Ah these are laser cut and acrylic

Acrylic......yick.

The worst material to use for a protector. Much too brittle. Will easily crack on impact. PETG would be a better choice. Polycarbonate, by far, the strongest.

Maybe take a closer Pic of your coil wiring for the drop target in front of casters club.

20220508_191844 (resized).jpg

The drop target should be down at the start of a game with default settings.

The most common issue with the drop target knock down mech is that the coil fires but it cant pull the actuator in. Some folks mess with the spring. I assume the issue is that that the tabs that the actuator hinges get worn and cause it to open so far that the coil can't pull it in.

One owner had the arm break off of the knock down actuator, and as mentioned above the wires could be loose on the coil.

That’s so awesome. FT does deserve a RK clear coated playfield. Mine was also clear coated, but I don’t know by whom. I love how fast and punishing FT is! I just finally got past 500 mil, it look me a year of trying. I was able to hit 3 jackpots on the same mb and then scored a 200m super jackpot. I had never seen that before! What a fantastic pin.

C1BEC0AD-4D7E-4DC0-95A2-69F6128171C2 (resized).png

on that coil bracket there is missing some important part for the rest position

Upon further inspection I found that I had the drop and trigger coils swapped, which makes sense haha. Already realizing the benefits of molexing all my coils. A simple plug swap and we're golden!

I was going to replace this speaker but didn't know what red wire was going to? Some sort of isolator? Ground? Do I need to keep it the way it is with a new speaker. Curious if anyone knew.

20220508_185435 (resized).jpg

That is a capacitor used to filter out low frequencies from going to that tweeter.

Since this is not specifically a Fish Tales question, check around for threads about "Bally/Williams WPC speaker replacement", etc. There is probably lots of info on that subject posted. If you can't find anything, ask in this general forum where more folks will see it:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/forum/tech-dot-matrix-games

Doing a full tear-down shop job on my FT, and in taking it apart the reel assembly to clean (and replace the belt), I find that 2 of the 3 plastic pins on reel that hold the plastic pulley in place are broken. I have the broken pieces, but gluing them back will be difficult and may not work that well. Is this a common issue and any suggestions on attaching that pulley?

Could I use small screws to hold it in place? Any reason I couldn't just glue the pulley itself to the reel? (I realize that would make replacing the pulley impossible, though it doesn't seem particularly breakable?)

Randy

Was playing Fish Tales in a tourney yesterday and I was surprised to see a good player do poorly in the video mode and get ~15million. I mentioned if they had hit 20 of 20, it would have been ~42million. They mentioned that they had owned several Fish Tales, and with color DMD it displays things a bit faster and that was the reason their timing was off on this tournament pin with a plasma display. Was not aware of that aspect of color DMD.

That, or more likely he was embarrassed by his poor performance.....lol

So do yo try to hit anything in video mode? Jet skis count the same as a boat?

The boats are worth a bit more, but there is not enough time to just target those. I have seen perfect scores of 42mil and 42.5mil for example. I think the most important thing is sinking 20. If you miss just one, your score is much lower, like 32mil.

I've gotten 44 million

The further away the objects are the more points they are worth. You can focus on shooting everything but the jet skis for more points, but if you do so the extra ball will never pass by. You need to hit 3 targets on each row to make the extra ball appear.

I think the player used the screen as an excuse for his poor video mode performance. It's not like timing as to be precise to the millisecond to hit the targets, and I see and feel absolutely no difference between playing with a plasma DMD or colordmd (led). The only moment you best take your time is the shot following the extra ball you collected. The animation slows down the targets and sometimes won't even register a button press, so I usually let the next target go by and make sure the speed of the targets return to their orignal speed before finishing video mode.

I usually see 42. That might be because I have EBs/specials turned off for tournaments.

My son played Fish Tales for the first time tonight and he locked 3 balls in the Casters Club to start multiball. I couldn’t believe it. He’s 3 1/2 years old. He’s going to take down Dad’s high scores soon!

I noticed the display lags if you get extra ball or big score while the fish is flapping about.

I'll keep an eye out for that .

Looking for a restored, HEP or otherwise, Fish Tales if anyone in the caster's club is looking to move one!

This is interesting. Im not sure if it's true but I have a colordmd in my Baywatch as well and I feel like there's a weird lag between sounds and the display with that one but I just figured that was the way it was programmed.

Does everyone have this tall post here? It was definitely interfering with the plastic that sits above it. I probably could have just replaced it with a metal mini-post but I figured I could just cut a yellow post down a bit.

