I'm not sure how/where to solder resistors to the large lamp boards to stop flickering. Has anyone tried these? https://pinballreplacementparts.com/products/stern-nine-ball-complete-set-of-boards-to-replace-metal-panel-sockets

They're great. Just upgrade your light board and buy a barakandi

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

What he said.

Those 555 lamp boards are great and eliminate pesky bulb sockets in that cluster. But you need that LED lamp board that Lawman linked to stop LEDs flickering.

I’ve already got the Altek lamp board, but the lights closest to the drop targets are still flickering. I was going to try to solder a 470 resistor, but I’m not sure where to ground them, since it’s one big plate. Maybe these aftermarket boards will do the trick.

I put in optix leds instead, and it worked fine in this spot. This game is close to playable, and is going to be very cool. I just need to get drop targets to reset properly.

Before and after.

2 hours sitting in the sun inside of a ziplock bag with hydrogen peroxide.

Stains gone.

Give it a try yourself.

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After a year of storage my Nine Ball is home! I played it the day I bought it and played several games today...and then it stopped at the end of the game. The final game I played was a two player game. It seems like the credit button wasn't registering the last time.
Set for five balls--feels like cheating.
Running an Alltek MPU.
GI and attract come on.
The tones happen when I turn on the machine.
When I hit the credit button, nothing happens.
I'm getting some strange stuff on the displays: #3 is strobing through all the digits in a very "light" font. #4 is blank. 1 and 2 were ok.
There is a solid light on the MPU.

I'm wondering if I need to add credits.
Any suggestions?
Please be gentle...this is my first classic Stern (My Meteor is a project and is coming home this week from storage too).

Turn the game off and remove and reseat the connectors in the displays. See if that improves the displays.

You picked a good one.

So.....I may be crazy, but I'm seriously looking into scratch building a Nine Ball.
Playfields and back glasses are available, I have a Bally/Stern transformer, I can build a cabinet, I have a set of wire guides from a parted out game, I can get a plastic set, I have Cliffy's spinner bracket. I just missed an eBay auction for a Dracula apron, but I'm guessing there will be other classic Stern aprons that will come up.

So the tough parts are the large drop target bank, the single drop target bracket, the actual single drop target itself, the game-specific spinner, and of course the wiring harness.

I'm assuming that the wiring harness is going to become available because it seems to me that there's *no way* I am the only person inclined to try this. I'm told that the single drop target may not be so hard to find. I'm told that the spinner can be modified if you fit it out with your own wire? And the big single drop target could at least in theory be 3D printed. I realize that all of that is a lot easier to say than it is to implement, but it at least seems conceivable.

That leaves the regular drop bank and the 9 bank, plus the reset coils and a way to mount them.

Does anybody have thoughts on how to go about this? None of these parts are especially complicated, and as a non-purist, I would be totally open to replacing them with some alternative part or something cobbled together, provided it works properly.

Seeing what this 40+ year old machine is selling for, I personally would rather buy all this stuff and build myself a brand new cabinet than purchase a machine at high expense that, to me anyway, would probably just end up being a full blown restoration anyway.

Is this madness?

One man has been making the wire harnesses. I would make sure that I can buy a NB harness, or build one myself, before I spent much effort in a scratch build pin.

Are you referring to Third Coast? I didn't know he had done them previously.

Yes he’s talking about third coast. He’s saying that third coast hasn’t announced any plans to make nine Ball harnesses, and you should check with him to see if he’s willing to make them before gathering all of the other items for a build.

Yes. I suppose someone could start accumulating parts to build a NB and if a harness does not happen, someone who can build their own harness might buy you out.

No. it is determination. 4 years ago I decided I was going to build 2 Star Gazers and 2 Quicksilvers. All there was was John Greatwich with his Star Gazer play field and his Star Gazer back glass. There were no CPR Star Gazer plastics. There were no Mirco Repro QS play fields.

I started loading up on parts from Ebay. And eventually, parts, like SG plastics, came available. I also bought up loads of old wire harnesses from Ebay as a source of wiring. And then Shawn came along.

So, what you are thinking about doing is not madness. If you want to do it bad enough, you can make it happen. Give me a source of AWG wire with the color coded wire and I would not hesitate to build my own harness from scratch if that is what it took.

But with all I have done with my restoration work, Shawn at Third Coast is the shop that saved me the most work.

I think your idea is sound. Chase the parts you need. And gamble something will work out with the wire harnesses. but know going in that you are gambling.

Yeah, that has been my thought going into it. I imagine I could pretty easily unload the parts I accumulated, or most of them, if I had to bail on the idea.
The guys down at Western MA Pinball Club seem to think we could make a harness ourselves if it really came down to that. I talked to Shawn a bit about this and while he didn't have any plan to do it in the immanent future, he didn't rule it out either. So if there's enough interest...
Anyhow. I feel solid on owning a spare transformer and some low-cost parts so far. I'll probably hold off on buying a plastic set and backglass until I am have the really specific parts I need in hand. I'm OK with it if it takes a few years to collect what I need to do it, lord knows there are enough other projects in line ahead of this latest scheme, lol.

I went down this road with a Fathom build. My simple advise is to but the harder parts first!
I ended up dumping the project b/c of the top ball drop mech.....5 years later I really want to see how Haggis handled it.

CanadianPinball “I went down this road with a Fathom build. My simple advise is to but the harder parts first!
I ended up dumping the project b/c of the top ball drop mech.....5 years later I really want to see how Haggis handled it.”

