I finally plugged it in tonight. I breathed a sigh of relief as it fired right up. I'll post a few more pictures as time goes on. I have much detail work in front of me. I am probably going to have some questions, too.

Like the Star Gazers being built, it is a Greatwich play field and back glass, and a Third Coast Pinball play field harness. And Pinball Pimp stencils. Without these three suppliers, none of this would be happening. I got into this hobby at just the right time.

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I started this two years ago. Other things and life intervened. Right now I have it sitting in my Seawitch cabinet while I work some final items in my converted Dracula cabinet.

It plays. But I have some issues with the drop targets and have a couple of switches and lights acting up. All I can say is that it is impressive when the flippers kick the ball all the way to the top. It is going to be fast.

I started the cab two years ago. Here is the link for that. It was a filthy, beer soaked, beat up Dracula cab. I had to rebuild a lot of corners. I had to replace the floor.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/restoring-stern-dracula-cabinet-for-duty-for-star-gazer

There are more pics at the link.

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I decided early one that I did not want to to a "straight" restoration. It is not a restoration. It is a new build. I like my Sterns but I do not like how the play field sits in the cabinet on those metal "Z" angles that require you to lift the play in the air to return it from the "leaning back service position" into playing position. I have replaced the "Z" angles with support brackets from an old Gottlieb cabinet. With this setup, it is super easy to move the play field into the upright service position and then back into playing position.

I have one more minor mod to make to this Gottlieb support to make it complete.

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Along those same lines that this is not a 100% restoration, I made a modified lamp board to give a more even light behind the back glass. The LED light tape operates on house current. I still have to work out how I will hook this up to turn on at the same time I turn the pin on. I will most likely add an extra pole to the on-off cabinet switch and tap into the service outlet wiring.

The adhesive backed LED strip is pressed onto some shiny whiteboard I got at Home Depot.

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The reason I decided to go this way was as a means to avoid light spots behind the back glass.

The LED light strip gives a nice even glow to the back glass, however, with the way I built the lamp board, it leaves a semi-dark halo around the edges. It looks better in real life than in the pic, so it is tradeoff I will live with---unless I can figure out a way to light up the edges.

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Thank you. That means a lot.

Only the finest

(You are looking at a brand new can of white that I dropped and broke the nozzle off of. $4.00 worth of paint I cannot use ).

After the color was applied, I hit it with several coats of automotive clear.

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I lost some pics due to a computer glitch. So I have to improvise.

I saw the copper tape usage in a thread and liked the way it looked ( I think it was one of Vid's threads ). This is the Quicksilver I am starting. The copper tape is used to feed power to all feature lights. I did this on my Big Game and have gotten good results. The advantage is you can remove any extra wiring from the harness. And you screw your feature lights tight to the copper tape and only have to solder the individual feature wire to each lamp socket tab. And if you need to change bulbs, instead of having to bend the socket backwards, now you can just unscrew it.

Some may value this, or not.

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This is the GI wiring for Quicksilver. When using the copper tape, it is easier to use fully insulated red and white GI wire instead of trying to insulate any points where bare GI wire would cross over the copper tape.

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This is Star Gazer. The wiring is complete. You can see the copper tape buried under everything. Shawn at TCP included enough wiring that I was able to roll it up and tie wrap it. Every wire has enough extra wire wrapped up so sometime in the future, if extra wire is needed, then clip some tie wraps and get the length you need to reach that switch etc.

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Shawn sent out this Star Gazer play field harness in 3 groups.

( I like to build things that can be disassembled easily. That comes from repairing too many car parts that were supposed to thrown away ).

#1) There was a separate harness for the feature lights. This is the harness that is closest to the play field. Following Shawn's instructions, I wired the feature lights first.

# 2) Next was the switch harness. It is now living in between harness #1 and harness #3.

#3) This is the solenoids harness. It sits on top of the stack. The pops and drops are Molex-ed. So if needed, all I would need to do is disconnect the wire at the slings and slo-blo fuse holder, cut a few tie wraps and peel the entire solenoids back to freely expose the switch harness. If you wish to unscrew all of the switches, then the switch harness can be peeled back to expose the lamps harness.