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20220604_081253 (resized).jpg

20220604_081353 (resized).jpg

Yup I have the tall post also. Need a spot of mylar on the bottom side of that plastic to protect it or use a smaller post like your last photo.

anyone in need of a FT apron.

i have one in good condition for sale. I replaced mine with a NOS one.

pm me

So I’ve run into a problem on my FT, I lost all the sound. None of the 3 speakers are so much as making a crackle. I tried swapping out 3 different boards (audio board, MPU and dot control board), and that didn’t work. I didn’t swap out the power driver board to check that.

Any ideas what would cause FT to suddenly lose all audio?

Incidentally I played a game with zero sound and it’s funny how well you can focus on the ball without any sound.

Thanks for any ideas!

If its not the boards, and all 3 speakers are out, its gotta be a broken or disconnected wire. I would try to use alligator test leads to connect the display panel full range speaker directly to the audio out pins on the sound board.
I know you know your poo about pins, but did you enable the minimum volume override and turn the volume down all the way accidentally?

Thanks, and I agree for all 3 speakers to suddenly go out, it seems a common cause like a wire or connector is bad. I’m hunting for it. Yep, I made sure the volume override wasn’t the issue. I turned the volume up, down, sideways and nothing. I don’t even get the “Bert!” sound that I always got when powering on. Just the click of the power switch, and the game lights up.

Be careful using alligator clips unless you are sure you understand the wiring well from the schematics. (don't want to short something out and make things worse) You can ring out the speaker wires with a meter and make sure they are not shorted to ground to confirm the speaker wires are OK.

It sounds like all other functions are working, so it shouldn't be too hard to find. Also you have other WPC pins like whitewater to compare connections, compare measurements and swap parts with.

Let me check the schematics and I can recommend some places to check...

A ratty FT was one of our first pins we bought and it’s been waiting patiently in the basement for this.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/our-first-restoration-fish-tales#post-6968574

How about power on the sound board? 5v DC comes in on J502 and AC comes in J501 for the +12 DC and -12v DC.

You can see the DC power goes over to J503 on the right of the schematic where you can measure the DC voltages. The connector is not used and no header is soldered on the board, so those pads seem like and fairly easy place to check the DC voltages.

On the board you can see J503 on the lower left side, to the left of the 2 fuses. See below for voltages you should have there.

connectors (resized).png

IMG_1291 (resized).jpg

If any of the 3 speaker burns out the sound will be out. So ohm test each one.

Thanks so much! I will check these too!

Is that true, I didn’t realize that at all. So if one of the 3 speakers is fried, I can lose sound from all 3? So they are daisy chained and if power is cut to one, it could be cut to all? That might also explain it. I’m hoping to have time tomorrow or this weekend.

Thanks!

More likely a wire is loose on one of the speaker lugs, would be my bet.

I put a Pinwoofer speaker kit in my FT. I don't regret the purchase 1 bit. It's worth every penny. Really makes the game come alive! I highly recommend it if you have speakers that need replacing.

No, the speakers are in parallel, not series. However, some WPC game speakers are wired differently... Some use a floating ground and only one wire is actually connected to the audio outs. The ground uses a single molex in the backbox, (which I have seen fail) the only single molex used on any WPC game. Other games have the speaker panel and lower cab speakers wired separately.

All I can see is that beer sitting on the glass

This is how my FT is wired. In series. If you have a loose connection, a bad speaker or a broken wire you have no sound. And yes my FT had the sound stop working last year, it was a bad pink crimp on connector on the bottom speaker. I cut them off and soldered the wires on to the speaker, been working ever since.

FT (resized).PNG

Interesting... mine is not wired like this, but mine is a very early production (#15) and there are several other differences between mine and later versions... i'll add this to that list!

I think they were trying to get better sound by different methods but failed. DCS sound on later pins was much better.

Im having a couple of issues with my machine, wondering if anyone might have some insight before I try and dig into it.

First, when in MB, the catapult doesn't seem to hold the ball while the JP timer runs, it just kicks it out shortly after you shoot the Casters Club. Im feeling like it ONLY happens when down to two balls so Im suspecting that maybe it has something to do with one of the trough switches.

Second, when balls launch from the Reel Catapult around the long habitrail, they often hit the cross-playfield Boat Ramp habitrail as they fall to the playfield, any tips on adjustments to make to prevent this from happening?

Turns out my catapult switch was missing the diode so it was also triggering Trough 3.

My right orbit was fixed by bending the corner area of the ball guide into a smoother curve which leaves the tip of the ball guide aiming more toward the backboard and less to the rubber near the ball gate.

Now Ive just gotta figure out how to slow the ball down when it leaves the catapult. Is there a way to dial in the strength of the catapult?

Weaker coil.

LTG : )

It's supposed to be fast.

So fast that it flies into the other habitrail? Because thats what Im trying to stop from happening.

Is it possible the other habitrail is too low? Maybe mounted wrong? It's a weird issue since the end of the catapult rail is aimed down.