I posted about this problem about a month ago and now I'm back, after what's been hours and hours of troubleshooting. My problem is fairly simple: the sound on my TZ randomly drops out (volume to near zero) during play. No rhyme or reason to the problem.

I've already done the following:

- replaced all sound-related ribbon cables (actually all but 1 cable in total)
- checked all cables to ensure they're not seated improperly, same for the non-soldered chips
- most importantly, replaced the original sound board with a new board.

I thought the sound board replacement would solve my problem. It didn't, but it did prove that my problem isn't with the sound card.

For 300 bucks I can get a brand new power driver board. I want to isolate this problem (last time it sounded like everyone thought it was the capacitors on the PDB), THEN fix it by repairing what's broken. Am I making a good gamble to assume the problem is with the power driver board? My thought here is that I replace the board, the problem goes away, then I go to town troubleshooting the older board.

Yep, my only machine and yes, it does appear that RD boards are the only ones available. Super bummed to hear you say that your didn't work out.

So I'm down to 1) power board 2) CPU board (or chip?) or 3) physical speaker issue.

The situation is as follows: the sound never 100% drops out...it just drops super low. I don't hear any loud crackling or anything that would indicate that a speaker wire is frayed and losing contact. It also isn't consistently a problem. I've had stretched of 15-20 minutes where I haven't heard any issue at all, then all of a sudden it's happening again. I can take an audio sample of the problem and put it on Youtube if that would make it easier to understand.

When it happens, the sound drops out for anywhere from 1-5 seconds at a time, sometime a little longer (total bummer for gameplay, as you can imagine). Then it comes back full force. Then a couple of minutes later it drops out again, sometimes a minute later and sometimes 10 minutes later. Totally inconsistent and hard to replicate the problem.

The machine is in my basement where it's quite cool all the time. I hadn't thought of playing with the backglass removed and the door open but that sounds like a good idea. I guess that would tell me whether it's a heat-related problem or not.

The guy who sold me this machine told me that the capacitors on the power driver board were replaced and they look brand new, so I'm less inclined to think it's a power driver issue. I guess I could break out the voltmeter and try testing them again, but I'm not sure I understand how a capacitor is properly tested. I know how to test for resistance and volts, but not sure how to test caps....

Testing the speaker wire configuration sounds interesting. Any thoughts on how I'd do this?

Sorry quoting my own text...less inclined to think it's a capacitor-related power driver issue (since they appear new). It could still very well be a power driver board issue.

I suppose that's possible, but I'm not sure what sounds come out of the backbox versus the other speakers, so it's hard to say. There have been a few times where the sound died down so much that I honestly thought the sound was 100% off.

One other thing I should mention: this machine has two other problems, both of which I thought were unrelated but might be playing in here:

1) the DMD is going out...fuzzy around the edges, pulsating fuzz on the lettering, etc. Doesn't happen all the time, but it comes and goes. I've noticed it's more pronounced/obvious when you start the machine, play a game, then reset during the (with the little button on the inside of the door). I've been resetting games to try and test the sound and notice it that right after reset the fuzziness is the worst. I didn't care much about this problem because I heard they were coming out with LED DMD displays in the next few months and wanted to upgrade anyways

2) there's a blown transistor (I'm positive, found it and everything) on the power board that controls the solenoid that governs the "shooter diverter," which is that little silver thing that lets the pinball load into either the manual plunger or the automatic plunger. The transistor blew and the solenoid got stuck in "always-on" on mode and burned out. I've got a replacement solenoid and transistor already, but was waiting to solve the sound problem before trying to fix that problem

Regarding the blown transistor - I thought I had a genius moment when I realized that the transistor controls the shooter diverter, which is only toggled to ON in rare moments in the game, like when certain multiballs start. Since the transistor is blow, I was thinking maybe the random drops are caused by the machine trying to fire off an ON command to the shooter diverter every time a multiball happened that would use the shooter diverter. But then I played through, got a multiball that would utilize the shooter diverter, and nothing happening to the sound. Sigh.

Stupid question - how can I test the speakers to make sure it's not just a speaker wiring problem?

Hey guys,

Is there any reason why the big speaker in the cabinet of the pin uses slip-on contacts to connect the wire to speaker versus just using solder? I want to remove "weak contact" at this speaker by just soldering the ends of the wires directly to the speaker contacts. Any reason I shouldn't be doing that?

There are capacitors on both the sound card and on the power driver board, right? Which ones are usually the culprits when it comes to sounds? I assume it's normally the sound board acting up.

Such a bummer that it's so hard to test capacitors.

Thanks guy, I think i'll give a new round of testing and see what I can find as far as parallel/series. Hoping they're series and maybe the series is partially broken somewhere