Well then, slot me in too if you please.

Have had mine for 3-4 years now, Was a not too abused route machine, though the mini-playfield mech was a total mess! (and I heard that the route mechanic was not at all unhappy to see it go. Meh, I love a challenge!)

I added the 'Warner' Wobble Head kit a couple of years back and gave if a Flipper Fidelity speaker upgrade just not too long ago. Still have lamps in, but if that lamp in the pop under the ramp goes again I'm probably going LED! And I keep thinking toward a blue DMD to extend the motif.

My Doctor(s)? Tom Baker, David Tennant... Still have fun causing confusion when I mix the Baker scarf (all 18 feet of it!) and hat with the Tennant suit and overcoat!

So I'm wondering... Has the speech on Doctor Who always been kinda 'rasty' (bordering on distorted)?

The speech on mine has been ever since I have owned it, and I just attributed it to the high level of compression that speech ROMs seemed to commonly have in the encoding at the time.

Then last year I added the Flipper Fidelity speaker kit to it, and while it did improve the bass response a fair bit it really did nothing I could notice for the speech. After a bit of poking around here and various other places it seemed that dried out caps on the sound board were a commonly reported cause for distortion in the sound (speech in particular), so I set off to re-cap the board.

Let's just say... I'm less than impressed... The same sources that suggested the re-cap'ing also noted that failing op-amps can cause similar problems... And I purchased all of the relevant ICs at the same time as the caps, but that means unsoldering all of those little legs... And installing sockets... (I won't torture a board more than once!)

But before going to that extreme... I thought I would solicit some opinions first... If the 'rasty' sound to the speech is due to the compression in the ROMs, then there is really little point to replacing the amps unless one actually full on fails...

And having never (that I can recall) been up next to a 'factory fresh' machine, I don't have a good point of reference on how the speech should sound...

Thoughts / suggestions?

Thanks!

Well... There's my 'duh' moment for the morning...

I'll have a look about and see if I can make any determinations. Thanks!

Speech compression issues notwithstanding, I would still say yes with a slight caveat.

Since my game room is a bit on the small side, I don't have the volume up very high so
the response from the large bass cabinet speaker is not as pronounced as it could be.
It gets impressive at higher volumes, but then I catch grief from the rest of the house.
And if I boost the bass from the supplied balance control (on the Flipper Fidelity system)
then the speech really suffers...

So I guess it becomes a judgement call depending on your particular situation. I do not
regret putting the speaker upgrade in, it is just not quite as 'impressive' as I might have hoped...
But considering the source material, there is only so much you can expect.

I keep looking toward the PinSound board once that gets more real, but the price concerns
me a bit, especially since the capabilities of the board would not be fully realized without new
source material.

So... For the 'long weekend' project I got my new TARDIS installed. A nice bit of shiny!
Then the next upgrade: Shaker motor!

Yes, the frequently discussed replacement with the shell from the 4 port TARDIS
USB hub. Very shiny! (in a cool way, not an overly glossy obnoxious way)

And if you keep an eye out, they can be had pretty inexpensively these days. I got mine on a sale at 'ThinkGeek' and actually picked up a pair. One intact as a hub on the desk in my (home) office, and the other now in the pin.

The mod is really fairly easy with a couple of tools and a tad bit of patience. (which admittedly, I am frequently short of) I cut the opening around the ball track fairly tight, and it looks pretty good. (imho)

I've been debating printing a control room interior picture to place in it and then adding a color-changing LED below for illumination so it looks like there is activity inside. We'll see how that sorts out...

The sort of things you think of once the 'mod bug' bites!

Very cool! Thanks for sharing.

So then, are you saying that the leads are too short? And did you clip them off at the top of the housing or undo the leads at the bottom of the wedge?

Seems like in either case it should not be that difficult to extend the leads slightly if needed.

A 'classic' companion to the Doctor joining my machine on the next round of updates:

Affirmative, Master!

Have to be honest, it was a buy... No where near enough free time for a craft project like this!
Spotted it for about $10 on buy.com and it looked to be the perfect size for the application, so...

...and comes with a book!

After the TARDIS upgrade, K-9 just called out to join the fun!
And who am I to deny such a request?

Have not popped for the ColorDMD for my Doctor Who quite yet (trying to crowbar it into the budget), but many thanks to shimoda for his efforts in getting this done.

One day soon...

Well... judging from some of the occurrences in the more recent episodes, either phrase is essentially correct.

Did not even have to touch the light board! OK, I needed to change one dodgy bulb but that needed to happen anyway.
The LED version of the ColorDMD upgrade is pretty much the exact size of a standard DMD display (perhaps a bit deeper, but there is more than ample room behind) so no special considerations/adjustments were needed.

And just for a minor weekend diversion, a bit of game room wall art.

Framed flyers and keyfobs

And just for a minor weekend diversion, a bit of game room wall art.

Framed flyers and keyfobs

Thank you. It is a DIY. You can do quite a bit with a mat cutter, some foam core, an X-acto knife, and a stack of garage sale picture frames to pull from.