I don’t want to derail this thread but what are you referring to as the “top ball drop mech?” The only things at the top of the playfield are the two rebounds, the 3 in-line drop target assembly and the approximately 7 or 8 inch long ball gate. The 3 in-line drop target assembly would be the hardest part here to find here. The one way ball gate I would think would not be too difficult to make. Of course, it helps tremendously if you have access to one to copy. And being this is Pinside there is no lack of support.

When i made my srcatch built stargazer, there is no harness for it, so I built one myself... with the schematic, it's not so hard

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/my-stargazer-crazy-project/page/3#post-2360856

Redketchup, you were my inspiration to take on building a Star Gazer.

Typing fast, it was the in-line drop

I know where there’s a cheap Flight 2000 drop target bank. You’d have to modify it and PBR sells the memory coils. Pm me if you’re interested in the lead.

Can a fellow owner tell me if you have the same wires in the same positions on your power supply board?

I might have the wires on J1 in slots 1 & 8 reversed, and I’m not sure if that makes a difference.

I’m trying to sort out a locked on MPU led. Power supply test point voltages are within spec.

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J1-pin 1 is red GI power. Pin 8 is white GI return.

You are wired correctly

Drop target issue?

I’ve never had a working nine ball in my possession so I’m at a disadvantage trying to get two of them correctly functional.

I replaced the drop targets on the large 8 bank, but they seem loose and don’t stay in place well. Between the two playfields I have I can’t see any obvious missing parts.

Any thoughts on how to correct so they stay nicely lined up would be appreciated.

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You bend the plates 'finger' to adjust them, but I would leave it. That bank causes enough trouble as it is. Now if you have ones that don't stay up yeah you have to fix those.

Only bend the brass finger very slightly and only up and down GENTLY.

Think of them as 8 individual drop bank shelfs - they're never really going to line up perfectly.

I'd also recommend putting mylar over those shiny new blue dots, otherwise you'll have worn off lines down the center eventually. Even worse on the three-bank star drops.

reposting...

Hey pinball people,
I'm trying to get the large bank of drop targets on Nine Ball to work great again. The reset arms or links have a small angle or finger that goes through the drop target plastic and closes the switch. I've seen several pictures of other people's games, and they have those too. But, I can't find a reference to them anywhere. Marco shows the correct part as 1A-491, which does not have a finger/angle on the end. Or, there is a Bally part with a much larger angle/finger, #P-1973-418.
https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/1A-491
https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/P-1973-418

The larger Bally ones won't allow the target to go high enough to reset (catch the ledge). The ones with no angle look like they don't poke through enough to close the switch.

Does anyone who has worked on these have any insight? I think it's interesting that I've seen many, including mine, where the reset link has a smaller sized angle, but I haven't found that yet in any parts manuals.

I don't have my Nine Ball drop target assembly handy to have a better look. Is there any way you can put up some pics of your NB drop assembly so we can see what you are taking about?

Anyone that may be interested in selling please let me know. This is my favorite game of this era and I am really wanting to add one to the collection. Happy to ship at my cost or drove if it’s local.

Can anyone suggest a good match for the orange on the cabinet? I am planning on repainting the front part of the head.

In addition to the outer edges being rough, someone painted over the front edge of the trim boards with black and I want to get it back to all orange.

I’ve started to sand it down and fortunately the rest of the head looks very presentable.

Ideally there is a good primer + paint option in a rattle can.
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Have you looked into Molotov paint?

Molotow is great, I've done 5+ cabs with their line

https://shop.molotow.com/en/dosen/premium-400-ml.html
Check out the colors at the bottom of the page

I always find it is very hard to get any kind of decent match repainting part of a head or cabinet. Though i am curious as my 9B could use a nice repaint.

I think that the closest match is Molotow’s Linda’s Sunset #327.132.

This appears to convert to Pantone 173c.

I don

Rattle can rustoleum orange is a perfect match.

Sorry if asked before, in several photos on IPDB they show Black Painted Cabs.
Were these only prototypes?
I've only seen 4 Nine Balls in the wild, all orange.

Head to Home Depot, or Lowes, or Walmart and grab a few color chips form the paint dept. If you can get them to tell you what colors they use to mox a color, you can take that to an automotive supply place and have some custom cans of paint mix up, either in a custom mix in a rattle can ($20.00 buck a can around here) or in quart can if you have the painting equipment.

Or you can take the color chips over to the rattle can dept. and start matching the lids on the rattle cans.

Look carefully at that black cab. You can see orange bordering 3 sides of the play field. If you look carefully, you can see some of the original blues and orange to the left of the coin door.

I think someone just painted the border around the back glass black.

Overall_view (resized).jpg

NBs are orange, blue, and some red accents.

Not sure if you also noticed the playfield picture of that machine had green 1 & 9 balls in the bonus area instead of yellow and the left side drop targets are blue though they likely aren't original.

Nineball_Playfield2.jpg

Also has 8 Blue drop Targets

I'm looking on a phone, details are blurry.
Thanks.

I did not notice the green on the 1 and 9 ball. After learning what I learned in buying a weirded out (sun bleached ) Big Game back glass I wonder if it a possibility that the yellow color faded and turned to green. Strange.

The blue drops look kind of cool.

I also see that his spinner is sitting upside down and needs adjustment.

Someone probably replaced the insert with whatever they had available at the time. Operators were notorious for putting in any drop targets, spinners, etc. they had on hand to keep a pin going and earning money.

Those blue drops were probably added from a later NOS stash at some point or simply pulled out of a parted out Viper.

I know that that is a Nine Ball spinner

Or you can do it the easy way

If anyone is looking for a nice nineball, I’m considering letting mine go

Captain..... we got a problem!

Ideas? I bet no one repros these targets.
Hope I'm wrong.

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It is a Chicago Coin/Williams target. A pinsider has reproduced the red target face.
I would inquire.