Looks like it is time to get in contact with @cottonm4.

Lucky for me, he is a local friend.

Come over. I'll make you a gate for the back box. Quite a few people on this thread have a gate that I made for their Catacomb. You can either come over and watch me make it or I can have ready for when you arrive.

I know what you are talking about. Those black lines have room for improvement. I am more disappointed that different fonts were used for the numbers on the inserts. But it is such a beautiful repro play field otherwise.

I found the link for the wooden back box ball.

https://www.caseyswood.com/shoppingcart/zen-cart/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=159_157&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI97PVk9rQ6wIVUvDACh3hvw51EAAYASAAEgKX5PD_BwE

They cost 16 cents each. You have to buy a minimum of 5. So, 80 cents worth of wooden balls. And $7.00 for shipping. I do think if the pinball hobby dried up that the post office would go broke. I know I have been doing my part to the post office in business

Yeah, he comes over to play my pins and I give him a basic primer on the rules of Catacomb. On his 2nd game he gets all 16 lights in the Bonus section lit ! And then he says, " I want a Catacomb."

It took me hours worth of play to get those lights lit.

Bastard. Come over here and make me look bad on my own machine

Did he set the high score as well? At least it's an early solid state so you don't have to stare at his initials all the time.

No. Worse. He got the lights all lit up with perhaps the lowest score possible to claim such a feat

Im pretty good at the bagatelle. Not so much the gameplay on the playfield.

Was a decent game though.

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Don’t worry I’ll come visit and leave my high scores on all of your classic Sterns.

Where can I get the pop bumper cap (decal?)? My caps are plain yellow.

I finally tracked down the bad diode and/or switch capacitor and the game seems to work as it should now. The trough switches are kinda weak which triggers an early drain. Is there a way to increase tension on the metal tab in the trough that activates the switch as the ball rolls over them? Two of those tabs seem to be weak/slow to recover from the ball rolling over them.

FYI yellow is stock

Yeah just adjust the switch toward the rollover and it will increase tension. Although I got some bitchy trow switches myself.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/catacomb-club/page/14#post-4764347

CottonM4 made them, or had them made. I was wondering the same thing though.

They are not decals. They are pop bumper caps from a Metallica LE. I bought on Ebay. I had to chop up the original yellow caps to make them fit.

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John, this is real generous of you Let me know when you are coming. I'll get some chips and dip, make some celery sticks with peanut butter, and break out some chocolate milk. I have a camera so we can record all your scores.

Wish I was closer!

Better yet, I'll carve my initials and high scores in your restored and repainted cabinets. That way they'll have that rustic authentic 80s look!

Cool idea. I have some of those. was it worth the effort?

Cool idea. I have some of those. was it worth the effort?

See post 670.
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/catacomb-club?tq=&tu=cottonm4

Had to buy the 20 count bag of 1" wooden bagatelle balls. Probably going to spray them all yellow.

If anyone wants a spare or needs one for another game I'm happy to help out. 5$ each.

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Were they worth the effort? I'm not sorry I did these caps. I enjoy them. Would I do this again? I think so. I have the orange lenses lit up with 2 SMD LEDs. That is a little bright. I am going to load some incandescents and maybe even paint a little black paint on the player's side of the lens.

I find the Catacomb play field a little darker than I like so I need to figure out how I am going to light it up. I wish it was a later model style cabinet that pushes the play field glass up higher. I would love to light this one up with some of those Stadium Lights but with the short distance between the play field and the glass I don't think it would work all that well, even though the Stadium Light guys says their lights will work on these older pins.

Thanks for the feedback. I like to brighten my games up too. I always add an led strip under the apron to light up the trough/ flipper area. For catacomb I also added (2) 10- led strips to the front of the apron, one on each side. Trick there is simply see where the ball makes ci tact and go about 1/4" higher. The next trick is to block the light from coming up directly into your eyes. For that I simply used 1/2" chrome auto molding. Keeps it out of your eyes and somewhat directs it back into the pf. I took a few pics but can't figure out how to upload from my phone. I'll post them tomorrow.

RB

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Gross, but congrats.

Edit: at least it lights up those balck rubbers.

That's a nice looking Catacomb. You could clear coat that and make your cupped inserts go away.

congrats on what?

New PF and plastics coming on monday. Probably wont get to it for a while. Figured I'd grab one while they were available. I will change the flipper bats back to originals when I do.

RB

PinStadium says that their light work with all games. Instead of paying $300+ on PinStadiums, make your own lighting kit on the cheap.
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/poor-mans-stadium-lighting

I know what Pin Stadium says about them working. And I sure they do. But how good do they work? But how much good light will you get when the light bars are sitting 3" from the play field? And the shooter lane side will have the light bar way over on the far side of the shooter lane. There is just no way to elevate the lights above the play field.