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Frying a solenoid coil and blowing fuses is no fun. Neither is trying to find the offending coil. Real quick, I learned to hate having to cut the yellow wires at the slo-blo fuse to see where the problem lies. So I double fused the solenoids. This way, if a slo-blo blows it is only going be be from one bank of wires. With Star Gazer, I have the left drop, left sling, top pop, center pop, and the top drop wired to one yellow wire. And I have the out hole, right sling, right drop, and right drop on the other yellow wire.

This will make it easier to trouble shoot just by pulling each fuse instead of cutting wire and re-soldering. To help with traceability, I have all right hand side yellow wire marked with small red tie wraps and the left side marked chartreuse/green tie wraps.

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Is all of this overkill? That could be argued as affirmative quite easily. Hopefully, the pin will never give me problems and I will just be able to play with abandon. However, at some time in the future, whoever owns this pin might benefit with this wiring set up and will thank "that guy" for building it like this.

I'm not all that great with electronics but I do like running wiring. Overkill or not, I had a good time wiring this up.

One thing I learned from Nine Ball is that adjusting the drop target switches is an impossible exercise with the drops being all the way to the back of the play field. There is just no easy way to access the switches should they need adjusting. So, on the drop in the back of the play field on Star Gazer, I have installed the switches as they were installed on the earlier Sterns. I have them mounted to the bottom of the drop target assy.

I have heard a couple of people say that the switches sitting on the bottom of the drop assy. can cause problems, but my Dragonfist came to me with the back drop assy. having the switches mounted on the bottom. It has never given me problems.

You can use your imagination as to how easy, or hard, those switches would be to adjust if they were mounted on the back for the drop assy. with a pop bumper also in the way. For the 2 drops on either side of the play field, that are easily accessed and have been left alone.

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When I brought my worn out and routed Seawitch home I did the normal basic shop job. And then started playing. I had a light go out. I lift the play field and see a broken wire swinging. I fixed it and went back to playing. I lost another light and saw I had another wire hanging.

You know how you can take a piece of metal and if you keep bending it back and forth it will break? Sure you do.

I lifted the play field and started looking around. IIRC, I had at least 15 wires that were hanging by one strand of wire as the other wires flexed too many times from the nudging. All of those wires were just swinging in the breeze and "bending" the wire strands.

Now, I go for "tight". I want my wires locked down so there is minimal flex and reduced chance of wire breakage sometime down the road.

This is how I do my flippers.

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There is something here that I do that is not proper soldering for pin wiring. You are supposed to insert the wire into the hole on the tab and then solder. When all those wires were broken, they are all broken from behind the solder joint; The solder joint was still intact but the wire was broken.

A proper solder job did not keep the wires from breaking. A minor PIA is trying to dig all of those loose, soldered wires out of those tab holes. I have better things to do, so I solder improperly and will take my chances with a solder joint coming apart. Hopefully, tie wrapping and making the wires tight will keep it all together.

One other thing I do is replace the prop stick. I don't like watching my cleared play fields flex in the breeze when I have the play field propped up. So, what I do is make a prop from some copper plumbing tube.

My Seawitch cab in its filthy glory.

The prop gives me good, solid, play field support in the center of the play field. I use a PVC end cap as a capture point for the prop.

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Big Game forced this one on me. That is a huge, wide, and heavy play field. It sagged so bad on the prop stick that I had to come up with something.

Catacomb has 4 drop targets and it almost falls off of the prop stick.

I added some of those Bright Caps pop bumper lights. They look fantastic in person. They do not photograph well, at all.

https://www.pinballlife.com/britecaps-evo-pop-bumper-lighting.html

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You can see the nice reflections in the play field.

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I tried to knock down the glare for this pic by laying a piece of paper on top. These are the cool white light units. What is cool is that they really light up the pop bumper housings and give them a bluish tinge.

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There is enough room to use these, at least in this Seawitch cabinet I am using. There is room for the play field glass to install. It is close. Only about a 1/4" of room to spare.

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The past few days has been taken up with locating and repairing switches that were not acting right.

I had one SU target switch wired backwards. I also managed to wire my slingshots backwards. I also had a problem with one of the drop target assemblies. I bought these drop assemblies in different places or removed them from different play fields. On one of those drop assemblies, the switches were stacked backwards which throws you off balance on how to wire up the 3-bank target switch assembly; This one drop assembly looked just like the other two, but it was not. That cost me a few hours before I finally figured it out.
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I finally made the only two wire guides used on Star Gazer. Per one of Vid's threads, I picked up on the thought to use .093 stainless welding rod. It worked fabulously. The rod is soft enough to bend by hand but hard enough to retain its shape when being used as a ball guide.

