Aquarius
Gottlieb, 1970I have a brewery with a Gottlieb Aquarius that was just mechanically restored. It plays perfectly. I use powered studio monitor speakers at the brewery for music. When I have the speakers and pinball machine on at the same time, playing the game causes the speakers to loudly crackle and pop when the various coils fire. The speakers are on the same circuit as the pinball, but at a different outlet. Moving to a discrete circuit is not an option.
Cheers!
Noah
Quoted from AlexF:Location unknown? I'm not sure how to solve your problem but do think it would be fun to visit a brewery with an Em pinball.
Warped Brewing Company in Sebastopol, in Sonoma County, California. I have a Bad Dudes arcade game as well. It's a video game themed brewery.
Edit: Scratch that, it's a double dragon. I confuse the two, due to them both sucking my childhood away.
Damn i was just in Sonoma last month visiting Russian River and Third Street and every other brewery i could find.
Ill put yall on the list for next visit
--Jeff
Quoted from way2wyrd:Damn i was just in Sonoma last month visiting Russian River and Third Street and every other brewery i could find.
Ill put yall on the list for next visit
--Jeff
Not quite open yet - my beer will be on tap at Barley and Hops in nearby Occidental. My tasting room opens early January. There is ANOTHER brand new brewery across the street from me called WoodFour which is also great. If you're back in the area, pop by for some pinball and a beer.
Quoted from LongJohns:I would think a AC line conditioner should work, or perhaps an UPS?
Ordered a line conditioner, hopefully that will help - but those are meant to protect the thing that is plugged into them, not feedback into mains. Hopefully it works that way too as a side effect.
Quoted from nbolmer:Ordered a line conditioner, hopefully that will help - but those are meant to protect the thing that is plugged into them, not feedback into mains. Hopefully it works that way too as a side effect.
My thinking is that it is an active circuit inside and should prevent any 'feedback' being fed back out (the output should be isolated from the input) - but on the other side, it should also take the incoming 'bad' signal and clean it up for use by your speakers. But I am just making a 'guess'.
Just a shot in the dark, I would be interested in knowing the actual results and if it helped.
edit: Just wondering if you tried a simple surge protector on the pin? I doubt that it would work, but never know.
Canadian games used to ship (or maybe be required to have installed later?) an isolation transformer. You could try that. Maybe pull one out of an old video game and wire it up. They were also used in video games with CRTs.
kind of off topic but sort of the same
was this trick when testing a th400 automatic transmission on a 71 Buick
you would set the radio to an off sta. (between stations=static) in the lower AM band
and with the car in park eng. off /ign on depress the gas pedal all the way to the flood
and the radio should produce a 'pop' over the static,
this mean the kick down solenoid is working inside the pan off the V-body.
If your room light are on the same breaker as your outlets you will see them flicker when playing an EM 
Quoted from newmantjn:Canadian games used to ship (or maybe be required to have installed later?) an isolation transformer. You could try that. Maybe pull one out of an old video game and wire it up. They were also used in video games with CRTs.
All video games had an isolation transformer wether they are stand alone or built into the monitor chassis (as did a lot of older electronics) - has nothing to do with 'noise prevention' but more to do with electrical isolation as the frame of the monitor (etc.) is tied to the hot side of power (vs ground).
An isolation transformer wouldn't work as it would still transfer the 'noise' spikes back through the main windings. You need an active circuit that isolates the 2 halves - with an active circuit power would only flow in 1 direction any returning noise would be stopped. A line conditioner should do that as it takes the original power feed and breaks it down and reforms it into clean power before sending it out - it should prevent any returning noise from passing though to the main feed.
Unfortunately, no luck. I purchased a quality line conditioner from APC, no effect whatsoever, except that connecting it to the Pinball machine caused the coils to be much weaker - the ball isn't fired at nearly a high speed. I tried connecting the line conditioner to the speaker. No luck. Tried surge protectors on everything. No luck. Tried surge protectors WITH line conditioner. No luck.
A musician friend suggested lifting the ground on the speaker. Since it's high up in the air, I'm not worried about getting zapped from it while touching a microphone... I'll report back.
Cheers.
EDIT: Forgot to mention, the pops stop happening if I disconnect the XLR (sound in). I believe this means that the interference is happening through the XLR cable, not the power. This makes sense, as a power conditioner wouldn't halt any EM interference through an XLR cable. I don't have, but could purchase one of those anti-hum boxes, but lifting the ground should probably give me the same effect, as believe that those anti-hum boxes are ground-loop eliminators.
Post edited by nbolmer : update
Quoted from HELLODEADCITY:kind of off topic but sort of the same
was this trick when testing a th400 automatic transmission on a 71 Buick
you would set the radio to an off sta. (between stations=static) in the lower AM band
and with the car in park eng. off /ign on depress the gas pedal all the way to the flood
and the radio should produce a 'pop' over the static,
this mean the kick down solenoid is working inside the pan off the V-body.
Wow, you gotta be old to know that trick with the THT's! Whats AM band?
Quoted from WOLF:Whats AM band?
Amplitude modulation. 
Quoted from nbolmer:EDIT: Forgot to mention, the pops stop happening if I disconnect the XLR (sound in). I believe this means that the interference is happening through the XLR cable, not the power. This makes sense, as a power conditioner wouldn't halt any EM interference through an XLR cable. I don't have, but could purchase one of those anti-hum boxes, but lifting the ground should probably give me the same effect, as believe that those anti-hum boxes are ground-loop eliminators.
Post edited by nbolmer : update
In addition to worrying about grounding loops, you may want to be sure that your cable is adequately shielded. This will reduce it's acting like an antenna.
Wanna join the discussion? Please sign in to reply to this topic.
Great to see you're enjoying Pinside! Did you know Pinside is able to run without any 3rd-party banners or ads, thanks to the support from our visitors? Please consider a donation to Pinside and get anext to your username to show for it! Or better yet, subscribe to Pinside+!
This page was printed from https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/em-pinball-causing-electrical-noise-in-mains and we tried optimising it for printing. Some page elements may have been deliberately hidden.
Scan the QR code on the left to jump to the URL this document was printed from.
Akron, OH
Edmonton, AB