Hello everyone,

New to the board and to this thread. I apologize in advance if I ask any questions that have already been answered, but I haven’t yet gone back through all 36 pages of this thread.

I’ve had a Hook for close to 14 years. I paid $900 for it somewhere around 2005. It’s probably more or less original and still plays well for the most part but I would like to restore it. It has sat unused for the majority of the last 10 years... every now and again we plug it in and get it going. When I bought it I had one three-year-old kid and now I have three, 16 13 and 10, and would like them to be able to enjoy it more.

My biggest issue with it is that during gameplay, the sound cuts out. So that’s the first thing I would like to solve and was wondering if anyone has any suggestions on that. There doesn’t appear to be anything in the gameplay that triggers the cutout, and adjusting the volume doesn’t help - just produces static noise in the speakers when I turn the knob.

Past that, wondering if anyone had any suggestions on diving into this machine for someone who hasn’t worked on a pinball machine before. Everything besides the sound seems to work ok... there are some bulbs out, but a LED upgrade seems like a logical early step anyway, along with replacing all the rubber. But there doesn’t appear to be any cracked plastic or anything like that. Just wondering what are good resources out there to guide me through things like this, and what are other basic things that should be done while I’m in there.

Thanks in advance.

Hello everyone - my Hook machine plays fine but has no sound at all anymore. It used to cut in and out, and seemed to "reset" itself at the end of a ball, but now it's completely silent. If I try to adjust the volume I get brief static through the speakers but that's it.

I am interested in a new Pinsound board anyway, but I'm wondering if that would solve the problem on its own or if there's anything else I need to check first.

Thanks in advance.

This is terrific, thank you... I'm not good at electrical stuff at all but my son is, so I'll go through this with him and see what we can figure out.

I definitely want to go with the Pinsound board at some point, but it'd be good if we can figure out a way to keep this one working for now.

Would it make sense that changing my batteries would fix this? I finally got the backboard open today and one of the batteries had kind of burst, although fortunately it didn’t make a mess. I changed them and the sound worked again. I haven’t tested any voltages yet but I may not need to at the moment.