I hear the clicking (reels) on a Williams game with chimes and it sounds like bliss. (Obviously the Williams chimes are much more quiet than not only bells but Gottlieb chimes as well - I like the Williams chimes for playing late at night)

Yes, when I decided I wanted to start collecting the early 70's Williams single-player machines with the big reels (still trying to figure out an easy name for their "breed", lol) I was extremely delighted to realize one day after I already had two for a while and playing one of them "wait a second, these are still early enough to have bells! I hear bells!". I didn't really ever make the connection before as I was already enthralled and too excited to notice or care. Made me even happier to collect them, I figured they would have chimes and never paid enough attention to hear or see them inside of the cabinet until I realized one day while playing one of the machines. It is nice, especially because Gottlieb switched to chimes earlier, in 1969, with "Skipper" (which ironically right now is in the back of my van).

I'd say the chimes on the 70's Williams games are a bit softer than the 60's games - that Vagabond (especially with the back door off) can be ear piercing - although in a good way.

I was looking for a different picture but came across this one that I've never posted (and forgot I took recently!) that almost serves the purpose even better (except all the machines in question are off, oh well), here is the start of my Williams 70's single-player-big-reel collection next to my 1962 Williams Vagabond - and then in front of them (with space to play) is my 1977 Williams Liberty Bell and my 1974 Williams Strato-Flite (barely shown) - which both were made after the shift to chimes. The spinners on Liberty Bell fire the chime, advance the score reel, but also advance a unit that moves a cosmetic string of lights under each spinner. It is one of the loveliest sounds in my opinion, and looks great too with the giant string of inserts and lights that move on each side in perfect synchronization since they share the same exact circuit. I believe it uses one of those tiny match/0-9 unit spinners - except of course is in addition to the actual match unit, so there's two in this machine. This one only controls the lights.

IMG_5550 (resized).JPG

Friendship 7 is forever ingrained in my mind because as a newbie I read a pinball page that warned (almost violently, LOL) about the Williams 50 volt use and noted that Friendship 7 was the last machine to use it. Of course it was used in a string of machines, but they weren't mentioned (so it "didn't matter"), so Friendship 7 is forever ingrained in my mind as the electronic devil since back when you're new everything is scary and daunting especially when some guy on the internet puts it in giant red text. At least I'll be prepared and cautious if I ever work on one.

I'll have to look on IPDB, I don't think I ever played very many of the 50 volt Williams games - I've played Vagabond (obviously) and Beat The Clock a lot, but they're both after that cut-off. Interesting.

I have this problem on some of my EM multiplayer Gottliebs. Probably just need some tweaking to the 10 pt. relay switches. (on mine)

I bet those (and I believe I heard they did) circuit boards had problems with the fast coil pulsing - which is how your situation differs from o-din's Grand Prix which is an EM.

*problems (my bad, maybe it is more readable now, I edited it to fixed the typo now)

What I meant was the circuit boards have trouble keeping up. They take it through the switch matrix and wiring back to the boards (and also I'm sure the code only checks for switch hits every so often (milliseconds) but it sounds like you're not having that kind of issue since it is scoring) and then the power to strike the chimes has to be sent back out through the driver board, MEANWHILE, an EM spinner is just a switch to the power line of the 10 point (or whatever) relay, which itself is just a power switch to the reel and coil.

SS:

Switch press -> Wait for board to accept -> Board runs through code to go to function of what that switch does -> Adds score -> Tell driver board to power chime -> Driver board powers chime.

The score adding and chime triggering are likely not in parallel since they're probably only fractions of a millisecond apart - why bother? Granted, this is all done incredibly quickly even with the technology at the time (fractions of milliseconds or at least milliseconds)- BUT, then you're ripping that spinner so incredibly fast on top of that, it can't keep up.

I know Bally and Gottlieb games (and probably Williams too) will put everything in a "queue" to be done, so like if your ball hits 5 switches before the board can get through and score them and play a sound for them - you will still receive your points properly. Like if you go in and touch a playfield switch incredibly fast you can create a repetitive line of scoring for each of the those presses even after your pressing is over. But if they did for a chime spinner, it would sound really silly for it to still be going with the spinner stopped, so they likely don't keep the sound queues in this "note to self: do later" line.

EM:

Hit spinner -> Powers 10 point relay -> Powers score reel and chime in parallel

No waiting for much - no reasonable delay, just the 299,792,458 meters per second electricity travels through wire (but read next sentence) & the split second activations of EM relays. Of course the chime coils as well, but the electricity speed + coil speed is something that both the EM and SS share.

Unless other owners of this SS title have different experiences, I'd say your game is fine!