I am coming down the home stretch on my current project and am looking for my next one, a pitch and bat. Actually, I've been looking for awhile but will ramp up the search shortly. While I love the look of a lot of the older 50's machines, I'm looking at 60's, maybe 70's. It has to be a two player and it has to have multiple pitches. I have so many fond memories of being in the local bowling alley. You'd shield the pitches from your friend. Then start the chatter...'hey batta, batta, batta, batta, hey batta, swing batter, swing batta batta..' and then unleash the fast ball!
Since I'm going to be patient on my search, I have some questions for the group. First, Chicago coin or Williams or doesn't make any difference? I prefer a bit of a project but are there specific issues you are better off avoiding? Any parts for particular games that are pretty much unobtanium? What would you expect to pay for something like this?
Thanks

OK, so I need one of you well-heeled individuals to put together a consortium to purchase this lot, so I can pick off the Shortstop or United Yankee

Thanks to AlexF's excellent detective skills, I have acquired a '59 Williams Pinch Hitter. It has some minor issues, but the big problem is the pitching unit. I started a thread in the EM technical forum:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/59-williams-pinch-hitter-pitching-unit-issues

If anyone has any ideas, I would appreciate it. As I said, the other issues appear to be pretty straightforward (famous last words)

Thanks

I have a '59 Pinch hitter with fast ball and curve that I am in the process of restoring. As you note, the curve relies on a magnet, which is tied to a relay. The curve button triggers the relay, which turns on the magnet. Pretty simple and straightforward. Since it does not have a slow and fast option, I'm not sure how that is done. It does have a screw adjustment with a rubber 'brake' on it that makes contact with the pitching cam/disc. A relay forces the brake onto the disc to slow the pitch down. It would certainly be possible to rewire this relay so it only operated via a 'slow pitch' button. Now, there may be other options based upon how the pitch velocity is achieved. For example, my pitching mechanism is controlled with a spring. The pitching motor takes it to the point of the spring being released but does not determine the velocity of the pitch. The speed of the pitch is dictated by the strength of the spring (less brake pressure). So adding a resistor to reduce the voltage of the pitching motor would have no effect. Either it has enough power to make it to the release point or it doesn't. Once released, the motor is out of the equation.

So the pitch speed is always the same? On mine, there is actually a pot that is accessible if the coin door is open. It is used to control bat speed. The speed of the pitching mechanism is determined by the number of winds on the spring plus there are 3 notches that one can place the end of the spring in to fine tune speed. When I set it up at first, I had the pitch spring tension at max and the bat speed was in the middle. There was no way to get the bat around in time.

Well, finally down the home stretch on this. Another AlexF successful quest resulted in a Pinch Hitter in the far north (Minnesota). Had to do a fair amount of work, but that was what I wanted. Cabinet repainted, pitching unit working new buttons and bumpers, rebuilt batting mechanism and a host of other odds and ends. I still need to do a bit of tweaking to get some of the hit/out switches dialed in but very playable and a great game!IMG_2704_(resized).JPGIMG_2705_(resized).JPGIMG_2707_(resized).JPGIMG_2708_(resized).JPG

My original plan was going to be to sand all the crap off then mix blonde and amber shellac flakes to get the proper vintage shade. Nothing like the enthusiasm one has at the start of a project! However, I realized that removal of the trim was going to be problematic. (The guy I purchased it from had removed the side rails and there was some damage around the nail holes) So that left sanding in place, which is an extremely time consuming, labor-intensive activity. After the pain and hassle of doing the stencils, I decided on Plan B (quick and easy). I simply used lacquer thinner to remove most of the grime and the old paint that had splattered or rubbed off on it. Then put on some additional light coats of high gloss lacquer to give it back the shine. Easy to tape off the cabinet to protect it, so it was very easy and, while not museum quality, good enough for me.