Yeah, what he said! Promo key fobs.

Mine does that as well. I just figured that it was a side effect of the game being set for 'free play'.

Is a touch annoying tho I will grant you.

There is a slight gradient on the decal, hopefully it's visible in the picture. Sorry it's not a bit better, but I'm in the middle of about six annoying things that made it a bit difficult to arrange a decent shot at the moment.

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You know when some little inaccuracies in something just finally drive you a bit round the bend? I finally hit that point with the DALEK topper on my Doctor Who.

Aside from the eye stalk and dome lights being wildly out of scale (yeah, I know it's just a pinball machine and it's just there to attract attention) which is a bit difficult to do anything about without just about making an entire new DALEK... (which could yet happen) Two things just continued to gnaw at the back of the head.

The color of the 'eye' and the light bleed between the head and the main body. (mainly an issue if you have a moving DALEK head) OK, the color of the dome lights is incorrect as well but there are limits.

On early DALEKs the 'eye' was not illuminated at all, and then in the 'revival' series they took on a blue glow. So I guess red was as good a choice as any for the time. But... I wanted to address the light bleed issue so it seemed as good a time to deal with the 'eye' color as any. The final (more or less) result is in a clip at the following:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1D_Vg7gndw-MQhKNSYxQPCgAfsz2llTl4

If anyone is curious about the process I took to get there, let me know and I'll post some additional details/pix.

Love the game, but great screaming Gort getting to the pop bumpers is a miserable task! Not that changing out bumper skirts isn't miserable in general but when you have to pull out all of the ramps to do it, well...

Those old ones really did need to go tho! They have obviously seen a few games over the years.

And oh yeah, the pops are getting the LED treatment! I really don't want to have to get back into them anytime in the near future!

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Doctor Who like most of the games of that series used a timing circuit for the clock/calendar which is maintained by the CPU board battery when the game power is turned off. It is the removal of the batteries causing this issue not the presence of the NVRAM.

Doctor Who does not really use the clock/calendar for anything other than bookkeeping functions so unless it really bothers you it can be ignored.

Now, in a game like Twilight Zone where the clock is actually used I would add a 'coin' type battery in a remote holder to maintain the clock along with the NVRAM for long term retention of scores and settings. But that's just me...

Mine has always behaved the same way, think that is just the way it is...

Sounds very similar to the way the MPF in mine behaved when I first got it. Turned out that the main drive gear in the gearbox had worn down the mating surface where a smaller gear was pressed into it causing it to slip when any real load was placed on it. So coming down was good, but raising it up was dodgy. The reset roller bracket, while not being a major part of the issue would have contributed a little extra load at the beginning and end of the cycle so I can see how someone might have jumped to the conclusion that it was causing it.

My fix was to disassemble the gearbox and braise the gears (both metal) together to eliminate the slipping. Some people questioned that choice the first time I mentioned it, but those gears were not intended to slip in the first place so it is a valid (IMHO) approach to the repair. And I've had no MPF issues of that kind since. Probably at least five years now. YMMV

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/doctor-who-smooth-lifter-kit-interest-waiting-thread

Good grief! Who let 'The Master' in there?!? Grab your sonic and have at it!

Good luck!

Well... I suppose it depends in part on if you really want some of the optional video modes that the LCD version offers.

When I was trying to make up my mind on the LED/LCD issue I was struggling until I got to see a couple of machines next to each other, one with LED one with LCD. Decision made! The LED unit just "felt" right. Something about the physical pixel appearance vs. the LCD drawing them in. And I suppose it could be more than a little dependent on the particular machine. Doctor Who has more of a "classic" vibe to it, so going with a more "classic" if colorized display just made sense to me.

The size issues are obviously a consideration with the LCD version on things liek Doctor Who, Addams Family, etc... But I leave that one up to you and what you are comfortable with doing to your machine. I always try to err on the side of completely and (reasonably) simple rollbacks if/when the need arises.

I've had the ColorDMD LED unit in my Doctor Who for a couple of years now and have never questioned the choice.

YMMV! (obviously)

3) The gears in the motor gearbox are pressed together. My Doctor Who acted in a similar fashion to what you are describing and I found when I disassembled the gearbox that the mating surface between the gears had worn over the years and caused the joint between the gears to slip under load.

In my case, the gears appeared to be brass so I brazed the joint and have had no issues since. YMMV

So... Being firmly ensconced at home like most of the world at present... It seemed a good time to break in the new resin based 3D printer.

And what would be a good test, that is also useful? Or at the least, really cool? Perhaps some new playfield posts for Doctor Who!

Now just have to figure out the best way to light them.

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Indeed I did. I was just looking up the Thingiverse link since someone had asked for the .STL.

And yes, they came out very well! Looking forward to getting them installed on Doctor Who!

Thanks!

Can't take the credit for these, found them on Thingiverse. They are cool tho!

The link to the .STL file for these was posted by the author a couple of messages back.