I technically joined the club at the end of October, but have just been lurking and using some of the background info to get my High Speed (also my first machine) into the best shape I can. So, hey eveybody, thanks!

Has been a fun process from learning to re-connect the backbox on day one (picked it up off a friend who had it in two pieces in storage) through to tearing down and reassembling the whole playfield for cleaning, new plastics/rubbers, LEDs for all the lighting, fuses for the bridge rectifiers, two new full flipper assemblies, fixing a cracked standup target; various switch adjustments and things so far. Throughout, the machine has been good fun to play, and it's exciting to see it slowly getting even better.

Been letting one issue linger - all the music works as expected from the background sound board, but I get nothing for sound effects or voice samples from the main board (this was a known issue when I picked it up and had started during the time my friend owned the game). So, next I plan to investigate that to decide if I am up to doing my own troubleshooting on the board or need to send it off to a pro. I'm pretty comfortable with a meter/soldering iron/schematics, but there's always some self-doubt as this would be a fair bit deeper than I've taken that experience before.

After that, I guess I'll be facing down whether I want to do the work for a hardtop or a full replacement playfield

Annnd, I think that's enough of a wall of text to say hello, thanks, glad to be here!

I appreciate you sharing your experience and cautionary notes - I have heard elsewhere about the concern over doing damage to traces and other issues with learning to work on these old boards, so put up another point leaning me toward sending it out to a pro after doing a little testing to see if I can't understand at least where the root cause may be.

As for the overlay, it seemed in my reading of threads on these forums that the hardtops from Outside Edge were generally better liked than other overlays. Do you know if your reference was speaking specifically to that product or another one? My playfield has a fair amount of wear, and soon it'll probably be the "worst" part of my instance of the table (though not so bad as to have much impact on the playing), so improving on it is definitely appealing if possible for some "reasonable" cost/effort. So far, I have relatively little cost into the machine and all my effort has been a fun learning experience.

Definitely looking forward to adding another game or two to the collection in the not too distant future, but had it in mind to get closer to "finished" with changes to this one before adding another. I also do have a Williams Phoenix (my friend was happy to get it out of his storage for free when I bought the HS off him), but that may likely be more of a project than I am motivated to take on for a machine I probably would end up just giving away or selling at very low cost. High Speed is probably mine to keep.

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Actually just ordered the robtune stoplight and tree spacers yesterday. Been eyeing those freeplay40 ramps, too. Of course, those things being nice and shiny new also help to draw attention to the state of the playfield, but at some point, the playfield will probably be improved one way or another.

Is the backglass for sale on Marco a resale of the CPR or a different take on it? It also notes having proper mirrored sections instead of a flat print like I have seen on at least one other product. My glass is rough, but looks pretty much fine when illuminated, so it is low on my list considering the cost - nice to have other’s perspectives on the quality of the options, though.

Cool, yea I’m not yet familiar with how all that stuff is produced/sourced and didn’t know if cpr is the only one making decent backglass.

Yours does have an interesting pattern going Mine has pretty significant bubbling, but it doesn’t standout too terribly when lit - luckily not much cracking. One day when everything else is finished, I’ll probably grab a new one, since I’m sure even if it isn’t quite as good as the best condition originals, it is a lot better than mine .

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I’m sure some deeper experts will have some additional thoughts, but I had noticed mine doing the same - for me it got a lot better when I replaced one particular bulb in my swap from incandescent to LED (under hideout jackpot - based on the timing of the noise paired with the lighting pattern, it also matched when this one was lit).

Also, I had the 1/4A fuse populated on my power supply, even though I didn’t need it, because my machine has pinscore displays - removing that to disable the highest voltage circuit further reduced the noise my machine makes. There is still some hum, but is acceptable now - perhaps a couple things that might spark ideas for things to test.

I used 44/47 Frosted Premium-Non Ghosting warm white bulbs ordered from cointaker on a recommendation from a friend for all the 44s behind the backglass and above the playfield. Used other premium/nonghosting bare bulbs or flex versions of them for certain tricky inserts to get more even alignment, #63 replacement in all the flashers (clipped the warming resistors), and these 2LED bulbs with clear tops in the pop bumpers.

Pretty happy overall - I personally like a somewhat natural look and don’t often love complex colored LED arrangements, myself. My flashers have a very slight momentary glow (nothing close to a flash) along with all the GI getting very slightly less bright for a split second if I flip wildly. Have seen thoughts on how to possibly deal with this (current reversing through some diodes possibly as the voltage sags?). But, it reaaally doesn’t bother me - have seen lots of other games of this era blink worse on flipper flips.

As for hum, I feel like it could be so many things from power supply noise, aging filter capacitors, grounding, etc - definitely a lot to track through. It doesn’t feel like these machines were designed to have clean audio, and adding years of aged components, broken grounds, etc doesn’t help.

But, I love that they put an early FM synth chip in there along with the sample playback stuff, so I will excuse them the noise. It’d be fun to try to get it really really clean, but also could be fun to just blast it out with a fuzz distortion circuit and a noise gate (says musician and electronics tinkering brain).

edit to note: i think my phone cam is also doing some low light trickery, because the bulbs are not blindingly bright in GI or washing out the decals on the inserts the way it appears in the photo

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Hey koji, thanks for the thoughts! I've been distracted from much more work on the High Speed the past couple weeks while working on not-pinball-related things. BUT, this was a hunch of mine too on a really surface level understanding of the MPU layout that I've got so far. I had done some basic meter tests to make sure power at various points around MPU sound components was correct, and had confirmed the sound selector pins on one of the chips were correctly cycling through during sound test (both because these were quick easy tests to do). Need to make my way a little further along that path when I have more time again soon.

Also, KSUWildcatFan, thanks a bunch for sharing your experience with the hardtop. I've got a Wonka incoming that will ease the pressure on the High Speed as my only playable pin. If I can get the sound fx working (or when I decide to send it off to a pro), I likely am also going to get a translucent red ramp on order along with the hardtop. Then, just need to set aside a bunch more weekend time into making this thing the best version of itself I can. The fact I'm still loving playing it, even sans sound fx, months after I picked it up gives me some confidence the effort will be worthwhile and I'll be keeping this thing a very long time

According to the lamp matrix table in the manual, the outlane special lights and drive again light are all on column 1, along with some others (Game Over, Match, Ball in Play, and the 1000 Arrows at left/right spinners). If they're all not functioning during testing, that connector/wire is a good place to start (Connector 1J7-1). I know the wire landed on the connector for column 7 is touchy on my machine - if it gets pulled, I lose the whole column of connected lamps, but I can reseat it into the connector and it'll work again for a long while (need to get around to a more permanent fix eventually).

By not working, do you mean not registering at all or multiple switches registering when a single one is activated, or something else?

Those are all in one column of the switch matrix - 1J8-3. So, you may want to start by checking that wire is well seated into its connector on the board. If that doesn't resolve it, then look closely at each switch for loose wires, diode problems, etc. A problem with any of those things could take out the whole column, as I understand it. If all of that looks good, maybe someone with deeper knowledge can chime in where they'd go next (not sure if specific board components or what).

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