly checked the orientation of ALL ribbon cables?

Very cool.