To make the 90 degree bends all that was needed was a small bench vise and elbow grease.

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I still need to figure out why 4 feature lights are not working, but the heavy lifting is done. I need to make some tweaks and small adjustments and the play field will be done.

I have a few minor items to gather up on the cabinet and it will be done. I am giving myself 2 to 3 weeks for having it finished.

It is a blast to play. Very fast game.

I have run into some issues with my wiring that I am discussing on the Stern Electronics thread. So, my completion schedule has been altered.

Doing a new build is a bit a of a challenge. While playing some test game and putting the pin through its paces, my right flipper quit working. I'll spare you the drama. On my right hand Pinball Life flipper assembly, a switch contact fell off of a switch blade.

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Fortunately, I have some spare contacts I got from Steve at PBR so it will be no problem to replace the missing contact. Right? Wrong. Unfortunately the hole in the Pinball Life switch blade is 3 times the size of hole needed for the replacement contact I got from Steve. Fortunately, I also have some spare switch blades I got from Steve. So, I had to build up a spare blade and do an R & R.

I am most likely going to put the play field back on the rotisserie as I look for my wiring issue.

I'll add new info. as it comes available.

I had to take a break on Star Gazer. I had it together and ran into an electrical problem that threw me for a loop. The problem was a defective switch on a drop target assembly. I just swapped drop assemblies and the problem went away. I'll check for the defect/problem a little later on down the line.

I have the pin playing 100%. But I have 4 feature lights that are not burning, so this is my next trouble shooting job. And then the play field will be done.

Things I have learned with this build:

Let's talk about making ball guides for Star Gazer.

1) Bought a container of stainless steel welding rod. I will have other uses for it, but would suggest you just visit a weld shop and offer to buy a couple of sticks for a $1.00 each; Something like that.

This material is easy to bend. You can bend it with a pair of pliers but I would recommend having a bench vice.

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There are 2 wire type ball guides that you have to make.

This is the upper ball guide. This is my 2nd try at making this guide.

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The problem with my 1st guide is that it was a little flat at the top and a ball could stop on the flat spot and get hung up on the guide. so, with number two attempt at it I made it into a little bit more of a peak right at the end and cured the problem. It is not that critical with how much rod you use and how long you make your guide. All that is really needed is to leave enough room for the ball to get past the guide and enter the play field.

The lower ball guide has to be worked a little different. What you are going to see is that there is slight bow in the rod I used to make this guide. I'll offer up my logic for the bow in the guide.

When bending metal, you have to understand something called "bend allowance". Basically, when you bend a piece of metal into a 90 degree angle, the metal will stretch at the bend points. Without knowing the formula for bend allowance ( I used to know the formulas but have forgotten them ) when you make your bends on both ends of your guide you probably will have a piece of wire or metal that will not fit.

With my first ball guide for the lower guide it was just a hair too short. I could make it fit in the 2 locating holes but it was trying to pull itself out of one of the holes. So, I made a 2nd guide, made it about 1/8" longer and got it into position by making a small bow in the wire. This keeps you from having to learn bend allowances.

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One more thing about this weld rod I am using:

You will see that the labeling shows the rod as being 3/32" in diameter. 3/32 = .093" But actually, the weld rod company is cheating and I caught them. This rod measures only .091". I have measured every rod with my calipers and they all check at .091. .002" is a minuscule amount of difference but it can hose you up. Make sure you double check any weld rod you might use for what size it really is BEFORE you drill hours ball guide holes.

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You all have heard of Murphy's law which states that "If anything can go wrong, it will".

Well, I'm the guy who makes Murphy's law come to life. If there are 100 boxes of product on the shelf and 99 are working 100% and one unit was crushed in the box, I'm the guy who will manage to bring home the unit that was crushed the box .

I'm that guy.

Check out these mangled drop target switches that are bent in all different directions. I'm the guy who made this happen.

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How did this happen?

I thought you would never ask.

This is the set of drop targets in question. They are on the left hand side of the play field.

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And when you go to lift the play field and pull it back so you can flip it forward to stand up, those switches on this drop assembly are on a collision course with the slam tilt "U" channel on the tilt board. I am holding this channel up for the photo. I removed it from the tilt board after I managed to jam the switches into it for a 2nd time.