My Pinch Hitter works fine with three exceptions. I'd been living with all of the issues since they didn't impact game play, but finally had some time and figured I'd address them. The first was that the credit wheel wasn't turning. Basically a full disassembly and really deep cleaning took care of it. Since the credit wheel wasn't working, it was effectively on free play. So after fixing it, I had to attack the coin mech...interesting in that the slam switch on the coin door is normally closed. Thank goodness there was a little sticker on the door saying it was or I would never have figured it out. So two down one to go. The third issue is the high score wheel. For the life of me, I can't figure out from the schematics what conditions are needed to make it turn. I can manually hit the coil to increase the number and the reset button at the front under the playfield will 'roll it back' However, there are tons of switches, several option pins and a complete disc mechanism that seem to be involved in making the high score register. Anyone out there able to explain this and, more importantly, the likely culprit?
Thanks

Well you guys are no help!
I got it working but I'm not sure why. I think it has to do with the fact that the high score tens wheel has several "blank" positions. In fact, the first number is a 2. In my case the wheel was in one of the blank positions. I believe this is a non-registered position. (I did re-clean and check all the switches but nothing was particularly dirty or out of adjustment, so I don't think this was the source of the issue). In any case setting the tens wheel to the 2 position seems to have done the trick. Thought I'd post this just in case someone else experiences a similar problem.

Technical question; however, this seems to be the best place to post it. My Pinchhitter is pitching consistently wide right. Consistently as in 4 out of 5 pitches are too wide to hit. Of those a good 25% will be so wide that they hit the 'rail' and bounce towards the center, thereby registering as a strike. Is there a trick/technique to get it to pitch down the middle consistently (obviously, while not pressing the curve button)? Do I try to bend the metal striker and if so do I bend it towards the direction it is skewed (which seems reasonable to me). Or do I try to rotate the entire pitching mechanism? (Not sure how I would do that) Or some other 'adjustment' I should make?

How does one align the pitching mechanism? Do you fiddle with the actual 'blade' that strikes the ball or attempt to rotate the entire mechanism. If rotation is the answer, is there a technique to do that? I don't see anything, like slotted screw holes or adjustment screws that would be used to make the adjustment.

I'll give that a shot...you'd think there would be some wiggle room to fasten the mechanism to the bottom of the playfield. If I could rotate it a couple of degrees, that would do it.

I'll double check, thanks

It appears it was just the striker bar that got bent somehow. Therefore, it was not making contact with the center of the ball (7/8"). Now the head scratcher is how it got bent in the first place. I've had the game for several years without much of a problem and it takes quite a bit of force to bend the striker. Maybe the force behind the striker bar is enough that it slowly got off center...but not enough to make a difference until it reached a point where it did make a difference. At that point, the bar was off-center enough that each pitch would have resulted in the bar being deflected even further? Or perhaps I pitched one before it was fully in position and that caused the striker bar to bend? Anyhow, thanks for the suggestions

Damn, spoke too soon. I'm about 90% sure the issue is with the ball guide spring. It does not put enough downward pressure, so the ball can leak out to the side before traveling the full length of the 'trough'. When I press down lightly on the spring with my finger, it pitches fine. So, I did a bit of disassembly, removing the pitching unit, so that I could reach the spring. Tried to bend it back some and it now seems to work. However, my experience with spring steel tells me, I'll need to get a new spring. Not really looking forward to that as the last person that replaced it or tried to adjust it, stripped the head of one of the screws that holds it in place. Oh well, guess I'll need to order a new spring.

Rather than starting a new thread, I'm gonna try here. I'm thinking this is an easy one but not necessarily intuitive (at least for me).

Williams PinchHitter. Everything works as it should with one exception. Sometimes when you have two strikes, pitch the ball, get a hit and as the runner is moving, it chalks up a third strike and the associated out. At first I though it may be because a ball was still in the chute system from a previous pitch and that it registered through the switch before the hit switch was activated. However, this does not appear to be the case as I've had it happen when I made sure the previous pitch was no longer rolling through the return chutes. Seems like it has to be a timing issue where a switch is in the incorrect state, but it is not consistent. (Happens maybe 20% of the time and only on the third pitch...but of course, it could be happening on other pitches, just don't notice it)

Hopefully, someone has experienced this before and can point me to the right place.