It would be like the the lights for a baseball diamond being lowered down to 3 feet off the ground and only lighting up a 3 foot radius around the light course.

I would need seen old Stern or Bally lit up before I would want to take a chance.

With the later style cabs with the glass jacked up 8-9-10 inches from the play field the light has lot of room to flow.

The link bluespin posted has a medusa for the example. Another approach is keep it out of the pin. Well positioned track lights also work but it takes a lot of experimenting to avoid the glare or use bulbs you can tolerate some glare from.

This is not my highest score on Catacomb, but it is close. Highest score to date is 2,360,000.

This score was 2,020,000

But this is the most I have ever lit up the Bonus/ Toast section. I was one light away from getting all the lights lit up twice.

My score was 1,549,580 before I plunged the last ball. All I needed was to light up B-16-Orange for a complete lighting the 2nd time.

It was an intense game with 3 extra balls.

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My new gate fits perfectly.

Thanks cottonm4

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Glad to hear that. When you get this Catacomb up and running I would like to give it a whirl. And sort of compare the two.

I'll let ya know when I get it playing. May be a while. Still waiting on the rectifier board parts. I am done painting and clearing the first batch of wooden balls. I may bring one over to compare the color with yours. It may not be spot on, but it looks pretty close.

Come back and bring one of those balls with you. It is the right size. Let's weigh it and see how close to .4 oz. it is.

I can make the gate.

You now have the balls .

I'm still trying to come up with something for the ball gate brackets in the bagatelle.

I just installed SiegeCraft LED boards and plugged the wire from them to the gray wire on the Tilt bulb. Now the toast lights blink at the same pace as the Tilt bulb, instead of the attract mode pattern I see with other Catacomb videos on Youtube. The blue 5 and green 2 bulbs, however also seem to be on their own pace in addition to flashing along with the Tilt bulb. Those two also have a separate pattern that looks more like the attract mode. I'm guessing the wire plugged from the LED boards to the Tilt bulb is incorrect. The test points on the SiegeCraft boards all measure a steady 5-ish volts. Where does that wire go if the Tilt bulb isn't correct?

The other tab on the tilt lamp socket should hook up to the 5.4VDC feature lamp power wire (thick blue wire from memory). That's where the Siegecraft wire needs to be connected.

Bank A, B, and C do not light with it connected to that tab. Bank D and the rest of the feature lights seem good. Am I now chasing a ground issue in the A, B, and C area? I saw cottonm4 was chasing a similar issue with his LED board install, but it sounds like his issue fixed itself.

Post a picture showing the back of the door in the head showing the wiring to the lamps.

I can't clearly see where you've hooked up to because the area is shaded but if it's the double blue wire on the tilt lamp socket, that's correct.

Yes it’s clamped on to that base of the lamp socket. I’ve reflowed solder to the obvious lamp grounds and relevant lamp wiring in the toast and drop target sections. I don’t see anything that looks iffy to that extent.

Can you pinpoint specifically which lamps aren't illuminating so I can look for a pattern.

Bank A: 1, 6, 9, 14
Bank B: 3, 8, 11, 16
Bank C: 4, 7, 12, 15

The corresponding numbers in the toast section are also not lighting. Other lights not lighting in attract mode are Spot 2, 500 at the spinner, Spot 1, and Spot 6 at the top lanes. I haven’t looked into those to see if they are just wonky sockets or part of this issue.

Ok, looks like you have a bad connection to the lamp driver board at pin 17 of the J4 connector. This signal comes from the MPU board at J1 pin 12 and goes via the speech board at pin 17 on both connectors.

The spinner lamp not working is a separate issue.

I sure did! That connector looks to be in good condition, but barely moving that particular wire brought just about everything to life! Thank you very kindly for helping me sort through this. Next, I'll tackle individual troublesome bulbs. I think I saw in Clay's guides that a bit of solder between the base and the lamp socket can usually get them going. It's worked so far a few times in other games, but is that frowned upon as being hackish?

On to a general question about the game: Just below the star rollover at the top center of the playfield there is a switch facing that rollover. It isn't listed in the manual as having its own number in switch diagnostics. What does it do? How is it possibly triggered since I can't see a plunge having enough force against that rubber to activate it.

Glad you got it going.
With respect to soldering the socket receptor to the base bracket, I don't consider this a hack at all. It solidifies the connection and helps improves reliability.

I'm glad you found your issue. My problem when I installed the lamp boards was that I had pinched a wire under one of the drop target mounting flanges. The wire was buried under others and difficult to see. I cannot remember how I found the pinched wire but when I cleared the pinch all my problems went away.

I was always glad I had an original bagatelle gate to make copies from. I used to make gates for this group, happy to see someone else is helping the Catacomb group once again make this hard to find gate.

Ken

I have never seen this thread on fire before, had to join in.

What wire colors are on that switch? Or which unique number comes up in switch test mode when you press it?