You have many options for displays - don't be too set on only one - do some research.

https://www.pinballlife.com/ballystern-6-digit-led-display.html

If your original displays are working well (A) why replace them? or (B) you could probably get at least $20 each if you sold them on to help offset the cost of the replacements.

When is the second machine due???

Connectors need to be replaced. All Bally's from this era suffer to some extent.
Once the connectors are changed you will be fine.

At a minimum repin J3 & J4 on the SDB, and J4 on the MPU. Note that I repin every connector as a personal preference.

J3 & J4 on the SDB since they carry the signals to the board, J4 on the MPU since those pins usually get eaten up when the battery leaks on the original MPU.

Classic Bally’s are good games both for gameplay & reparability. Tons of expertise and strong aftermarket support.

As others mentioned connectors are the most common issue. After that check voltages at the power supply and rectifier boards. The Bally rectifier boards are almost always pretty crispy and have had multiple repairs/hacks over the years. Buying a replacement rectifier is a good investment for reliability. The power supply can be rebuilt easily if you’re willing to solder. Check out the big daddy electronics site for repair kits.

If the game was played the night before with no issues, then I would say double check your connectors and make sure your grounding strap for the cabinet is reattached to the strap in the head.

Check the fuse under the PF. Pull it and check continuity with a multimeter.

I would say at minimum, the header pins on your boards need fresh solder. Pretty simple if you have a decent soldering iron and solder. Just heat up the pad and pin with your iron and flow fresh solder onto it.

Keep it simple for now. If you do those few things and still have problems, then it might be somewhere else, but again, if the seller said he played a 4P game without issues, then something happened upon reassembly.

Good board refurbishment guide: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/vids-guide-quick-bally-driver-board-repair-bulletproofing

With intermittent issues like that, I would suspect either issues with the header pins or connectors. With the header pins, they might be cracks in the solder joints on the back side of the board, or the pins themselves may be too tarnished or corroded to conduct signals/electric properly and might need to be replaced.

If you want to tackle that yourself, make sure you tackle the task of desoldering & soldering on a junk board that you don't care about for practice. The pads on original bally boards tend to be a bit fragile, and if you use too much heat for too long, the pads can separate and come off the board.

If there're fully working, then it's not really necessary to spend the money on a new set of displays.

One thing that may be a good idea is to use the trimmer RT1 to reduce the voltage for the displays from 190v down to about 170v to help extend their life and prevent burn-in. (Use a multimeter to check the voltage--don't just turn it at random).

Sounds like a problem with the 43v. I would start with resoldering J3 on the SD board. Also check the jumper on that connector. Nest check the connectors on the rectifier board. If there is any evidence of burning they should be rebuilt.

I had a similar problem with my Paragon. As it turned out, connector J1 on the rectifier board had nine holes even though there were only eight pins. It was seated incorrectly and everything was in the wrong place. The 43 V that were supposed to go to the solenoid bus instead went to the control lamps and burned them all out.

I’m just thinking if it was working before you detached everything and now it is not working, that could be the issue. It is unfortunately a very easy mistake to make. At a minimum, double check that connector to make sure the right color wires are going to the correct pins.

Don’t forget to add Paragon to your pinside collection, and favorite this forum. To favorite it, click the link then click the star. Share some pictures of your Paragon in that forum.
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/paragon-club-enter-the-valley-of-demons/page/22#post-6719685

Here's the thing, if you own a pinball machine, it'll probably be in your best interest to learn how to fix problems. It'll be much easier on your wallet, and you get to learn some new skills. Plus, like you said, Pinside is always available (look at my thread history for proof ). Things break for apparently no reason with pinball. Even brand new games (sometimes moreso than the old ones.)

If you can wiggle the 24 pin connector on the solenoid driver board and things work, then the problem is cracked solder joints in the header pins. The board sounds like it is completely serviceable and once gone through, should last another 40 years. I would spend the money on a soldering iron and some solder, watch a couple YT videos and learn how to solder. Just my 2 cents.

I think that’s a good plan. Having a fully functioning board will give you the confidence to learn repairs on the old board. If you have never soldered before, especially on boards, I can understand not wanting the added stress of messing up your only board.

Alltek is a good choice. You can buy directly from them. It might even be a bit cheaper.

Alltek is a good choice, but consider an alternative.

https://nvram.weebly.com/bally---stern-pcbs.html

Andrew (@barakandl) makes these boards and is active on this forum. I've always bought his boards when needed and they are great and less expensive.

For prebuilt aftermarket displays, you can go with XPin, Pinitech, Pinscore, or (once you get your soldering skills down (*nudge nudge*) you can go with DIY display sets from Wolf Pac.

https://www.wolffpactech.com/

I've used his displays on several games that needed replacements and they are great.

And just to add, I've been where you are now a handful of years ago, but with the help of Pinside, I've learned a great deal and prefer to troubleshoot the old boards, unless they are so far gone that a new board makes sense. And I learned on a Paragon

A bonus for the after market displays is that they do not use the high voltage section of the SDB. If your hi voltage section is fused, just remove the fuse.

Be careful when buying replacement boards. Some use surface mount parts and unless your soldering skills are pretty polished these will be written off (or at the very least need to be sent out for repair) if you have a problem down the track.