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OK, Star Gazer owners. You heard it hear first. Make sure you really lift the play field up before you pull back on your play field and jam these switches into the slam tilt channel.

So you think a guy stepping on his own pork is a funny laughing matter, huh?

I got news for you. So do I. I'd be laughing my ass off it was happening to someone else

I was not laughing at the time. But I am getting to where I can start to grin about it.

I am getting ready to buy all of the last parts I need for this build. I need to buy displays. Which displays should I buy?

I'm still progressing on my Star Gazer build. It took me awhile to figure out how I was going to power my back box lighting. My back box lighting runs on household voltage. It is on it own separate circuit For the longest time I had a plan on how I would power this lighting. And then, out of the blue, I figured out how I was going to light it up.

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First was finding a source of house voltage. At first, I thought I would tap into power at the service outlet on the tilt board. But the outlet is unswitched and I need a power source I can switch on and off with the pinball machine. Splicing wires and tapping in out the service outlet just "felt" like it would be too cumbersome.

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After months of thinking about a power source, the answer came to me in about 5 minutes. I tapped into the line filter at the lower left side of the cabinet.

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Tapping into power at the line filter allowed my to add in a electrical junction box. This pic also shows the power brick/transformer for the back box lighting plugged in and ready to power the back box lights.

I set it up so it can be disconnected/unplugged from the line filter. My logic for doing this is to make it easy to service should the wall socket ever need to be replaced. Basically, I did it for serviceability.

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In this pic, you can see a length of white lamp cord running down the left side of the cab and crossing over to the right side where the pin's power switch is located. You can see my test bulb plugged in; It has passed the light bulb test.

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And here is the switch that controls the back box lighting. For the longest time I was trying to figure out how to switch this setup. Finding an pinball style On-Off toggle switch that could handle one more load item proved to be an impossibility for me. To get the two extra lugs I would need is something I could only find in an On-Off-On configuration which would not work.

I settled on adding a separate switch. Doing it this has allowed the back box lighting to become its own separate circuit, completely independent of any other pinball wiring. I'm still trying to figure out how to join the two toggle switches On-Off levers so only one switch movement is needed, but it will probably always be two switches will have to thrown to get the pin ready to play.

I still have a couple of other small details to complete inside the cab and then I will be ready to set the back box on.

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I have the coin door completed. Since this will be a home use pin, the coin lockout parts have been stripped out.

The coin slots have been filled with some red plexiglass "levers" to add credits to the pin.

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Credits can be added by pushing the red levers, or the door can be opened and the Cherry switch activating wire can be accessed manually.

And the red levers are Molexed so that they can be disabled if needed. If I want make sure no one can add credits I can disconnect the red levers, lock the coin door and no one can add credits except the one who holds the coin door key.

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Cool. Where did you tap into the 12 volts at?

I'll file this away in my "Why didn't I think of that" note book. I could have placed my electrical service box where you placed your outlet and tapped the wiring as you did. It would have save me around $15.00.

how do you like the 12 volts?

What type brand of light strips did you use?

I'm waiting for some flipper switch contacts to come in from PBR so I can rebuild the flipper switches.

Other than this, the cabinet is done. Including the ground straps on the coin door and coin door trim pieces and the stainless side rails are also properly grounded. But I still need to add all of the stapled paper work.

And I need to clean up my extra wiring that will light up the back box. I am going to add a fuse for this wiring down next to the On-Off switches. There is going to be a lot of high voltage in that corner so I made a tent of clear plastic that lays over the top of the entire switch area.

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It looks like I need to turn my high voltage waring sign around.

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Thank you. I forgot to show the volume pot. I moved it to the coin door for easier access. The pot harness is tie wrapped to the coin door harness if it ever needs to be moved. ( There is a coin catching "funnel" hidden inside the metal bracket. I had to remove some of the factory metal from that coin catcher to make room for the pot.

The big reason I made this move is that the Dracula cabinet is built different than your donor cab. The speaker sits farther back and behind the cross-tie board, making the pot harder to reach. I like it. I think I will do my other Sterns this way, too.

Thanks for the tip on the missing ground wire. I will borrow your solution.

I'm looking for my knocker plate in my parts stash.

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I can tell you the difference in sound is tremendous.