if you don't find anything with the chime wiring, the only real difference between you manually operating a relay and the game circuits doing it is you are almost certainly holding the switch on the relay closed longer and you may be making a different/better connection by tilting the armature plate.
none of the below would explain the wrong chime powering (assuming it's not just when the digit is rolling over from 9->0), so if that's definitely happening, ignore the following.
tmi alert
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there's hold-in switches on the relays that keep the relays powered until score reel switches open the circuit. E.g. on the N relay, there's a switch with WH-BL wire and the SL-WH-RED wire going to the coil that is the hold-in switch.
look for the WH-BL wire on the 10's reel on player 1 ... usually it's an EOS type switch. You should have 25V between the WH-BL wire and BLK wire on the coil when the reel is not doing anything.
alternatively, measure resistance between the WH-BL wire and RED-WH wire on the same switch on player 3 tens reel. You should have almost zero ohms.
also on the N relay is a switch with MAR and RED+WH wires. That's the one powering the chime. Make sure it closes quickly/reliably.
it's basically a race condition. The reel coil and the chime are more-or-less firing at the same time via different switches on the controlling relay. If the coils are wrong or switch behavior doesn't make the chime plunger do it's thing first, the reel will unpower the circuit before the chime has ... chimed.