Wow, that's hot

Fixed it for you.

Ya, just don't touch anything!! It will break.

Stick a sock in the speaker?

How thick is the playfield? What's the playfield made of? It looks like Masonite.

their playfields are about 5/16" maybe 3/8" thick Ken.. and Gman, oh yeah theyre sensitive to the flimsy side!!
in another thread I'd described a glitch that switched the power ON to the pop-bumper-cluster solenoid. I had the bottom cover off and was on the phone when it melted down to spit its plunger to the floor, OUCH! pulled its board to find a circuit trace was gap-burned, jumped it with wire and solder, replaced the main power transistor on that channel and still no joy (wasnt gonna bother to mess with the SMT micro-surgery pre's). the solution was a 10 dollar optical relay to drive the now hand re-wound solenoid coil, using power from auxilary LED seperate power supply for triggering, and direct power (with a 4-ohm resistor inline) from the incoming main to power (aftermarket 3.75A 24v) the solenoid itself. it doesnt score points anymore when the ball hits the bumper-caps, but they're working and DO help to get the upper roll-thru's to advance the gameplay for battle-wizard modes. being thats external now, at least it aint gonna glitch THERE again.

a couple weeks ago now, I'd put yellow LED's under the 3 roll-thru dividers, and fast-slow color changing LED's into the centers of the pop-bumper-caps.. theres just barely room for those 5mm blinkies in em, and they look really cool!
drilled 2 teeny holes in each for the LED legs, locked em in with crazy-glue to re-solidify them. didnt take long to half disassemble to install those, I think it was worth the effort after seeing em lit up. playing with resistors I got the 3 yellow LED's to bounce-blink in sympathy with the color changers, just added limit resistors until I got the effect I liked. also used the slingshot graphics from the zizzlemod-blogspot guy (ships! scale them up about 107-108% they fit about perfect, rubber cement then covered with clear 2" packaging tape.) and put white LED's under the slingshots and islands. 2 deep blue 30mm LED strips at the apron is where it started, using a seperate 9v wall wart for all this stuff, which is also being used for the low V side of the bumper-cap relay just mentioned. the difference of stock lighting vs all ON now is something else. cool-tiny-simple "mod" was using the inside mirror looking mylar-plastic from a potato chip bag on the backside of the spinner (I put skull and crossbones on the front) so when it spins it kinda red ghost strobe reflects at ya off the arrow below it. another simple, wired in (in series with stock one) an 8" speaker into the bottom cover, its an OLD kinda shallow radio shack speaker thats 1w-2w max, overall sound is much fuller (even has some bass!) with it in there as "just a parasite". done other little mods too, 28mm arcade buttons, using the old buttons lighter springs to replace flipper solenoid springs gave better hit, lotsa wax and armorall to the playfield, leg levellers now too.. this thing has almost grown up!

I'm still looking for and needing a "Heroes vs Villians" mainboard for a buddy's machine that went out completely. its pop-bumper solenoid did the same glitch-n-burn as my PotC.. then it got worse and worse. music and voices started slowing, nonstop spinning dr doom, slingshots started spazzing, and now it wont even start-initialize at all, ouch.
(not a power supply issue, tested it and tried bigger better one too)
"Marvel Heroes" or "Heroes vs Villians", whichever.. if Mark1-Mark2 are compatible enough? the muzak of the Mark1 Heroes vs Villians, to me, is really bad and annoying, idk if Mark2 is different on that. theres still a chance its one of the bigger main power transistors failing or failed, which might or not have toasted a bunch of stuff but i'll sure try it.

Another mystery solved! I have a little more respect for these things now... but just a little...

"More wire than a Ford Model-T"
-Gary Stern

I wonder if Gottlieb pop bumper driver boards could be used to drive some of the solenoids?

You can with even less:

http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/source-for-zizzle-components-pcbs-coils-transistors

idk Ken, the 10 dollar optical relay running my bumper cap cluster solenoid now, real good and pretty cheap buy too. no idea how much "fun" it'd be to try to wire in something real there, the relay was VERY simple with low current 4v through the scoring-triggering switch leads to the relay trip for powering the solenoid.

a friends Heroes vs Villlians, same glitch same place, power leads to the solenoid were cut before he'd bought it from some bargain basement type store. bumper cap solenoid had done the meltdown for glitching ON. still needing a complete brain for his machine now, the one in it completely belly up done

Can you describe what this optical relay part is and exactly where it's installed? Thanks!!

Edit: are you just using something like this:
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10636

Instead of a transistor? Sense switch closure, close voltage path?

sure Mocean,
http://www.amazon.com/DC-DC-Single-Phase-Solid-12-220V/dp/B008MPLFAE/ref=sr_1_64
thats a 10A unit, probably plenty adequate, I used one rated for 25A and no heatsink, probably overkill, oh well.
the unit you linked is probably adequate too.

installing was disconnecting the score sensor solenoid drive triggering switch, since the solenoid driver of the mainboard had glitched, caused a solenoid meltdown, and got burned anyway.. the triggering switch is wired into the auxiliary LED's that I'd added, so when the switch gets a hit it closes the (simple!) circuit to send 4v to the triggering side of the relay.. which uses an internal LED to fire the high voltage output side, so polarity matters there.

the high side is straight from the main power supply jack, with a big 20w 4-ohm resistor in series so the coil isnt overpowered and so it doesnt drop-short the voltage to the game's mainboard.. when the low side triggers it'll send about 17v to the bumper-cluster coil. I mounted the unit inside the case, on the sidewall near the bumper-cluster.

mentioned before, it doesnt add score anymore when the pops are hitting, but they're working and for that they're helping to get those upper right rollthru's needed to advance the gameplay.. so I call it a WIN. having seen two zizzle machines glitch to burn up that solenoid, and my own machines driver channel itself burn on top of that, the external independant circuit was a pretty good and simple fix option.

Any general schematics and/or board schematics available to the Zizzle machines?

not that I know of Ken, had e-mailed JP hoping for parts and info's.. he's real nice but VERY busy.
when I had to get into mine it was the old "Chiltons" method.. mark everything before disassembly (mainboard plugs).
I'm still hoping to get an ok used heroes vs villians board for a buddy here.

So it looks like all three pops fire at the same time from one coil. neat. It the new Fonz pinball of the times.

yup CNK, the old sentinel home machines run two caps from one solenoid with a stamped metal bar, one set vertical and lower set horizontal, the dinosaurs slam a ball around real good when everything is clean. back to zizzle now and speaking of bumper-cap-cluster.. their clear centers ARE a bit on the flimsy side, I'm really thinking about using a triangular bit of polycarbonate and 3 small screws between them so they can share the impact load. my pops were behaving kinda weak, when I was installing slow-fast blink color changing LED's inside em (looks great btw) one of the cores was partially cracked.. fixed with crazyglue, a longer mount screw and a small washer, theyre hitting good like theyre supposed to again. daaang, I've sure gotten to know things about these zizzles, theres another tip-idea,
join em before one of em fails.

looking at it, it'll probably require a 1/2 x 1-1/4 rectangular "tab" off that triangle at the top folded upwards to bump the ball down off the skull ramp.. ball can fly through there pretty fast on mine now. with the plate I'm talking about the ball could get stuck behind a zizzlinger Davey Jones figurine I'd added.