You forgot the poll, but my vote would be Williams hands down.

Sonic games are made with Williams parts so they are the same thing

I can completely clean, replace coil sleeves and reassemble a Williams 4-player head in about an hour. Awhile back, I started cleaning the score reels on one of the two Target Alpha’s heads I have. I finished only two reels in one hour. They have been sitting ever since. I have considered paying someone who knows them better to shop out both heads. It will be money well spent.

Darn! I was looking for a Target Alpha head and just bought one to be delivered to Pinfest! Surprised there’s so many floating around.

Thanks for that. My Mars Trek and Super Straight cabinets are in FAR WORSE shape than that! I figured I’d just nail angle iron over it to protect what’s left and sure-up the cabinet.

That is a much better option! Did you have the cabinet upside-down when you applied the epoxy?

Williams by far is the easiest to service.

Williams are great but I've got to say, I can't remember the last time I ever had to mess with a 70s bally score reel. The williams will occasionally have issues and need (easy) servicing but the ballys are always working perfectly no matter how long the game's been sitting. And it's amazing how fast they can spin

Actually, I have two complete project Target Alphas. Both are somewhat playable, trashed backglasses. They sat somewhere on the East Coast for about 20+ years. A friend bought them about six years ago at Allentown to make a homepin. Homepin never happened, then they fell into my hands when he got tired of looking at them. Both backdoors were missing, probably forever. All of the score reels in both heads are gunked up and seized. Need an extensive cleaning. Pretty much the only thing keeping both machines from working. I’ll get to them one day.

Chicago Coin reels are evil.

Bally doesn’t bother me too much probably because I was exposed to them the most when I was new to EMs.

I tend to agree on the WMS comments.

Oh boy... I have to work on my first one this week as a favor to a friend. Are you hinting that by the end of this favor I won’t consider them a friend any longer?

I rather like United score reels but not included in poll.

I just voted on the ones I like the looks of best. Haha. Williams are too small of a font. Gottliebs for the win there.

Williams are super easy to work on.

As far as servicing them, I don't have much experience with Chicago Coin, except a while back, I serviced the reels on a CC arcade machine I had, and found them to be similar to the old United reels, and the Gottlieb "rat trap" type.
Had a crazy problem where there was a dead short in the reel. I discovered that the hub should have been a nylon one, but along the way, someone installed a metal one. I got a nylon hub from PBR, installed it, and problem solved!
Earlier Gottlieb decagon reels can be a royal pain to get just right, but the last iteration of them were a big improvement. I did a four player '60s Bally once, and thought that the design was very simple, effective and very easy to service. Williams games have several different types of reels depending on the era, and the later ones are very easy to service as well. If I were to choose, I'd say those late '60s Bally reels are the best.

Has anyone ever worked on those Midway motorized reels with the shims and magnets?
I did a while back. Figured I better take a lot of pictures! Once everything was cleaned up and reassembled, they worked great.