Trying to chase down this Paragon issue.
Bought game nonworking. No CPU, bought a rebuilt one.No GI, pretty hacked transformer board.
Replaced the board with a new one. Also repinned the connectors to that board. Worked for very short time (a few minutes).
Long story short, F4 toasted. Popped a new one in, same thing. confirmed, no 43 volts. MPU
I've done the following:
Unplugged the playfield just to rule out anything there. No change.
Unplugged the lamp driver board, displays, sound board (again, just to rule out anything). No change.

One odd thing is that when I repinned the connectors, I was missing a wire, but not sure if I'm supposed to have it or not. A2/J3 Pin 13 is supposed to be white/yellow, and I have no wire into it. Supposed to go to solenoid bus.

So I'm a little stumped. According to the schematic as I read them, 43v is the solenoid bus.

I know I'm missing something silly, but I'm overtired and slightly medicated, so I can't think this through on my own. Anyone care to help?

2013-11-30 19.58.27.jpg

Nothing?

Interesting. I will test the knocker and start from there.

Thanks Doug!

Just FYI, tested the knocked, it measured properly.

So game powers on, I get only 5 flashes at the CPU, and F4 blows immediately on power up.

Been working through, and I'm thinking it's a bad BR on the board.
If I disconnect the playfield, fuse still blows.

I'm going to reach out to rottendog and see if they can swap the board. I have a few space rectifiers here, but would hate to have to swap a component into a brand new board.

I haven't checked, but I have unplugged the playfield from the rectifier board and the problem still exists.
Knocker reads proper resistance. I've unplugged the coin door as well, no change.

Next thoughts?

That was my thinking. Jim from rottendog is going to reach out to me to discuss. As much as I'd love to replace it, I'm reluctant to swap hardware on a brand new board.

That said I may also try to resurrect the old board in the meantime. I ordered a whole rebuild kit for it/

Good point. I will give the transformer wires a good check!

Took a bit of time to get back to this today.
Some more observations:

Rechecked, all of the BRs on the power supply are good.
Transformer taps are all good, wired properly and going to the right place on the board.

I narrowed it down a bit more (until I ran out of fuses again).

If I pull everything off of the power supply board EXCEPT the two leads on either side of the power switch (I don't remember which off the top of my head) it blows the fuse. So I need to trace some more, but that's something.
It's none of the boards or anything in the head since if I leave the playfield and backbox disconnected from the board I still blow the fuse.

Well...I do have a happy ending, but here's the story....

I spent a chunk of time and went through this every inch. Checked the AC everywhere. Checked the power switch. And, as a final test, I removed every connector from the recitifer board except the cabinet connector. From the cabinet connector I removed everything except the AC feeds and return. So there were only 3 wires going into the entire board.

And the fuse blew. So that knocked out pretty much everything.

I did double check the transformer connections.

Really scratching my head.

Walked away for a few minutes.

I was going to just say screw it and replace BR3 on the board since that's what the fuse (F4) protects. It tested OK, but what the heck. I pulled the board out, was looking around the board and what do I see..?

Yep. Replaced that and as long as I was at it, BR3.

2013-12-27 12.36.28.jpg

Oh, VR1 was dead shorted by the way.
And here's the result

2013-12-27 13.54.32.jpg

Thanks. Was thrilled to get it playing!