Smithtown, NY
Never really share my restorations here but thought I would share my Paragon restoration, it's not often I work on early Bally's anymore, mostly work on WPC from the 90's etc. When I went to look at this, I thought it was in amazing condition for its age, might have even been HUO, but maybe not. The backglass was mint, the cabinet was very good except one side was very faded, the red on one side was pink. The playfield was pretty damn nice, mostly just key line wear around the inserts, but the inserts were cupped pretty badly. So I bought it and went on my way and put it in storage. I finally pulled it into the shop and stared at it for a while to figure out my game plan, new playfields are available ( I think), stencil kits, PF overlays, so how to proceed.
I knew I could touch up the cabinet but with 1 side of the cabinet and 1 side of the backbox having pink and not matching the other sides was bothering me. I thought about a few options and decided I would try something crazy, I decided to just repaint only the red, think it came out pretty good. I started on the backbox as practice and using acrylics I matched the paint pretty good and was happy with the results but it was tedious. Then I realized I had paint markers that matched the color really well so I switched over to using that. I bought a fresh fine tip and regular top and proceeded to color in all the red like a kid would do coloring books. But first I cleaned the cabinet really well, did the blue and orange touch-ups first. After all the touch-ups were done I cleared it with varathane. Time to move onto the playfield.
Cleaned the PF, then locked everything on with varathane, then began my touchups with acrylics. Filled in the cupped inserts, lots of layering and sanding. Did all the keylines on every insert using circle templates and molotow paint markers. Verified all the keylines with bright lights underneath to make sure no light bled though. Final coat of clear was using spraymax 2K and let it cure for the summer. Took it back out, sanded and polished, re-populated everything, re-pinned all the connectors, new CPU and lamp driver and comet warm LED's and there she was. Really a nice diversion saving an old Bally for a change of pace. Plays great, looks great and kept it original authenticity. Not many Paragon's with their original cabinet and PF paint around anymore. More of a "real" restoration than a P.F swap or a re-stencil job, very satisfying. Anyway, here's the before pics....
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