The EM part of pinside in general is very nice. The history of EM's has already been written, so it avoids nearly all of the drama associated with the newer, high-priced (and thus high-emotional-investment) machines, and new manufacture drama.

Looks like another week till I join...looking forward to it

Good karma Wickerman! I will do the same thing. Invaluable advice from members here since I'm located in an area with *very* few pinball machines (I know of 1 other) and no technical advisors....well there might be a few of those "advisor types" but not so relevant if you know what I mean! So thanks too from sleepy Smithers BC.

Wahnsinniger - where do the early ss machines fit on your scale for friendly owners? I was watching some videos about machines with circuit boards, transistors, capacitors etc and thought switch stacks and dirty contacts are not so bad!

Peace everyone and all the best for the New Year.

I am no expert mind you, and only have Bally-made early Solid-State machines. I have to say that, thanks to Clay's guides, they are actually not that bad to keep working. Their age and apparent design flaws are negatives, but the circuit boards are relatively easy to work on it seems. Thankfully I believe all of the circuit boards have newly manufactured replacements available.

That said, EM games, once you get comfortable with them, are easier to work on. If something stops working, you can manually troubleshoot it by just actuating relays and switches until you isolate the problem.