There are lots of options these days so don't settle on the first one you find - look around and check on the experience of others. Some boards are great but have zero support, look out for that.

EIKO lamps are one of the most common available - no problem with them and it's GOOD if they are a tight fit.

When is the second machine arriving? You will need another so you still have something to play while the Paragon is waiting for parts!!!

One thing you’ll soon discover is that Bally lamp sockets suck. They are constantly flaky. At some point, after you develop some tech and soldering skills, you may want to try yoppsicles as a more reliable alternative. I haven’t tried them yet, but I’m considering it. There’s a thread on Pinside about them.

If you’re just soldering switches and coils, you can get by with a cheap kit. If you do want to try board work, you really need something that is temperature controlled. A lot of us use Hakko. It is more costly, but very good quality.

Hahahaha - I would stick with a simpler machine.

Complex (read - "more modern") machines bring with them far more complex electronic repair challenges which IMO are best left until you have a good grounding in how electronic pinball machines work overall before diving in too deep.

Do it. I used yoppsicles leds for the first time yesterday on a Harlem Globetrotters, and they were awesome. As painless to install as possible, and a great result. Couldn't recommend them enough.

Meteor is great, fast and furious. Also Firepower is great, with the best sound effects in pinball.

I've replaced all my solid state games displays with LED displays, Bally machines are pure plug and play kits, William's come with a replacement board but still are simple.

I've bought X pin display kits and the Marco brand and been happy with both.

And as stated above, led displays remove the High Voltage.

Welcome to the Paragon club, beware the Beast.

Cheers.

Meteor

Meteor by a country mile! It's also a much easier game to repair and source replacement parts/boards etc for. Congrats!

Congrats, Paragon's a great game, so are a lot of the early SS Ballys. If it were me, for the second game I would get an EM but they are a completely different beast in terms of repair, not recommended for someone green on repairs. As for your saucer, it could be the metal prongs are bent (Im not sure what angle they're supposed to be bent at exactly), but I would maybe suspect a dirty coil sleeve and plunger if the prongs stick at all.

A side note, did you buy the game fully clean and shopped out? Those rubbers look pretty dirty, and so does the playfield.

The arm looks to be bent off to one side - lift the playfield and inspection should reveal if it just needs a slight bend or if there is some bush/bearing related slop causing it.

Not saying it was a bad purchase, but from what I read I thought you bought it from a collector who had freshly shopped it. Must have misunderstood. I would suggest swapping all rubbers with fresh Titan rubbers and cleaning the playfield with CP100 and Novus 2 on a microfiber towel. Can wax with paste carnuba wax after cleaning

The game will play a lot better with fresh rubbers all 'round and this is a great father/child job. Easy to do and should only take an hour.

I wouldn't worry too much about being specific with (as one example) 'Titan' brand rubbers - there are many suppliers of equally fine rubber that will make your game seem fresh and will probably only set you back $30~40 for all of them.

Look up the manual for what size rubbers to order and the number of each. Manual here if you don't have it: https://www.ipdb.org/search.pl?any=paragon&search=Search+Database&searchtype=quick#1755

I use cheapo spray can furniture polish on my playfields but it is generally recommended to use Novus for cleaning playfields and posts/rubbers etc.

Possibly BUT you are better off trying to narrow the issue rather than 'shotgunning' ANY repair.

The very first place to start - and NEVER skip this step - EVER!!! Get a multimeter and learn how to use it if you don't already know and measure the power supply voltages coming from the power rectifier board mounted near the mains power transformer.

These rectifier boards are all pretty crusty after so many years of use and really should be replaced if you haven't already done so (or it may have already been replaced). Here is a link to one type (there are many different manufacturers of these and they are all pretty much OK). https://www.pinballlife.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=AS-2518-18

Understand that unless ALL the power supply voltages are close to spec the machine can never work correctly, so start by eliminating that as a possible cause of dozens of sometimes seemingly random and unfathomable issues.

Also learn about "the seven flashes" of the LED on the MPU board - this will help you identify possible problems on the MPU or it's supply voltages (but you already checked those voltages, right? So it can't be that - hahaha)

......and....its connectors are also likely to be quite burnt and cactus. This can cause 50% of the reported problems in this era of machine (along with all connectors on EVERY board needing re-pinning, but save that for another day).

That board I linked to includes all new plugs and connectors needed to complete the FULL replacement/repair of this board and all for just $69.95.

Other brands of this board may also include the connectors but you would have to check that as I don't know, I have only ever used this one for my repairs.

That rectifier board looks reasonably good - so do the connectors. Someone has replaced the wires to the plugs and joined them - it looks a bit 'agricultural' but (as long as those joints are soldered) should be OK for now.

No flashes could be anything BUT - measure supply voltages BEFORE DOING ANYTHING!!

I can't emphasize this enough and you MUST drill it into your mind - measure FIRST whenever you have ANY electronic issue.

There will be voltage test points on the MPU - find these and have your meter at the ready when you boot.

What sort of MPU is fitted? Is it original or an Altek replacement?

You will also be doing yourself a HUGE favor by reading through all of this - at least twice!

https://pinwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Bally/Stern

I would remove that battery and replace it with one not mounted on the playfield.